If you’re new to paid search marketing (also known as search engine marketing or SEM), it can be overwhelming to know where

to start—but don’t let that stop you! If executed correctly, the results of paid search marketing can massively pay off.

The Beginner’s Guide to Paid Search Marketing

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Table of Contents

What is PPC? 3

What is paid search marketing? 4

How is Google Ads structured? 5

What are keywords? 6

What are ad groups? 6

What are keyword matching options? 7

What is a Google Quality Score? 9

What are ad extensions? 10

What are your targeting options? 12

Ready to get more out of your Google Ad spend? 13

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What is PPC?

Before we get started on paid search, it’s helpful to note that paid search falls under PPC in the digital marketing umbrella. PPC stands for pay-per-click and is a type of online advertising where a company pays a fee each time their ads are clicked. There are many different kinds of PPC marketing, including:

Paid search marketing This is one of the most used types of PPC. Companies pay to have their ads displayed alongside search results when users search for certain keywords.

Display ads: Companies can buy space to display banners, images, videos, etc. Google, Facebook, and Twitter are some of the largest platforms for display advertising.

Affiliate marketing: This is a form of revenue sharing where someone can earn money by promoting and selling a company’s products. For example, a consumer review site might review a mattress and use affiliate links to send readers to the mattress site, then earn money for those visits and purchases.

Retargeting ads: When a user visits your site and bounces, you can use cookies to retarget them with ads on other websites.

Social media ads: Companies can use granular targeting to advertise to audiences on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

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What is paid search marketing?

Alright, now onto paid search. Paid search is also known as search engine marketing (SEM) and is when companies pay to have their ads displayed alongside search results when users search for certain keywords. The most popular platform for paid search is Google Ads, but there are also other platforms, such as Bing Ads and Yahoo! Ads.

Paid search results usually appear above organic results and have a small “sponsored” disclaimer. Below is an example of what paid search results look like.

If you’ve done any Googling (or other searching) lately, you’ve probably noticed that less and less real estate is given to organic results. Often times, there are paid results, a map of store locations, YouTube videos, or featured snippets.

Since it’s now more difficult to appear at the top of Google search results organically, a smarter paid search strategy is becoming necessary for many companies.

Paid searchOrganic results

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How is Google Ads structured?

Before we dive into the details of Google Ads, it’s helpful to understand how Google Ads is set up. Your Google account is associated with your unique email and billing information.

In your Google Ads account, you have campaigns. Your campaigns can vary by campaign type, which include search network, display network, shopping, video, and apps. Campaign types determine where your ad can be displayed (e.g. video campaigns are displayed on YouTube). Each campaign will also have its own budget settings.

Each of your campaigns will contain one or more ad groups, which are very important to your paid search strategy. Ad groups are groups of ads that are targeted to a set of related keywords—basically, they are the organizational structure for your campaigns, and give Google information about how you want to target and how (which affects Quality Score).

Within your ad groups, you will have keywords, ads, and landing pages.

Account

Campaign 1 Campaign 2

Ad Group 1

AdsLanding Pages

Keywords

AdsLanding Pages

Keywords

AdsLanding Pages

Keywords

AdsLanding Pages

Keywords

Ad Group 1Ad Group 2 Ad Group 2

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What are keywords?

What are ad groups?

Perhaps the most important component of any good paid search campaign is keywords and keyword groupings. Your ad will show up when people choose the keywords you select as ones you want to be alongside. For example, if you sell suede shoe cleaner, then you can add “buy suede shoe cleaner” or “keep suede shoes clean” to your Ad campaign. Then, your ad might appear alongside those keywords when people search for them. 

Each of your campaigns will contain one or more ad groups, which are very important to your paid search strategy. Ad groups contain target keywords, their related ads, and the landing pages those ads lead to.

That means for each ad group, you identify the searches you want to target, what your ads will say in response to those searches, and where you will lead users who click on your ad. This gives Google a lot of information about how relevant your ads and landing pages are, which impacts your Quality Score (more on Quality Score below).

When it comes to creating high converting, lower cost ads, the trick is creating highly specific ad groups. That means your keywords should be tightly related and your ads and landing pages should incorporate those keywords. Doing that creates what Google calls “Ad relevance,” meaning that if users search for “size 10 Nike shoes,” they will be shown ads about size 10 Nike shoes, not ads for blue Nike shoes.

Highly specific ad groups allow you to target clicks with a higher chance of converting, because those users are directly searching for what your ad and landing page offer.

Ad Groups

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Advanced tip:

To start creating ultra-specific ad groups, start by using only one keyword phrase and using it with broad match modifier, phrase match, and exact match (more later on keyword match types), which will look like this:

+blue +Nike +shoes

“blue Nike shoes”

[blue Nike shoes]

Then create ads and landing pages that directly incorporate your keywords—that will ensure that your ads and landing pages are highly targeted towards your keywords.

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What are keyword matching options?

Now that you know what keywords are in the world of paid search, it’s important to understand how you can use keyword match types to control which types of searches can trigger your ad. Google has four types of keyword matching options:

Broad match: It’s very important to note that this is the default match type for all keywords. If you use broad match, your ad can appear when a user searches for synonyms, related searches, misspellings, and other variations (which are determined by Google).

While broad match sounds like a good deal (you can capture a wide audience!), use it very carefully, as it can get expensive fast. Because broad match is set up to reach a wide audience, your ad can appear for semi and totally irrelevant searches, which means you will likely end up paying for irrelevant clicks.

Broad match modifier: This keyword match type still allows you to reach a broad audience but adds more specificity than the broad match type. With broad match modifier, your ads will only show up in searches that included your “locked” keywords. You can lock keywords in place by adding a plus sign in front of them. For example, if you want to advertise blue Nike shoes, then you can lock +blue +Nike as your keywords. Doing that means your ad will appear when people search for “blue Nike shoes” or “kids blue Nike shoes”, but not “blue Adidas” or “red Nike”.

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Phrase match: This keyword match type allows you even more control over which searches your ad appears alongside. Using phrase match means that your ad will appear when users search for your keywords in the exact order you’ve specified, but there might be additional words before or after your phrase. To use phrase match, add quotes around your keyword phrase. In practice, if you’re selling “blue Nike shoes”, your ad can appear when users search for “buy blue Nike shoes cheap” or “women’s blue Nike shoes”, but not “blue Nike Solar shoes” or “blue men’s Nike shoes”. Keep in mind that Google might also display your ad for close variations on your phrase, which can include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, abbreviations, and accents.

Exact match: As you probably guessed, this is the most restrictive keyword match type. When you use exact match, your ads will appear only in searches that include your exact keywords and close variations on your keyword. Meaning, your ad can appear when users search for your exact keywords and a reordering of words if it doesn’t change the meaning, keywords including or excluding prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and other words that don’t change the meaning of the search, implied words, synonyms and paraphrases, and words that have the same search intent (as defined by Google). To use exact match, add your keywords in brackets: [blue Nike shoes].

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What is a Google Quality Score?

When it comes to Google Ads, Quality Score is incredibly important to the success of your campaigns and the cost you pay per click. Google determines your Quality Score by taking three factors into consideration:

Expected click through rate: How likely it is that your ads will be clicked, based on the past performance of your ads and its position in search results.

Ad relevance: How closely your ads are related to your target keywords

Landing page experience: How relevant, useful, and useable your landing page is to people who clicked your ad.

Your Quality Score measure from 1-10, where one is the worst score and ten is the best. If your Quality Score is high, then you can get a discount on your cost-per-click (CPC), meaning Google gives higher quality ads a better deal on clicks. On the other hand, if you have a low Quality Score, your CPC will be higher.

Google has given examples in the past of what a high Quality Score experience looks like:

Let’s say that you own a website that specializes in socks, and Sam, a customer, is looking for striped socks. Here’s how your ad (and high Quality Score keywords) connects Sam with what he wants.

When Sam searches Google for “men’s striped socks,” he sees your ad. (Your ad has “[striped socks]” as a keyword.)

Sam clicks the ad and lands right on your website’s “striped men’s socks” page. The page loads quickly and is easy for Sam to use.

Sam buys several pairs of striped socks.

That’s what we consider a great user experience. Beyond a potentially higher Quality Score in most cases, relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.

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What are ad extensions?Ad extensions enrich your ad with more options and information, making your ad more appealing to users. Extensions also take up more space, making your ad more noticeable. There are two categories of extensions: those that Google adds automatically (automated) and those you have to add yourself (manual). Types of extensions include:

Manual App: Mobile app download button Affiliate location: Shows chain locations for retail/restaurants Call: Clickable extensions that dial your phone number Callout: These look just like sitelinks but aren’t clickable.

They add another layer of information. Location: Show your address and opening hours Message: Clickable text message extensions Price: Transparent product pricing Promotion: Deals, sales, or coupons Sitelinks: Additional links you can add to your ad Structured snippets: Additional lines of text that highlight key

benefits

Automated Automated call: Clickable phone number display, if your business

goals are for people to call you Automated message: Clickable text message, if your business goals

are for people to message you Automated sitelink: Links to deeper pages on your website like your

menu, opening hours, etc. Automated location: Your address and opening hours Dynamic callout: Content Google pulls that it deems helpful to users

like number of satisfied customers, free delivery, etc. Previous visit: Tells the user if they have previously visited this page Customer ratings: Reviews and ratings from Google

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Below are two examples of what extensions can look like in an ad. In Spotify’s ad in particular, you can see how much more real estate the ad is given with extensions.

According to Google, “Ad extensions increase an ad’s click-through-rate by several percentage points.” Not to mention using ad extensions is free, so they’re a good way to increase your CTR. However, as with all things Google Ads, make sure the extensions you use are highly relevant to your ad and business goals. Tailor your extensions to each ad or ad group, then make sure your ad copy reflects your extension goals (e.g. if you add a call extension, mention ‘give us a call’ or something similar in your ad copy).

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Reviews

Sitelinks

Callout

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What are your targeting options?

Google search ads offers a few different audience targeting parameters. Using these helps further narrow down your target visitors beyond the keywords they search for. Google allows you to target your audience based on the following criteria:

In-market: With this targeting option, Google allows you to reach an audience that is in the process of researching or close to buying a product/service like yours.

Remarketing: Target users who have previously watched your videos, visited your site, used your app, or given you their contact information.

Customer match: This targeting option lets you reengage with existing customers. You can, for example, upload a customer list and target them with search ads for a new product offering. It’s an incredibly powerful option to reach your customers on multiple channels.

Similar audiences: You can target users with similar search behavior as those from your remarketing lists—giving you a fresh audience with behavior that indicates they might like your products/services.

Demographics: You can now target audiences based on their age and gender, which can be quite powerful for some industries (e.g. retirement services, beauty products, etc.)

Location:You can target users in a specific country, areas within a country, or a given radius (think local businesses or even event locations like sports stadiums)

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Ready to get more out of your Google Ad spend? We know diving into paid search can be overwhelming—so much so that it’s tempting to just accept Google’s standard recommendations and settings. But if you can persevere and set up your account to reflect your business goals, you’ll see a much better ROI on your ad spend.

To make that process even easier, you can use Siteimprove Ads to manage your Google Ads optimization.

Siteimprove Ads makes time-consuming ad optimization fast and easy, with insights that actually impact bottom line results. Simply connect your Google Ads account, set target thresholds, and start optimizing without wasting hours sifting through irrelevant data.

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Digital Presence Optimization (DPO) software. Create higher quality content, drive better traffic, measure digital performance, and work towards regulatory compliance—all from one place. Find out why more than 7,000 organizations around the world are using the Siteimprove Intelligence Platform at siteimprove.com.

Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Siteimprove Ads to see for yourself

https://siteimprove.com/en/trial/?trial=ads

Connect your Google Ads account

Set custom target thresholds

Begin optimizing with clear recommendations

Three simple steps for better results

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