Google Ads is one of the most effective ways to drive leads and sales.

The purpose of Google is to provide the user with the most intuitive and relevant user experience possible. Trust is pivotal – and part of trusting the results provided is providing the most relevant search results & ads.

That’s why the structure of your Google Ads account matters. It’s why five different clients targeting the same keywords in the same industry can receive five wildly varying results. Why are some companies ads appearing more often, converting sales at a lower cost than others?

The Crystal Marketing team has worked with Google Ads for over a decade, managing accounts in just about every single industry. During this time, we’ve had first-hand experience with the best structure to drive granular, relevant account structures that drives better results. This is called the single keyword ad groups (SKAG) approach.

Before going into more detail about SKAGs, it’s important to understand how Google Ads works.

How does Google Ads work?

Google Ads is simply an auction. Each advertiser selects their keywords and chooses a maximum bid they are happy to pay for a click for that specific term.

Google selects a winning bid and ranks the ads at the top of the page.

So how is the auction winner determined? Is it the highest bid? Thankfully, no. 

Google uses a formula (known as Ad Rank) to ensure that it’s the relevant ads that show up first, not the advertisers with the deepest pockets. Knowing this formula and making sure your account is structured to get the most out of it is the key to successfully advertising on Google Ads. 

The formula is: Your Maximum CPC Bid x Quality Score

Quality Score

We’ve covered the maximum bid for each keyword, but what is Quality Score?

Your Quality Score depends on multiple factors, including:

• Your click-through rate (CTR)
• Keyword relevance within their respective ad groups
• Landing page quality and relevance
• Ad text relevance
• Your historical Google Ads account performance

Quality Score is a score out of 10, given by Google to attain your relevancy for that term and the relationship between three variables:

1. Your keywords
2. Your ads
3. Your landing page

So, for example, if we’re selling Blue men’s running shoes, we can select the keyword “Blue Running Shoes for Men”.

Ideally, we should see an ad with the specific term in that headline – This will increase the percentage of users clicking your ads. Then the user can navigate to a landing page showing a selection of blue men’s running shoes.

In this case, the relationship between such a keyword and ad combination would be very high.

Below we can see the relationship between Maximum Bid and Quality Score and how it affects rank and position:

This table shows that Advertiser I is only willing to pay $2 per click and has the highest quality score of 10 compared to the other advertisers.

Using the formula above: Maximum Bid ($2) x 10 (Quality Score) = Ad Rank of 20

Even though Advertiser IV has a max bid of $8 – it will still be outbid due to the higher Ad Rank of advertiser I. In this instance, the advertiser with the lowest bid wins the auction.

Google recognises and rewards advertisers that provide the most relevant, transparent experience.

This is why some businesses win at Google Ads, and others don’t.

The advertisers who know how to implement the best practice to maximise their Quality Score drive more business at a much lower cost!

We don’t want to oversimplify Google Ads. There are tonnes of ad formats, ways to test and solid theories behind the bidding – but the most significant impact to scale performance is the basics – your campaign structure. Why? Because the account structure and landing page have similar significance on the Quality Score.

Google Ads Account Structure and SKAGs

Let’s have a look at what a traditional Google Ads account structure looks like compared to SKAG, which employs best practice.

Here we can see that the new SKAG has three ads for each keyword, as opposed to a set of ads for multiple keywords like the below:

Each of these keywords – should have its own unique ad speaking directly to it.

Imagine seeing the same ad for blue, red, women’s or men’s running shoes! Is it relevant? Yes, kind of – but certainly not as relevant as ads that are tailored to every single keyword that take them to the perfect landing pages. 

Not convinced? Here’s a case study from one of our clients, Fox Mowing.

We implemented SKAG for our client Fox Mowing, and they received four times the lead volume immediately. More impressively, take a look at what it did to the cost per lead – it fell by 66%. This means they were driving more than four times the amount of leads with the same level of investment!

On top of this, AdEspresso studied 104,256 ads and found that when ad relevance increased and CTR increased, there was a huge drop in cost per click. This is what we have been experiencing with our clients.

We have applied SKAG time and time again for our clients, with the same incredible results.

Things to keep in mind

1. Landing page experience is key – factoring for over 1/3 of the impact of the quality score
2. Fast loading time
3. Responsive design
4. Relevant content
5. Get your main points across visually & fast – don’t rely on the user to scroll down very far on the page.
6. Clear calls to action (CTAs): Enquiry forms, buttons to enquire, buy.

The benefits of this approach are clear – you will be the advertiser that outperforms your competitors, shows more often than not, spends less for each enquiry and generates more margin on sales. After 12 years of digital advertising on Google Ads, many factors drive performance, but understanding and implementing this is the one that makes the most impact.

There is nothing fancy. It may not sound as exciting as other Google Ads techniques out there, but it’s the foundation of a truly successful Google Ads strategy.

To get a free PPC audit, or learn more about how this can benefit your business, please contact Crystal Marketing at admin@crystalmarketing.com.au.