Google Ads management in Newcastle, NSW

You choose the searches you want to appear for and what a click is worth to you. Google runs an auction each time somebody searches, and how relevant your ad and page are affects what you pay as much as your bid does.

The part owners find surprising is that the highest bid does not simply win. Google weighs how relevant your ad is to the search and how well your page answers it, so a more relevant advertiser can appear above a higher bidder and pay less for it.

What decides whether you appear

• The search you chose. And how loosely you let Google match it, which is where most budget goes missing.
• What you are willing to pay. Per click, against everybody else bidding on the same search.
• How relevant your ad is. Whether it says the thing that was typed.
• How well the page answers it. The page you send people to is part of the auction, not just the destination.

That last one is why paid and unpaid search are less separate than they look. A good page makes advertising cheaper as well as ranking better.

When people are already searching for what you sell, when a job is worth enough to absorb a few clicks, and when the page you send them to actually asks for something.

Search advertising buys you people who were already looking. That makes it the most direct channel there is, and the most expensive per person for the same reason.

What has to be true

• People search for it. You are buying existing demand. If nobody is typing it, this is the wrong channel and social advertising is the right one.
• A job is worth enough. You will pay for several clicks per enquiry, and several enquiries per job. The maths only works from a job value up.
• The page asks for something. An obvious number and a form that arrives. Paying for traffic to a page that does neither is the common way to conclude advertising does not work.
• Somebody answers. Paid enquiries go cold fastest, because the person clicked three ads.

Loose keyword matching, no negative keywords, advertising outside your area, and sending every click to the home page. Those four account for most of the waste we find in small accounts.

Almost every small account we are asked to look at is leaking in the same places, and all four are visible from one report.

Where it goes

• Loose matching. Google decides which searches are close enough to yours. Left wide open, it buys clicks from searches you would never have chosen.
• Missing negative keywords. The list of words that should never trigger your ad. Free, jobs, DIY, and the name of a service you do not offer.
• Advertising outside your area. Location settings that include people merely interested in Newcastle rather than in it.
• Every click landing on the home page. The visitor has to find the thing they searched for. Some of them do.

The search terms report is where all of this becomes obvious. It lists the actual searches people typed before clicking, and reading a fortnight of it usually explains where the money went.

Which clicks became enquiries. Without that, the account optimises towards clicks, which is the thing you are paying for rather than the thing you want.

This is the step that gets skipped and it is the one that makes everything afterwards possible. Google can steer an account towards a result, and only if it is told what a result is.

What to count

• Form submissions. Recorded as a result, not just an email arriving.
• Calls from the ad. Trackable, including the ones from a phone tapping the number in the advertisement itself.
• What a job is worth. So the cost of an enquiry means something rather than sounding high or low.
• Which searches produced them. Not just how many. This is what tells you where to put more.

Google's own guidance on conversion tracking covers the setup, and it is worth doing before the first day of spending rather than in month two.

Set up the counting first, choose a small list of exact searches, write the negatives, send each ad to a matching page, then read the search terms report every week.

1. Set up the counting first

Forms and calls, recorded as results, before a dollar is spent. Everything after this depends on it.

2. Start narrow

A short list of searches you are certain about, matched tightly. Widening is easy later. Recovering a wasted first month is not.

3. Write the negative list

Free, cheap, jobs, courses, DIY, and every service you do not offer. This list keeps growing and that is normal.

4. Send each ad to a page about that thing

Not the home page. The page that answers the search you paid for.

5. Set the area properly

People in your area, not people interested in it. This one setting quietly spends a lot of money.

6. Read the search terms report weekly

The actual searches that triggered your ads. Ten minutes, and it is where the next negative keywords come from.

Clicks arrive the day it is switched on. Knowing whether it works takes longer, because you need enough enquiries to tell a pattern from a good week.

The order it happens in

• The counting goes in. Forms and calls recorded as results. Nothing is running yet, and skipping this is what makes month two an argument.
• It runs narrow. A short list of certain searches, tight matching, each ad landing on a page about that thing.
• It gets read and widened. Search terms report, negatives added, then more searches once the first ones are earning.

It also stops the day you stop paying, which is the honest difference between this and search work. Both are reasonable and they are not the same purchase.

Ask whose account the advertising runs in, what is being counted as a result, whether you can see the search terms report, and what the management fee is separate from the spend.

We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.

• Whose account does the advertising run in? The business's own. An account held by an agency takes the history with it when you leave, and the history is what makes an account cheaper over time.
• What is being counted as a result? Forms and calls. If the report leads with impressions, that is what is being optimised for.
• Can I see the search terms report? Yes, on ours. It is the report that shows what your money actually bought.
• What is the fee, separate from the spend? Two numbers, named separately. A percentage of spend is a fee that grows when the budget does.
• Am I locked in? Ours runs month to month and always has. Any arrangement you cannot leave at the end of a month is worth a second look.

A small budget is often better spent on the free half first. Advertising gets cheaper once the pages and the listing are working, so the order is worth arguing about before the spending starts.