Effective practices for Googles newest adwords changes!

So far this year Google has rolled out a number of changes to their adwords service, from minor cosmetic changes to the removal of ads from the right hand side of the page. With even more changes to still to come, it’s time for your adwords campaigns to adapt.  

The changes so far 

Early in 2016 Google changed to of it’s most fundamental features, in a large shake up of their service. The most obvious change was the removal of ads on the right hand side of search engine results and the introduction of an additional ad at the top of the search results. As well as this Google also recently introduced it’s ‘Expanded text ads’ meaning that the amount of lines you can use in your ads has increased, giving people chance to add more text to their ads in order to grab more attention. 

There’s no denying that these changes have had an effect on both the performance of paid ads and even on organic rankings. With ads no longer visible on the side of the page and only at the top and bottom the competition to get noticed gets even tougher, a decrease in top spots can see a huge increase in cost per click and with an increase in how many lines an ad can feature, see both paid and organic results getting pushed down the page. 

So with these changes in mind creating an successful adwords campaign may seem like a challenge, however here’s our tips for optimising your ad campaigns in order to maximise your ROI.  

Learn new copy techniques 

On of the first things to consider when optimising your ads for these changes is to take time to generate variations of your current ad text. If you’re writing for the expanded text ads then you need to take advantage and create engaging but slightly lengthier ads. 

Featuring more text in your ads not only gives searchers more detail about the company and the ad but also increases how much space your ad takes on the page, pushing your competition down and making your ad more noticeable.  

Test your ads 

Testing your expanded ad text to your previous shorter text ads can be an effective way to find out which works best for your business. Whilst lengthier ads seem like a great idea it’s important to remember than when it comes to text ads sometimes less is more. Often people don’t want to have a lot to read when browsing search results pages.

By comparing your ads side by side to work out which ones are effective, generating clicks and attracting your customers allows you to see what ad text is really best for your company, even if Google believes otherwise. 

Keep track 

As these changes are rolled out it’s more important than ever to keep an eye on your campaign and it’s performance. Monitor your account closely and keep track of any significant changes you might see in your account metrics. 

Whilst you should always monitor you account for changes to your campaigns with such important changes being introduced you’re likely to see fluctuations in your ads, which could cause big problems if not given attention straight away.  

Plan ahead 

With any changes, often things don’t work smoothly, so it’s important to plan ahead and consider the best ways to respond if anything doesn’t go as expected. If your competition pushes up your cost per click then you should have a contingency plan in place in order to still have effective adds available.

Making plans to shift your budget if necessary means that your business is prepared to put money into the ads which matter and means your ad words campaigns aren’t left with no money and no clicks. 

Overall Google’s changes shouldn’t be viewed as a negative, despite increasing competition and affecting cost per click, these changes offer great new opportunities for businesses. These changes also shine a light on paid ad results, boosting their profiles and are likely to encourage more searchers to click ads over organic results, generating more leads, more sales and more success for your business.