Ensuring a profitable Google Ads strategy hinges on effectively targeting the right audience with tailored messages as they browse. Central to achieving this is understanding how your ads perform and the specific keywords potential customers employ in their searches.
Enter the Google Ads search terms report – a treasure trove for every Google Ads account holder. This report offers invaluable insights into the precise phrases that trigger your ads, enabling you to:
- Fine-tune your keyword strategy with precision.
- Improve targeting accuracy.
- Maximize return on investment (ROI).
Let’s delve into why the Google Ads search terms report isn’t just helpful but indispensable for optimizing Google Ads profitability.
What Is The Google Ads Search Terms Report?
The search terms report serves as a performance gauge, revealing how your ad fares when prompted by real searches on the Google Search Network.
This report meticulously outlines the precise terms and phrases that prompt your ad’s display, offering critical insights into whether your bidding aligns with the right keywords or match types.
Should you encounter search terms incongruous with your business objectives, swiftly adding them to your repository of negative keywords is a prudent move. This strategic action ensures optimal budget allocation, as your ads are exclusively showcased for pertinent searches by potential customers.
It’s crucial to discern between a search term and a keyword:
- Search term: Reflects the exact word or phrase a customer inputs on the Google Search Network to activate an ad.
- Keyword: The word or phrase targeted and bid upon by Google Ads advertisers to showcase their ads to customers.
How To Create A Search Terms Report
Crafting a search terms report within your Google Ads account is straightforward, and the cherry on top? It’s automatable!
To access your search terms report, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Navigate to “Campaigns” >> “Insights & reports” >> “Search terms”.
Below, you’ll find a visual guide showcasing where to locate the search terms report in your Google Ads account.
Once you’ve generated this report, as a marketer, you have a range of actions at your disposal:
- Incorporate top-performing searches into corresponding ad groups as keywords.
- Opt for the desired match type (e.g., broad, phrase, exact) when adding new keywords.
- Append irrelevant search terms to a negative keyword list.
3 Ways To Use Search Terms Report Data
As previously noted, there are various methods to leverage the data from the search terms report for enhancing campaign effectiveness.
Now, let’s explore three instances of utilizing this report to maximize your return on investment.
1. Refine Existing Keyword Lists
The search terms report is invaluable for refining existing keyword lists. By analyzing this report, you can identify areas of opportunity, such as:
- Pinpointing searches that result in conversions.
- Identifying searches unrelated to the product or service.
- Recognizing searches with high impressions but low click-through rates.
- Understanding how searches align with existing keywords and ad groups.
For searches that lead to conversions, it’s advisable to incorporate them as keywords into existing ad groups or establish new ad groups.
When encountering searches that are irrelevant to your offerings, it’s wise to designate them as negative keywords. This action prevents your ad from displaying for such searches in the future.
For searches with high impressions but low click-through rates, careful consideration is required. If the keyword merits bidding on, it may indicate an insufficiently competitive bid strategy, necessitating adjustments to your bidding approach.
If a search term is triggered by multiple keywords and ad groups, it signifies keyword cross-pollination, potentially reducing ROI by inflating costs. In such cases, you have several options:
- Review and adjust existing keyword match types as needed.
- Incorporate negative keywords at the ad group or campaign level to prevent cross-pollination.
Ultimately, leveraging the search terms report in this manner empowers you to identify top performers and weed out underperforming elements effectively.
2. Understand How Your Audience Is Actually Searching For Your Product
Frequently, there’s a discrepancy between how a company presents its product or service and how customers genuinely search for it. If you’re targeting keywords you believe match your offering but aren’t gaining traction, it’s likely due to a misalignment of expectations.
Surprisingly, many conversions stem from search terms you might not have considered bidding on initially. This is where delving into the search terms report becomes invaluable.
One of the most overlooked benefits of this report is uncovering obscure ways customers are seeking and discovering your product or service.
Discovering such keywords could prompt the development of a new campaign, particularly if the search terms don’t align with existing ad group structures.
Constructing campaigns based on distinct search themes enables tailored bidding strategies for each theme, recognizing that not all keyword values are equivalent.
Comprehending how customers articulate their requirements for a product or service not only enhances your keyword approach but also facilitates more aligned product positioning.
This brings us to a third advantage the search term report offers for your campaigns.
3. Optimize Ad Copy and Landing Pages
As highlighted in point #2, the language and phrases used by customers offer valuable insights into their needs and preferences.
Marketers can leverage the search terms report to refine ad copy, ensuring it resonates more effectively with potential customers.
Moreover, it’s crucial to consider the corresponding landing page!
When a user clicks on an ad, they anticipate finding alignment between their search query and the content of the website.
Regularly updating landing page content to better reflect the searcher’s intent can enhance user experience and boost conversion rates.
How Using The Search Terms Report Can Help ROI
Each of the three examples mentioned above illustrates how the search terms report has the potential to enhance campaign ROI.
But how exactly?
Let’s delve deeper into each example.
How Refining Keywords Helps ROI
Refining existing keywords involves the crucial step of negating any irrelevant search terms that trigger an ad.
A robust negative keyword strategy effectively eliminates spending on keywords that are not pertinent, redirecting resources away from wasteful areas.
By reallocating previously “wasted” spend to campaigns that consistently yield higher ROI, overall campaign effectiveness is heightened.
Moreover, incorporating top-performing search terms provides enhanced control in terms of bid strategy.
The ability to adjust bidding strategies according to search themes enables more precise optimization, resulting in improved ROI over time.
How Understanding Audience Intent Helps ROI
By comprehending the precise language and search terms employed by potential customers, marketers can tailor ad copy and landing pages to align more closely with those searches.
This alignment can elevate ad relevance and subsequently boost Ad Rank within Google Ads.
Such adjustments contribute to improving keyword Quality Score, which, in turn, has the potential to lower CPCs as the Quality Score increases.
Ads that are more relevant are likely to garner higher click-through rates, thereby increasing the probability of converting those users into customers!
How Updating Ad Copy And Landing Pages Helps ROI
This example perfectly complements the previous recommendation.
As marketers gain a deeper understanding of the audience’s search intent, updating ad copy and landing pages to mirror their searches signals improved ad relevance.
When a user clicks on such a relevant ad, they encounter landing page content that better aligns with their search intent.
This heightened relevance significantly enhances the likelihood of conversion, thereby bolstering ROI.
Use This Report To Make Data-Driven Decisions
Google Ads plays a pivotal role in any digital marketing strategy, often consuming a significant portion of your marketing budget.
Through frequent analysis of the search terms report, you can optimize your marketing budget to enhance the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns.
Leveraging this report to drive data-driven decisions that refine various aspects of campaign management results in more efficient ad spending, increased conversions, and ultimately, improved ROI.
Original news from SearchEngineJournal