How to avoid the pitfalls of Google Ads

In a previous article, we reported on the many pitfalls of Google Ads, whose objective is to increase your spending in order to increase their income rather than to increase your sales. Here are the solutions we’ve tested and which work.

Campaign objectives

Google Ads offers Display campaigns, which let you appear with ads across the entire Google network, and Search campaigns, which let you appear when a customer searches for a keyword you’ve advertised. It’s advisable for SMEs to choose a search campaign to avoid wasting money on Display.

You can then choose campaign objectives favoring impressions, clicks or conversions, i.e. purchases. If you have a store, it’s best to focus on conversions, which means you’ll need to set your Google Ads to notify you when a purchase is made.

The campaign end date is hard to find

When you create a campaign, you end by creating an ad and confirming it, and almost every time you forget to specify the end date, which can result in you being charged for as long as you have money in your account if you forget the campaign or fall ill.

The solution is to go to the campaign parameters by clicking on the cogwheel next to the program, then to set a deadline. This secures you for the future, but does not prevent you from reactivating the campaign at a later date. Do this for each campaign to avoid unpleasant surprises and limit risks.

Keyword prices are multiplied by 300 at the outset

The fact that keyword prices can rise is normal, but the fact that the price can go from $0.02 to $6 – a 300-fold increase in just a few days – is abnormal and dangerous. The only solution for you is to follow the bids every day and check whether the price per click is justified by the income it brings you. And this is less and less the case for small businesses in many sectors, as paid keywords often cost more than they bring in.

The daily spending limit is not respected by Google

Google doesn’t respect the daily spending limit you set, as it calculates its daily budget on the campaign total and is keen to recover the revenue it lost when your campaign was paused.

The most important thing is to be aware of this, and to limit your daily expenditure if you feel that this is beyond your budget.

You’re in control, but you have to be aware of it and keep an eye on it every day, which is pretty demanding, unless you feel that your campaign is largely profitable and you can let it be.

Wide-expression queries are nonsense

Broad expression queries are advocated by Google as a way of getting to know your customers. In fact, they cost you dearly, as Google matches just about any search query with their AI, which works for them more to maximize their revenues than your sales.

Here’s what to do:

1. Start your campaign with broad queries to get the ball rolling, while Google gets to know you a little. With exact words, chances are you won’t be able to get your campaign off the ground.
2. Track customer searches
3. Then choose the right phrases or keywords
4. Continue to monitor your campaign and remove irrelevant keywords.

Excluded keywords recur in searches

The problem is that Google gives you the option of excluding certain keyword searches, but they come back in different forms. It’s hard to say why, but when you try to block certain keywords like “free”, they come back. The solution is to :

1. Block different combinations of the word, for example :
2. “free” in quotation marks, i.e. as an exact keyword
3. “Free course” in quotation marks, or exact phrase
4. Free, wide request
5. Free for women
6. Free, plural
7. Do the same for all troublesome keywords
8. Check customer searches to see if they come back in a different form
9. Add all new, irrelevant searches to the junk list.

Your agency is costing you too much

Agencies charge you in one of two ways: a flat monthly fee, or a percentage of your expenses, which we don’t recommend, as it’s in their interest to increase your budget.

There have even been cases of agencies buying keywords at a different rate from the one charged to the client, in order to increase their revenues. These are cases of fraud, but it’s important to monitor what the web agency is doing.

If you are a small company working through an agency, we recommend that you :

1. Track your expenses and income
2. Get access to Google Ads and track the campaign, in particular the key points mentioned above
3. Track conversions by campaign, i.e. purchases made thanks to your Google Ads.
4. Get Google Analytics access and track key events. The term “key event” has replaced the word “conversion” in Analytics since December 2024. It includes all significant customer interactions on your site.
5. Install and monitor the Search Console, which summarizes the searches carried out to reach your site. It’s more of a natural referencing tool.

In conclusion

Paid keywords have their pitfalls, but you can avoid falling into them if you know what they are and monitor them daily. But these paid campaigns have become very expensive for diminishing visibility. The question is whether you should opt for paid keywords or natural referencing, or even traditional marketing, telephone prospecting or canvassing. We’ll come back to this.

Jean-Pierre Mercie

Our sales course