Google Ads management in Newcastle, NSW: no more wasted clicks.

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 that surprises most owners is that the highest bid does not simply win. Google weighs how relevant the ad is to the search, and how well the page behind it answers the question. A more relevant advertiser can sit above a higher bidder and pay less for the click.

What decides whether you appear

• The searches you chose to appear for.

  And how loosely Google is allowed to match them, which is where most of a small budget goes missing without anybody noticing.

• What you are willing to pay for a click.

  Measured against everybody else bidding on the same search at the same moment.

• How relevant the advertisement is to the search.

  Whether it plainly says the thing that was typed, rather than describing the business in general.

• How well the page answers the search.

  The page somebody lands on is part of the auction, not just the destination, so a vague page costs money on every click.

That last one is why paid and unpaid search are less separate than they look. A page written properly makes the advertising cheaper at the same time as it earns its own position.

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

Search advertising buys people who were already looking. That makes it the most direct channel there is, and the most expensive per person for exactly the same reason. The test is arithmetic rather than opinion: a business pays for several clicks per enquiry and several enquiries per job, so it only works from a certain job value upwards.

What that means on a small budget, and how to work the number out before spending anything, is set out separately.

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 in small accounts.

Almost every small account opened for a second opinion is leaking in the same four places, and the search terms report makes all four obvious. It lists the actual words people typed before they clicked, and a fortnight of it usually explains the whole bill.

Which clicks became enquiries. Without that, the account optimises towards clicks, which is the thing being paid for rather than the thing that was wanted.

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that makes everything after it possible. Google can steer an account towards a result, but only once somebody has told it what a result is.

What has to be counted

• Forms that somebody actually submits.

  Recorded as a result inside the account, rather than just an email landing in an inbox somewhere.

• Calls that came from the advertisement.

  Including the ones where somebody tapped the number in the ad itself and never visited the site.

• What a job is actually worth.

  So that the cost of an enquiry means something, instead of sounding high or low on instinct.

• Which of the searches produced them.

  Not just how many of them arrived. This is the number that says where more money should go.

Google's own guidance on conversion tracking covers the setup. It is worth having in place before the first day of spending rather than in month two.

The counting goes in first, then a short list of searches nobody is guessing about, then the negatives, then a page per advertisement. After that, somebody reads the search terms report every week.

The order is most of the job. Every step below is cheap to do first and expensive to retrofit.

1. The counting goes in before anything runs

Forms and calls, recorded as results, before a dollar is spent. Everything after this depends on it, and there is no way to add it backwards.

2. It starts narrow on purpose

A short list of searches nobody is guessing about, matched tightly. Widening later is easy. Recovering a wasted first month is not.

3. Write the negative list

Free, cheap, jobs, courses, DIY, and every service the business does not offer. This list keeps growing for as long as the account runs, and that is normal.

4. Each advertisement gets a page about that thing

Not the home page. The page that answers the search that was paid for, which is also part of what decides the price of the click.

5. The area gets set properly

People in your area, rather than people interested in it. That single setting is one of the quietest ways to spend a budget on nothing.

6. Read the search terms report every week

The actual searches that triggered the ads. It takes ten minutes, and it is where next week's negative keywords come from.

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

The order it happens in

• First the counting goes into the account.

  Forms and calls recorded as results. Nothing is running yet, and skipping this is what turns month two into an argument.

• Then it runs narrow for a few weeks.

  A short list of certain searches, tight matching, and each advertisement landing on a page about that one thing.

• Then it is read and widened.

  Negatives come off the search terms report, and more searches go on once the first ones are paying for themselves.

It also stops the day the spending stops, 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 the search terms report is visible, and what the management fee is separately from the spend.

These are worth asking of any agency, including this one, so the answers given here are underneath each question.

• Whose account does the advertising run in?

  The business's own account, always. An account held by an agency takes its history away when the arrangement ends, and that history is what makes an account cheaper over time.

• What is being counted as a result?

  Forms and calls. Where a report leads with impressions and clicks, impressions and clicks are what is being optimised for.

• Can I see the search terms report?

  Yes, here. It is the one report that shows what the money actually bought, so being kept away from it is worth noticing.

• What is the fee, separately from the spend?

  Two separate numbers, both named. A percentage of spend is a fee that grows every time the budget does.

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

What a page built for one campaign costs is a separate question from the budget, and what a landing page costs is written out with the published bands.

A business working from one shopfront or one service area has a different set of settings to get right, which Google Ads for a single location covers.