Do you ever find yourself asking “Why aren’t my ads converting?”. Unfortunately, there is no one right answer! There are many factors that contribute to high converting ads. But the following are a few things you can check that might be having an impact on your ads’ performance:

1. Are your keywords too broad or too specific? As an example, if you are bidding on the broad match keyword “pizza”, and you are promoting home-delivery takeaway pizza in Christchurch, you are going to get a lot of irrelevant search terms showing your ad (e.g. “at home pizza recipes”, “pizza delivery Auckland”, “how to make pizza dairy free”, “how to make pizza dough at home” etc. – you don’t want to be paying for clicks for these search terms as they are not relevant). On the flip side, if you make your keywords too specific by only using exact match terms, you are potentially missing out on hundreds of relevant search queries.

2. Are your keywords geared up for driving action, and have the right intent for that desired action? For example, if you want someone to buy your shoes online, but you are targeting keywords such as “the top 10 shoe brands in nz”, that person’s intent is probably not buying a pair of shoes online today. So, think about the intent behind a search query and think “is that person likely to perform this action if they are search for it?”.

3. How relevant/connected are your ads to the keywords you are targeting? It is best practice to use the keywords you are targeting in the ad copy – if the search term the person is using appears in the ad, they are much more likely to click the ad. Breaking up your keywords into smaller groups based around one topic or theme means you can make your ads a lot more relevant to the keywords.

4. How relevant is your website’s landing page? Are your keywords and ad copy mentioned on the web page, to tie the ad and landing page together? Is the content on the page directly relevant to your ad? If your ad is for promoting a particular moisturiser, but the landing page the ads click through to is the home page, you are making it much harder for that visitor to find the product they were interested in and purchase it.

5. Are there any barriers to conversion on your landing page or website? It’s important to make sure your website has a streamlined process for a visitor performing your desired action – don’t make it too difficult for them! Sometimes setting up a dedicated landing page specifically for your campaign can work really well, so you can move the customer through the purchase process all on one page.

6. Mobile vs Desktop – Does your website perform equally well on both devices? You can review the data for device type and conversions in both your Google Ads and Analytics accounts to assess what is happening. If your conversions a lot higher on one device type, it could be worth either addressing the usability of your site on the lower-performing platform, or perhaps change your bid adjustments in favour of the one that does perform well.