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Are your PPC ads relevant?

That’s not a rhetorical question, and the answer isn’t subjective. Relevance is something Google AdWords measures and quantifies for all ads, and your adrelevance could have a real impact on your ads’ effectiveness.

What do we mean when we talk about adrelevance? Basically, it’s the connection between the keywords and the ad copy; the more tightly these things are aligned, the higher your adrelevance will be.

In this post, we’ll explain what makes adrelevance so important—and also what steps you can take to improve your own adrelevance scores.

Why AdRelevance Matters

A good way to think about relevance is this: If someone conducts a Google search, and your ad is displayed, would the ad make sense according to their search terms? Would it fit in? Or would it seem off-topic? That’s really what adrelevance is about—so as you can imagine, adrelevance isn’t just about appealing to Google. It’s also about ensuring a connection with the consumer.

Google does provide ratings for your adrelevance, using one of three categories to assess how relevant your ad is—average, above average, or below average. Average or above average ratings mean your ad is just fine; below average means there’s a problem you’ll want to deal with.

You want high adrelevance because it means you’ll really be able to capitalize on your ad traffic; below average relevance means your ad is likely to be deemed low-quality, which may mean that Google displays it less frequently. A low-quality ad will also come with a higher cost per click, so relevance can make your campaign much more cost-effective.

Why Are Ads Not Relevant?

There are a couple of things that tend to derail adrelevance. One is that the ad in question was created by someone who simply doesn’t have PPC experience, and doesn’t understand that the copy employed needs to be closely aligned with keywords.

The other big culprit? Ads being copied from one ad group to another, without them being tailored to the new keywords. Remember that each new ad group needs to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb, and fully customized to address the keywords in question. Taking a one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t work.

Tips for Improving PPC AdRelevance

With that said, there are a few steps that you can take to step up the relevance of your ads—among them:

• First and foremost, make sure the keywords you’re targeting are in the ad copy itself. Ideally, you should have them in the headline, the body text, and even in the display URL.
• Develop ad groups that are tightly themed. If you have 15 or 20 ads within a group, they should all hinge on the same basic product, service, or offer.
• Remember that your landing page matters, too. Google wants to know that your ad is going to take the users to an external site that’s truly on-topic, so your landing page should also use the keywords in question.

Make the Most of PPC

Your PPC campaign can be a significant way to boost website traffic and improve conversions—but only when it’s handled properly. And that includes making ads with high relevance scores.

We can help you with that. Driven2020 is all about marketing endeavors that get real results and improve your bottom line; we’d love to develop PPC ad copy that helps you convert. To start that process, or simply to learn more about integrated digital marketing, we invite you to contact Driven2020 today.