Common Google AdWords Mistakes You Should Avoid - Instapage Guide

What is Google AdWords?

Chapter 5

Common Google AdWords Mistakes to Avoid

We’ve discussed in detail about the things you need to take care of when optimizing your Google AdWords campaigns, what’s left to discuss are the common AdWords mistakes marketers make so you can avoid them.

Stuffing Too Many Keywords in One Ad Group

One mistake you can commit while creating your PPC campaigns is stuffing too many keywords in one ad group. Putting more than 20 keywords into one ad group makes it near impossible to achieve the search-to-ad message match.

And your PPC ads are just going to cost you many and get you no conversions if you don’t have proper message matching. If you want to achieve the perfect message match ideally aim for single keyword ad groups. If you think single keyword ad groups are going to be too much work for you, and you have a lot of similar keywords you should create logical ad groups for your campaigns like Apple does with their Google AdWords campaigns.

Another costly mistake you can make in your AdWords campaigns is not using negative keywords. Negative keywords allow you to stop your ads from showing when certain keywords are used, so that you don’t have to pay for an ad click when someone who has no intention of buying your service clicks on your ad.

For example if you sell women shoes, it would benefit your campaigns if you chose negative keywords such as ‘baby shoes’ or ‘men shoes’ to exclude your ad from coming up in searches related to these terms. Because if a user looking to buy shoes for their toddler clicks to your landing page and finds only women shoes there they’ll exit the page, however, you would’ve already payed for the click.

Not Taking into Account User Intent

User intent describes what a user is looking for while they make a search query. It’s how you determine what the user is thinking when they type a certain keyword phrase into Google.

There are three types of user intent:

1. Navigational: When the user is trying to open a specific site
2. Informational: When the user is looking to gather information about a certain subject
3. Transactional: When the user is ready to buy

To explain how to use different types of user intent and how they work for your AdWords campaigns let’s take the example of a fictional company called “Better Webpages.” Better Webpages helps its users create beautiful websites without any coding.

When a potential customer of Better Webpages does a Google search for the keyword phrase, “what’s the best way to create code-free websites” the user intent is at the informational stage. They are probably still searching for the best solution and aren’t ready to buy yet.


Now, if the potential customer does a search for the keyword, “Is Better Webpages the best tool for websites?” you know that the customer is inclined to buy soon and has transactional user intent and so your landing page should be minimal. It should tell them why you are the best in the business and then point them towards your personalized CTA.

Find out which specific keywords describe which type of buying intent and target those keywords properly with your landing pages, and overall PPC campaigns.

Not Using Correct Keyword Match Types

Keyword match types control which user search will trigger your ad, they are essentially a way to organize your bid for different search terms.

There are four types of keyword match types:

1. Broad match: This is the default match type that all keywords get assigned to. With broad match keywords your ads can show up even on searches with synonyms, misspellings and related searches.
2. Phrase match: Ads for phrase match show up on searches that match a phrase, or a close variation of the phrase. The search can also have additional words before or after the keyword. Ads don’t show up, however, if a word is added to the middle of a phrase match keyword, or if the phrase is reordered in some way.
3. Exact match: For exact match keywords ads appear on searches that match the exact term or are a very close variation of that exact term. Ads can also show up for reordered phrases, given that the phrase’s meaning remains the same.
4. Negative match: Ads for negative match keywords may show on searches without the term.

This video explains how the different keyword match types work:

After doing keyword research you should identify and categorize your keywords into the appropriate keyword match types, this helps you organize your campaigns and make sure that you are getting the best results out of the keywords you’ve selected.

Google AdWords allows you to promote your offers to your target audience via search and display ads on a medium that your visitors are bound to use. By choosing the right keywords, creating optimized ads and connected them to dedicated and relevant landing pages you ensure that your product/service gets the promotion strategy it deserves.

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