6 Best Practices for Paid Search Campaigns in 2024

To run a paid search campaign, you will need to bid on certain keywords and then pay each time someone clicks on one of your ads. The ability to target your ads based upon keywords, demographics, user behavior, and more, maximizes the effectiveness of your advertising budget and makes it a truly economical form of advertising. Furthermore, the best paid search platforms have helpful analytics tools, which allow you to measure performance and adjust your strategies in real-time. This way you can continually optimize your campaigns and achieve a better ROI. However, while the concept is easy to understand, the realization can be a little more complicated. That is why, we at Hitsearch have put together this guide to paid search best practices. If you follow our tips, hopefully you will avoid wasting money and set off along the right path.

Three Reasons Why Paid Search Matters

1. Reach Your Audience at the Perfect Time

While some industries are more competitive than others, there is always a lot of competition for the top keywords. With paid search, you can bid on keywords, which ensures that your adverts are seen by those searching for your products. This obviously makes it more likely that they will become a paying customer. Furthermore, you are able to be very precise with your targeting and refine it by location, device type, and more, to ensure that you are reaching the right people at the right time.

2. Control Your Budget and Campaigns

Paid search gives you a huge amount of control. You can control your budget, target keywords, and landing pages very effectively. Furthermore, the analytical tools will allow you to monitor how effective your adverts are and then optimize them based upon impressions, clicks, conversions, and sales. This kind of data-driven optimization can greatly improve your ROI. You can see what does and doesn’t work, and then make informed adjustments.

3. Complement Your Organic Search Efforts

It can take a little while for the effects of SEO to become apparent. In contrast, paid search can deliver an immediate improvement in traffic and conversions. You can use paid search to promote your content in the short term while waiting for your SEO efforts to produce results. By combining both techniques, you can build a meaning presence on search engine results pages.

6 Best Practices for Paid Search in 2024

There is an obvious drawback to paid search; it costs money. That is why it is important to be aware of paid search best practices. They allow you to put your money to the best possible use. If you adopt a logical and structured approach, you can gradually improve different aspects of your campaigns, such as keyword selection, your ad copy, and your audience targeting, each of which has a big impact on the overall success of your paid search efforts. With that in mind, spend a few minutes reading the following list of best practices, and you can then begin implementing them right away.

Video: Choosing the RIGHT Keywords for Google Ads in 2023

1. Choosing the Right Keywords

Keywords lie at the heart of all paid search campaigns. The keywords you choose will determine the ad visibility, the cost of the campaign, and the conversion rates. Therefore, it is imperative that you choose the right keywords. To help, use tools such as Google Keyword Planner. This will help you find new keywords, understand search volumes, and calculate costs. You can enter up to 10 keywords you believe are relevant and then receive a list of ideas of related keywords together with information such as average monthly searches and bid amounts.

2. Reevaluating Keywords

Unfortunately, choosing the right keywords is not a one-time process. You need to regularly update your list of keywords if you are to stay relevant. There are many reasons why the right keywords for your business will change. For instance, new market trends may emerge that lead to a change in customer behavior or one of your competitors might launch a highly effective product or campaign. In addition to Google Keyword Planner, you can use the Google Ads performance dashboard and search terms report to monitor how well your keywords are doing and adjust them as necessary. This way, you can give yourself the best chance of staying relevant and archiving a better ROI from your paid search campaigns.

3. Using Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are extremely useful. They will stop your ads from being displayed in irrelevant searches. In other words, a negative keyword is a search term that your ad should not be displayed for. For example, if you are selling designer sunglasses, then you may pick negative keywords such as “free”, “cheap”, and “Amazon”. You can research negative keywords in the same way as you would regular keywords, using tools such as the reports in Google Ads. It will help you avoid wasting money on clicks that are unlikely to convert to sales.

Video: How To Create A NEGATIVE Keyword List For Google Ads

4. Produce Engaging Ad Copy

Ad copy is of the upmost importance. Just because your ad is prominently displayed, it doesn’t mean a person will click on it. They need to be engaged by what it says. Aim to write copy that captures the audience’s attention, shows that you are offering a valuable product, and gives the person a reason to click. You should also try to include your target keywords in headlines and URLS, make sure you have clear CTAs, and use ad extensions to increase value. It is worth investing in ad copy as it can truly make all the difference.

5. Refine Audience Targeting

There is no value in your ads being displayed to the wrong audience. However, with paid search, you have a great deal of control over audience targeting. The best platforms, such as Google Ads, will allow you to create very specific rules about who sees your ads. However, you will need to monitor how effective they are and test different audiences to optimize your results. It goes without saying that accurate targeting significantly increases your chance of making sales.

6. Focus on Conversions

The whole point of ads is to secure conversions, so it makes sense to focus on them. You can do this by setting up conversion tracking in Google Ads and you can also use tracking codes, test different ad elements, and using remarketing strategies. By focusing on conversions, you have the best chance of your ads achieving tangible results.

Let Hitsearch Show You the Way

If you take the above best practices onboard, you will be well on the way to making the most of your paid search advertising campaigns. However, they are not all easy to implement and if your industry is particularly competitive, they may not be enough. If you have already decided to invest in paid search, then it may be necessary to invest in specialists to help you implement it.

At Hitsearch, we have all the expertise you could need, so contact us today to start talking about how we can help you optimize your paid ad campaigns.