Optimising Google Ads Search Campaigns [Updated for the NEW Dashboard - Google Ads 2023]

Once you have your Google Ads search campaign set up, the next important, and I mean very important step is to optimize your campaign. Now, I know that in 2023 you may have already watched some other videos on how to optimize your Google Ads search campaigns. And hey, I've even released some optimizing your search campaigns already here on my channel. But the reason for why it's important that we release another one of these optimizing your search campaigns is because Google has done what it does for quite often in that it has gone and changed some things around and in particular it's changed its Google Ads Dashboard, especially the navigation. And while you still have all the same optimization levers or optimization actions available to you for search campaigns in the new Google Ads Dashboard, some of them are now in different locations. So as requested by you, my viewers, I've put together an updated version of optimizing your Google Ads search campaigns to for 2023 using the new Google Ads Dashboard. And my hope is that with this video you can stop the fits of rage at your computer because you just can't follow along on YouTube with these teaching tutorials once again, because Google has gone and changed around the dashboard. So what I'm going to be taking you through today is the top three optimization actions that you need to be completing for your Google Ads search campaigns. Now, just in case we haven't met yet, and this is your first time here, thank you. Firstly, welcome. It's great to have you here. My name is Aaron Young and I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. Now, when it comes to optimizing your Google Ads search campaigns, the most important thing is, is that you actually have an optimization strategy. And what I mean by that is that you know exactly what you need to be optimizing in your Google Ads account every single week, every month and every 90 days. And the reason for why this is important because a big common mistake that I see is that someone will make a change to their Google Ads account. They then freak out because they see some different results and then they make that change back within 24 or 48 hours. And that's the worst thing that you can do, especially if it's something like your bid optimization strategy is because if you were to update your target CPA or add in a maximize conversions optimization strategy, it could take Google up to 10 to 14 days to be able to work out the new data that it needs to assign to your campaign. So these increased results that you will see may take one or two weeks so it's really, really important that as you're going through these optimization steps that you do need to take a big note of how often you to go through and complete certain optimization strategies. And to help you with that, I've put together my Google Ads Optimization checklist. And this not only lets you know the nine important optimization steps that you need to be carrying out in your Google Ad search campaigns, but it also lets you know, more importantly how often you need to complete that action, whether you need to complete it every 72 hours, every week, every month, or every 90 days. And if you would like to get a copy of my Google Ads Optimization checklist, all you need to do is to follow that link in the description below. So with all of that said, let's now jump into a screen share and I'm going to take you through the top three things that you need to optimize in your Google Ads search campaigns for 2023. And we'll be using that new Google Ads Dashboard right now. Let's go check out that screen share. Okay, so the top three actions that I'm going to be taking you through today is how to go through and review your keyword search review. We're then going to take you through your ad copy review. And then finally, I'm also going to take you through how to go through and do some bid optimizations, especially for your demographic targeting. Now, the reason for why with those three items are the core items that you need to be focusing on, especially with your search terms. We do know that Google has really changed the way that the keyword match types work and they're now a lot broader. So that's why it becomes really important that you go through and regularly review your search terms for a new campaign. I'm doing this every 72 hours, but I would be saying that even for mature campaigns, you need to be doing this at least every single week. So what you will need to be doing is you need to go into the individual campaign. We're going to choose this campaign in here. Now, previously you would go through and you review your search keywords, but to see the actual search terms and the difference between your search terms and your search keywords is that the search keywords are the targeted keywords that you've added to your ad group, whereas the search terms are the actual user search terms that the user has used to trigger your ad. So where we want to go is we want to go into insights and reports and then we want to go into search terms. Previously, you would have found this right under here in the keywords section. So if you're still using the old dashboard, just go keywords and then search terms. If you've been taken over to the new one, go into insights and reports and search terms. Now what you want to be doing here, by default it'll just show you the top 10 rows. But if you want to look at some longer term data, you can go to 100 rows. And what you want to be looking at here is, you want to be looking at, is there any search terms that users have used that have triggered your ad which are not relevant? And I can see some in here. These ones are for other apps. This, this is promoting a gym software app. So we don't want to waste our budget on those search terms. So I would go through and review all of these, but I've just picked out a couple of here because I just want to show you this process. And then once they're added, you go through and add these in as a negative keyword. And what this will do is that if someone wish to search these search terms again, our ad would not be triggered. So then we go through and click save. Now the other thing that you can do here while you're reviewing your search terms is that you can also add in new keywords as a targeted keyword. And for this one we're going to add in this one because Yoga Studio software that actually works really, really well with this product and previously we haven't been targeting that keyword. So we just need to select that there and add that in as a keyword. Now the one thing that you do need to note is that this will straightaway add it as a broad match. So if you only want that to be a phrase match, what you need to do straight away, just go into. So we can see in here, this keyword here, you can see how it's pending and under review. So we know that's the new keyword. We just want to go through and change that over to either a phrase match or an exact match. But in this current I'm going to choose a phrase match. So that's how you go through and complete your keyword search order, remembering you wanted to do two things. You're wanting to not only add in some extra negative keywords for unrelated searches, but you also want to go through and add in those extra long tail search terms. So the next thing we want to do is we want to go through and review our ad review. And that, that's this one in here. The way that we do this is that you go into your ad group, select the ad group that you want to use, and then we go through into your ads. Now, as a core rule here is that you want to be using two different ads in the same ad group. Now, everyone would be well aware that with Google you are now limited to your responsive search ads and the way that these function, if you're unaware of that. So Google will still show three headlines and two descriptions, but you're able to add up to 15 different headlines and up to four different descriptions. So it's really important, important that you get your split testing right. Now, even though Google does do its own split testing, I still highly recommend that you do manual split testing. And I want to show you the example. In here you can see from February through to May of this year you can see what a 4% difference in our conversion rate. And this ad in here has also got a 2% higher click through ratio. Now we've only just started this new ad, so there's not enough data in here. As you can see, this one's only got 30 clicks. But if we were to add in the enabled and paused, you can see this was the previous ad that we did running throughout this time period. So if we compare this one and this one, you can see that this one had a 1% less interaction rate or click through rate. But you can see from here the conversion rate on this one was nearly double and there was a much better cost per conversion. So that's why it's really, really highly important that you're always testing something new. And what we had in this one, that last round of tests, what we were testing, a difference between whether we put request for free demo or this one in here. Here we were testing whether we wanted to put in a price from just $54 a month. Now the way that we locked that in is that we pinned in that third headline or call to action for each ad and the data showed us that by not putting a price in in this case was giving us a better example. Now, we thought it would be the other way around and it could very well be that way for you. So that's why it's really important that you need to complete this split testing. And what I recommend is you go through and do this every 30 to 60 days. The reason for why you do it for 60 days and not 30 days is that you want to make sure you've got enough data on this secondary ad. So as you can see, we've only just started this one. So we don't have enough data in here yet, but once we were to get this one to be above about a thousand impressions, I'd then be comfortable to make a call on the data. And you want to be focusing on your interaction rate or click through ratio and then your conversion metrics. All right, so we've already gone through the first two, which is how to do your search term audit, then also how to review your ads. This third thing that I wanted to take you through is to go through and review your bid optimization. And I especially wanted to focus on our demographic targeting. And if you go into audiences, you'll see your audience segments in here. But I actually want to focus on our demographic targeting, which is this data in here. And the way that I like to do this is that we review the conversions and then the cost. Or you can also do it by your cost and also your cost per conversion. And what you'd be looking at through here is you can see this one in through here, this group of 18 to 24, our cost per conversion is a lot higher at $47, whereas the other ones are down at $26. Now, the reason for why I'm not going to pause this one yet or exclude this one yet is do have less data. We only spent $142 there, whereas these other ones we spent a lot more. So if you wanted to, you could go through for this 18, 24 to exclude it. At the moment I've just added some extra bid adjustments to these ones and you can see we're already spending a lot more money in this area. If we got to the stage where, especially for the 18 to 24 age bracket, we'd spent, you know, maybe 4 or $500 and we weren't getting the same level of conversions, I would go through and exclude that. And you just select that there. And the benefit of that is that's then allowing more budget to be spent, these better performing demographics. Another option is you can also do this for that household income. But I do want to note that if you're based in Europe, you won't have this household income data. And the reason for that is just for some EU regulations in regards to that. And once again, what you're looking at here, we want to change this over to your cost and we also want to change it over to the number of conversions. And what we're looking for is are there any high demographics that are spending a lot of money, but we're getting low levels of conversions. And you can see from here, this is looking nice in that where we're spending the most amount of money, we're also getting the most amount of conversions. And if you wanted to double, you can also switch that over to cost per conversion. And you can see these are all fairly stable there. So what I'd really be looking at is that if we had a cost per conversion that was really, really super high, we would then go through and make that decision to exclude it. So that's how you complete those three core optimization actions that you need to be completing for your Google search campaigns. And remember, if you want to make sure that you're completing all nine actions, make sure that you follow that link in the description below so you can get access to my Google Ads Optimization checklist. Now, it goes without saying that if you want to see the best results for your Google Ads search campaigns, even if you've got all of your optimization strategies and your actions completed correctly, if you don't have your Google search campaigns set up in the right way, you just won't be getting the level of results that you should be seeing with Google Ads. And to help you with that, and to make sure that you've got your Google Ads search campaign set set up the right way for 2023, go through and watch this video right here. Once again, thank you for joining me. It's been a pleasure having you. I'm Aaron Young from Define Digital Academy. See you next time.