How to Use Google Ads for Traffic Generation in 2019

Setting the Google Ads Traffic Ground

Even though many may see traffic as a vanity metric, that’s not entirely true. Because every key metric you measure on your website actually depends on traffic.

What can you achieve on your website without traffic?

Absolutely nothing!

That’s why you must always think of how to get more traffic from your campaigns.

Consider this scenario:

If you gain 5 leads from 50 visitors to your website, how many leads will you gain from 100 visitors if you maintain the same conversion rate? 10 leads.

Hence, any optimization you carry out on your website or landing pages will still need people to see it before it can have the desired effects.

Having said that, how can Google Ads help you to generate more website traffic in 2019?

Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is the most popular advertising platform online.

And Google estimates that businesses make an average of $2 from every dollar they spend on Google Ads. This is possible through the traffic advertisers generate from ads.

You have your traffic goals in 2019. And if you’re like most website owners, you’ve set daunting goals. How can Google Ads help you to achieve those goals?

In this guide, I’ll show you 9 ways to use Google Ads for better traffic generation in 2019.

Let’s dive in.

1. Increase your budget

One of the simplest ways to increase traffic from your Google Ads is to increase your budget. Your budget will determine the time your ads can show during searches. It will also determine the locations you can display your ads.

Most importantly, your campaign budget will determine the number of clicks you can have during the time your ads are displayed.

If you want more traffic through Google Ads, a reasonable option is to increase your advertising budget. First, look at the CPC for your chosen keywords, then set your budget accordingly.

Source: JeffAlytics

When you increase your budget, another strategy you can use is to bid for more keywords and to increase your bids.

When you bid for more keywords, you’re able to show up for more searches and gain more traffic.

Likewise, if you bid higher for competitive keywords, you can improve your ad position on the search results.

For instance, if you rank top for a competitive keyword, you’ll get more traffic than ranking below organic results for a term.

To increase your daily budget, go to your campaign page and click on the settings icon beside your daily budget. Enter your new budget and save. You can also set budgets for many campaigns.

2. Use keyword research to find keywords with higher search volumes

Sometimes, we feel people are searching for a keyword. Sometimes, we’re right. Sometimes, we’re wrong. This is why keyword research is as vital for Google Ads as it is for SEO.

If your aim is to gain more search traffic, then you need to use keyword research to find keywords related to your business that have high monthly search volume.

To do this, you can use the Google keyword planner. Input your keyword into the tool and check the search volume and competition. You’ll see other similar keywords to your keyword that you can add to your campaigns in the future.

3. Use head keywords

Head keywords usually have larger search volumes. Although many marketers target long-tail keywords, there’s an opportunity for huge traffic with head keywords.

The strategy for targeting long-tail keywords is solid as most marketers target these keywords for better conversions.

A long-tail keyword usually shows the intent of the searcher. But head keywords are opportunities to attract searchers before they make the decision to buy.

Although long-tail keywords will generate higher conversions but head keywords drive more traffic. To strike a balance of traffic and conversion, target both keywords in your ad.

Source: CrazyEgg

If you attract visitors to your website before they make the decision to buy, they may just come to your website when they need to buy because of familiarity.

If you already target long-tail keywords with your ads, you can add some head keywords that tend to get high search volumes monthly.

4. Improve your ad copy

Your ad copy is one of the main ways to convince searchers to click-through to your page. When you have a weak ad copy, then your click-through rate will be poor.

This can have a long-lasting negative effect on your overall advertisements.

When your ads have low CTR, it affects your quality score negatively. This means you’ll have to spend more while bidding for search terms due to a lower quality score. Improving your ad copy has benefits in many aspects of your campaigns.

You can get more traffic and increase your ad quality over time. This means you’ll have to pay less over time for even more traffic. Talk of killing two birds with one stone.

Look at this example of a poor ad copy that tells searchers not to use the AdWords editor. Such an ad will lose credibility with its intended audience.

Perhaps, it’s no coincidence that the company is out of business? A poor ad copy will harm your advertising efforts. And it can even harm your reputation if you make dubious claims.

5. Adjust your keyword matching

With keyword matching, you can avoid showing your ads to the wrong people. But on the other side of the coin, you could also prevent some right people from seeing your ads.

Google provides 3 ways of matching your keywords:

• Broad match
• Phrase match
• Exact match.

Another way to target your ads is to use negative keywords. But first, let’s briefly consider each of these keyword match types:

Broad Match

This type of match allows your ads to show up for keywords that are similar to your target keywords.

For instance, if your target keyword is “winter shoes,” then your ad can show up for “winter footwear.” This type of match allows for the optimum number of ad impressions. If your aim is to get more traffic, then broad match could be your best bet.

Broad Match Modifier

This allows you to gain more control than the traditional broad match. With this modifier, you can add a + sign to a keyword. This means your ad will only show up when this particular term is in the search term.

This can be useful when you provide gender-based services. For instance, if you use a modifier like +women’s, it means your ad won’t show up for people searching for men’s products.

Phrase Match

This is a type of match that will display your ad when a particular phrase is present in the search term.

For instance, if your phrase is “winter coat,” then your ad will show up for search terms like “best winter coat,” “blue winter coat,” “cheap winter coat,” etc.

This is also a type of match that could lead to a huge amount of traffic if you use a popular phrase. Furthermore, it’s more targeted than broad match.

Exact Match

Your ad will only show up for this type of match when a search user searches for your exact keyword.

This is usually employed for a targeted campaign.

Even though this type of match could give you the type of audience you’re looking for, it’ll also limit your traffic as there are many people who will use similar keywords to your specified keywords.

Negative Keywords

When you advertise, there are some keywords you don’t want your ads to show up for.

For instance, if you sell a piece of premium software, you don’t want to show up for search terms that include “free” in a search term.

Because this type of traffic is unlikely to take the action you want. It’s necessary to add negative keywords to your campaign.

Even though this may reduce your potential traffic, it will give you more exposure to the right keywords.

For traffic generation, you should use a mixture of broad or phrase match combined with negative keywords to have the best traffic to your website.

6. Increase your location targeting

At the start of your campaigns, you might want to start with a small geographical area to see how your ads will perform.

But if only a few people are searching for your targeted term in this small area, you’ll only get low traffic. Consequently, you’ll be unable to get enough leads to gain a positive return on investment (ROI) on your ad spend.

To reach more people, you’ll have to increase the area you serve your ads. If there are possible leads and customers outside the area you currently target, then you should increase the area you target.

For instance, if you run a local business, expanding your targeted area from a 10-mile radius to 20 miles could give your ads exposure to more people and traffic to your website. You can also turn these extra visits into leads and customers.

To set up geo-targeting for your ads, go to your “Campaign Settings” and click “Edit” under locations.

Then you can select the location you want to target. Google will give you an estimate of the number of people you can reach. This will also give you an idea of the amount of traffic you can generate.

If you’ve selected a region, you’ll see the region highlighted on the map.

Apart from targeting a city or region, another option available to you is to target a specific radius. This is applicable if you provide your services offline. You can increase your radius to reach more people.

All you have to do is to enter the location of the center of your radius and this will usually be your business location. Then you can enter the size of your radius which could be in miles or kilometers.

If you’re targeting a large location, like a whole nation, you can exclude locations you don’t want your ads to show. This is necessary if you don’t have your ideal customers in those locations. You can use the “Bulk locations” tab to do this.

Through the use of geo-targeting, Georgia Eye Associates were able to increase their CTR from 0.95% to 2.80% which means more traffic. They also reduced their cost per click from $4.91 to $2.31.

7. Ad extensions

Using ad extensions can increase your ad click-through rate and bring in more traffic to your website. The extensions help you to occupy a larger space in the search results.

Added to that, it gives more information about your ad that might convince viewers to click through to your page. In fact, in some cases, your ad extensions can allow search users to take action right from the search results page.

Some ad extensions available on Google Ads are:

• Sitelink extension
• Callout extension
• Structured snippet extension
• Message extension
• Location extension
• Affiliate location extension
• Price extension
• App extension
• Promotion extension

Of course, not all of these extensions will bring traffic to your website as some allow searchers to take action without visiting your page. However, you need to use those that will increase click-through rates to your website.

1. Promotion Extension

If you run an ecommerce website or sell products on your website, this is an extension that can get visitors to your website through promotional offers. This is highly effective in attracting visitors.

In a study, Wordstream found that their clients got a 10% increase in CTR when they used promotion extension. How do you set up this extension?

Go to the “Ads and Extension” tab and click on “Extensions.”

When you get to the next page, click on “Create Ad Extension.”

When you click on that, you’ll get many options on what extension you want to create. Select “Promotion Extension.”

You can click on “Use existing” if you already have an extension in place or “Create new” if you’ve never created one. After that, you can select the occasion for your promotion.

You can then enter more details about your promotion like percentage, monetary, or other forms of discounts. Enter the item you want to promote and its destination URL.

After this step, you can set the start and end date for the promotion.

You can add more settings in the advanced options like targeting mobile.

After adding all details to your campaign, click on “Save” to finish your setup.

Check out an example of a promotion extension below:

There are other types of extensions you can use that will bring in more traffic to your website. For any extension you want to add, you can follow the steps above.

8. Retargeting

For people who have visited your website before, it’s easier to convince them to visit again.

So far you didn’t piss them off with a poor user experience during their first visit. Ad Roll found that 98% of people who visit your website for the first time won’t convert. You need to bring them back to have a chance of converting them.

Retargeting ads can help you to target people who have visited your website or some particular pages on your website.

A study found that remarketing ads have 2-3X higher click-through rates than typical display ads.

So how do you go about this? You need to create a remarketing campaign. To do this, go to your ads account and click on “Shared library.”

On the next page, click on “Audiences.”

If you have no remarketing tag on your website, you’ll be prompted to add it to your website. You can get more information about how to install the tag when you click on “Tag details.”

After installing the tag on your website, click on the “+ Remarketing List” button to create your list. This could be your website visitors, mobile app users, customer emails, or YouTube users.

If you’re targeting people who have once visited your website, there are many options available.

You can select an option based on the people you want to target. You can also set up as many of these campaigns as possible.

With a tracking code on your website, you can explore many options on your website to bring people back to important pages.

9. Test your ads continuously

One of the activities you have to engage constantly is testing different elements of your ads.

There’s no perfect ad. Therefore, there’s every possibility that changing an element or a word in your ad could improve your ad click-through rate and consequently, traffic to your page.

What are some elements you need to test in your ads? Some of them are:

i). Ad copy

The words you use in your ad copy could determine whether a search user decides to click or not.

What’s the offer on your ad? What’s the benefit to any potential visitor? What will provoke their curiosity? These are questions to ask when you test your ad copy.

ii). Ad sizes

You should test different ad sizes to see how it performs. This is especially applicable to display ads. You can also test different call to actions to see the most effective ones.

iii). Ad placement:

This is also common with display ads. You’ll find that some ads will perform well on some websites while they perform woefully on others.

You can also test different parts of web pages like the sidebar, above the fold, etc.

iv). Time to display ads

Depending on the type of service you offer, it might be counterintuitive to show your ads at some periods of time during the day.

For instance, if you offer a software package that people use at work, you don’t need to run your ads during the night.

However, you should still perform tests to see the times that bring the highest traffic to your website.

To test your ads, go to your campaign settings and click on “Drafts & experiments.”

From there, you can create ad variations based on headline, descriptions and other details.

10. Test in-market audiences

Imagine how far you can go when you’re able to reach the exact consumers who need your products and services?

I mean, you’ll invest more money on Google Ads — because you know you’re going to get results.

That’s what the In-Market Audiences from Google entail.

What exactly does Google do with the enormous amount of data they currently have and will still have about online users? We all use Google products every day and Google is busy tracking every move that we make.

Google recently released a new featured called In-Market Audiences. This new feature leverages on this enormous amount of data insights.

This new feature is aimed at helping advertisers to move beyond demographics and reach targeted users who have indicated interests in the market for a specific product based on what they’re searching for or websites they visit.

This is a smart move because Google knows online user behaviors and can detect when someone is actively researching, analyzing, and comparing products, or clicking on similar ads, landing on a page, and converting.

It’s quite easy for Google to leverage this enormous amount of data to help advertisers target potential customers on various sites across the web.

Take a look at some of the available in-market audiences and where they appear in AdWords:

With In-Market Audiences, advertisers can take advantage of Google’s data to reach the right customers who have demonstrated their interest in the marketplace for your product.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you sell Laptops and you want people whose online behavior has shown that they’re interested in or ready to replace their Laptop or buy a new one. This is the feature you need to leverage and tap into Google’s rich volume of user data.

Make sure you layer in-market audiences to work with the keywords you’re already targeting in your ad campaigns.  

Conclusion

Getting traffic from your Google Ads is the first step in generating a positive ROI from your ad budget.

Make no mistake, generating more traffic will give you an opportunity to increase conversions on your website.

Use these tips to get more traffic from Google Ads. Have you ever seen a profitable website without a substantial amount of traffic?