When it comes to search advertising Raleigh NC, it can be easy to make some of the most common mistakes. As a premier digital advertising agency, we are here to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes! We know that staying on top of the new features and trends can be difficult, so we want to help you avoid 3 of the most common search advertising mistakes.

While every Google Ads account is its own entity, there are some commonalities between all the accounts. Over the years we have taken over Google ad accounts, as well as created new ones for clients and the common mistakes we have seen when taking over are almost always similar. Some of them may not be “mistakes” per say but more so things you should avoid if at all possible.  Without further ado, let me introduce you to 3 common mistakes within search advertising.

Geo-Targeting & Location Options

Everyone knows when you set up a search campaign on Google that you are required to enter in geo-targeting information so that your ads get in front of the right people, but did you know that you actually need to take this one step further for optimal targeting? Within the Google Ads platform there is an additional dropdown that enables location options. These options allow you to set how someone is determined to be in the location that you are targeting for your campaign. By default, Google will target your campaign to people who have either a presence or interest in searching within a specific location. But let’s say you ONLY want to target people who are physically in the town you are targeting. To do this you would actually need to switch the toggle on location options to target presence instead of both presence and interest. Forgetting to flip this toggle can be a costly mistake as you could be spending money in markets that you don’t mean to target.

Don’t Be Messy

One of the most common “mistakes” someone can make when running their Google Ads Raleigh NC campaign actually goes farther than just their geo-targeting but includes their keyword targeting. Did you know there are multiple different methods of keyword targeting offered within the Google Ads platform? Shockingly, a lot of marketers don’t. This keyword targeting all comes down to match types. What we often see is someone running a campaign (or considering running a campaign) in which the keyword match type is broad. What many users don’t realize is that when you run a campaign on broad match your ad could show for anything and everything containing that keyword. For example, let’s say you are advertising an Apple iPad. If you enter in just Apple iPad as your keyword, your ad could show up for just the term apple. Adding modifiers and parameters for your keywords ensure that things don’t get too messy and scrambled.

Missing Ad Extensions

The third, and final, search advertising mistake I will touch on is missing or disapproved ad extensions. Ad extensions are a very helpful tool for advertisers to expand upon the basic search ad with additional features and to be quite frank, take up more space in the search engine results page. There are a variety of extensions available and you can see them all on Google answers. Having ad extensions help your overall Google Ad optimization score, which should be at a 100% This score is affected by everything from your landing pages, keyword selections, ad copy and ad extensions.  Many ad extensions such as the location and call extensions can actually help you bring in more conversions each month!

Don’t Be A Rookie With Search Advertising Raleigh NC

Now that you know what not to do, get out there and take advantage of the knowledge bestowed upon you by myself for search advertising Raleigh NC. Of course, if you’d rather let the professionals manage your Google Ads Raleigh NC account, don’t hesitate to reach out!