Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can be a powerful driver of growth, but it's also an easy place to waste your budget. After auditing hundreds of ad accounts, we've seen the same mistakes time and time again. Here are the top five to avoid:
1. Neglecting Negative Keywords
Failing to add negative keywords means your ads show up for irrelevant searches, wasting clicks and money. Regularly review your search term reports to find and exclude terms that don't match user intent.
2. Poor Landing Page Experience
You can have the best ad in the world, but if it leads to a slow, confusing, or non-mobile-friendly landing page, you won't get conversions. Ensure your landing page is a seamless extension of your ad's promise.
3. Ignoring Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are free real estate! Using sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets makes your ad bigger, more informative, and more likely to be clicked.
4. Using Broad Match Everywhere
While broad match has its place, relying on it too heavily gives Google too much control and can lead to wasted spend on irrelevant queries. Use phrase and exact match to control where your ads appear.
5. Not Tracking Conversions Properly
If you aren't accurately tracking what a "conversion" means for your business (a sale, a form submission, a phone call), you're flying blind. Proper conversion tracking is the only way to know what's working and optimize for ROI.