Paid search advertising is a powerful way to drive traffic and conversions for your brand.

However, setting up your first campaign can feel overwhelming if you’re new to the game. Even if you’re a PPC pro, it can be hard to keep up with all the changes in the interfaces, making it easy to miss key settings that can make or break performance.

In this guide, you’ll find the essential steps to set up a successful paid search campaign, ensuring you’re equipped with the knowledge to make informed decisions that lead to positive results.

Step 1: Define Your Conversions & Goals

Establishing clear goals and understanding what constitutes a conversion is the foundation of a successful paid search campaign.

This clarity ensures that every aspect of your campaign is aligned with your business objectives.

Identify Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

In order to identify those KPIs, it’s crucial to understand the overarching business objectives. Begin by mapping out your broader business goals.

Ask yourself, “Am I aiming to increase sales, generate leads, boost website traffic, or enhance brand awareness?”

From there, you can define specific KPIs for each objective. Some examples include:

• Sales: Number of transactions, revenue generated.
• Leads: Number of form submissions, phone calls, appointments created.
• Traffic: Click-through rate (CTR), number of sessions.
• Brand Awareness: Impressions, reach.

Set Up Conversion Tracking

Knowing your goals is one thing, but being able to accurately measure them is a completely different ballgame.

Both Google and Microsoft Ads have dedicated conversion tags that can be added to your website for proper tracking.

Additionally, Google Analytics is a popular tool to track conversions.

Choose what conversion tags you need to add to your website and ensure they’re added to the proper pages.

In this example, we’ll use Google Ads.

To set up conversion tracking using a Google Ads tag, click the “+” button on the left-hand side of Google Ads, then choose Conversion action.

You’ll choose from the following conversions to add:

• Website.
• App.
• Phone calls.
• Import (from Google Analytics, third party, etc.).

After choosing, Google Ads can scan your website to recommend conversions to add, or you have the option to create a conversion manually:

During this step, it’s essential to assign value(s) to conversions being created, as well as the proper attribution model that best represents your customer journey.

Most PPC campaigns are now using the data-driven model attribution, as opposed to a more traditional “last click” attribution model. Data-driven attribution is especially helpful for more top-of-funnel campaigns like YouTube or Demand Gen campaign types.

After the conversion has been created, Google provides the necessary code and instructions to add to the website.

Enable Auto-Tagging

Setting up auto-tagging from the get-go eliminates the need to append UTM parameters to each individual ad, saving you time during setup.

It also allows for seamless data import into Google Analytics, enabling detailed performance analysis within that platform.

To enable auto-tagging at the account level, navigate to Admin > Account settings.

Find the box for auto-tagging and check the box to tag ad URLs, then click Save.

Step 2: Link Any Relevant Accounts

Linking various accounts and tools enhances your campaign’s effectiveness by providing deeper insights and seamless data flow.

Now, this step may come sooner if you plan to import conversions from Google Analytics into Google Ads, as the accounts will have to be linked prior to importing conversions.

To link accounts, navigate to Tools > Data manager.

You can link accounts such as:

• Google Analytics.
• YouTube channel(s).
• Third-party analytics.
• Search Console.
• CRM tools (Salesforce, Zapier, etc.).
• Ecommerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.).
• Tag Manager.
• And more.

Step 3: Conduct Keyword Research & Structure Your Campaign

Now that you’ve got the foundations of goals and conversions covered, it’s time to complete some keyword research.

A robust keyword strategy ensures your ads reach the right audience, driving qualified traffic to your site.

Start With A Seed List

Not sure where to start? Don’t sweat it!

Start by listing out fundamental terms related to your products or services. Consider what your customers would type into a search engine to find you.

Doing keyword research into search engines in real-time can help discover additional popular ways that potential customers are already searching, which can uncover more possibilities.

Additionally, use common language and phrases that customers use to ensure relevance.

Use Keyword Research Tools

The Google Ads platform has a free tool built right into it, so be sure to utilize it when planning your keyword strategy.

The Google Keyword Planner gives you access to items like:

• Search volume data.
• Competition levels.
• Keyword suggestions.
• Average CPC.

All these insights help not only determine what keywords to bid on but also help form the ideal budget needed to go after those coveted keywords.

When researching keywords, try to identify long-tail keywords (typically, these are phrases with more than three words). Long-tail keywords may have lower search volume but have higher intent and purchase considerations.

Lastly, there are many paid third-party tools that can offer additional keyword insights like:

These tools are particularly helpful in identifying what competitors are bidding on, as well as finding gaps or opportunities that they are missing or underserving.

Group Keywords Into Thematic Ad Groups

Once you have your core keywords identified, it’s time to group them together into tightly-knit ad groups.

The reason for organizing them tightly is to increase the ad relevance as much as possible. Each ad group should focus on a single theme or product category.

As a good rule of thumb, I typically use anywhere from five to 20 keywords per ad group.

Another item to keep in mind is which match types to use for keyword bidding. See the example below from Google on the three keyword match types available:

Create A Hierarchical Campaign Structure

Once your ad groups have been segmented, it’s time to build the campaign structure(s).

You’ll want to divide your account into campaigns based on broader categories, such as:

• Product lines.
• Geographic regions.
• Marketing goals.
• Search volume.

For example, you can create one campaign for “Running Shoes.” Within that campaign, you create three ad groups:

• Men’s running shoes.
• Women’s running shoes.
• Trail running shoes.

Now, there may be times when you have a keyword with an abnormally higher search volume than other keywords within a particular category.

Depending on your budget, it may be worth segmenting those high-volume search term(s) into its own campaign solely for better budget optimization.

If a high-volume keyword is grouped into ad groups with low-volume keywords, it’s likely that most of the ads served will be for the high-volume keyword.

This then inhibits the other low-volume keywords from showing, and can wreak havoc on campaign performance.

Utilize Negative Keywords

Just as the keywords you bid on are crucial to success, so are the negative keywords you put into place.

Negative keywords can and should be added and maintained as ongoing optimization of any paid search campaign strategy.

The main benefit of negative keywords is the ability to exclude irrelevant traffic. They prevent your ads from showing on irrelevant searches, saving budget and improving CTR over time.

Negative keywords can be added at the ad group, campaign, or account level.

Step 4: Configure Campaign Settings

Now that you’ve got the campaign structure ready to go, it’s time to start building and configuring the campaign settings.

Campaign settings are crucial to get right in order to optimize performance towards your goals.

There’s something to be said with the phrase, “The success is in the settings.” And that certainly applies here!

Choose The Right Bidding Strategy

You’ll have the option to choose a manual cost-per-click (CPC) or an automated bid strategy. Below is a quick rundown of the different types of bid strategies.

• Manual CPC: Allows you to set bids for individual keywords, giving you maximum control. Suitable for those who prefer more hands-on management.
• Target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Optimizes bids to maximize revenue based on a target ROAS you set at the campaign level.
• Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Optimizes bids to achieve conversions at the target CPA you set at the campaign level.
• Maximize Conversions: Sets bids to help get the most conversions for your budget.

Set Your Daily Budget Accordingly

Review your monthly paid search budget and calculate how much you can spend per day throughout the month.

Keep in mind that some months should be different to account for seasonality, market fluctuations, etc.

Additionally, be sure to allocate campaign budgets based on goals and priorities to maximize your return on investment.

You’ll also want to keep in mind the bid strategy selected.

For example, say you set a campaign bid strategy with a Target CPA of $30. You then go on to set your campaign daily budget of $50.

That $50 daily budget would likely not be enough to support the Target CPA of $30, because that would mean you’d get a maximum of two conversions per day, if that.

For bid strategies that require a higher CPA or higher ROAS, be sure to supplement those bid strategies with higher daily budgets to learn and optimize from the beginning.

Double-Check Location Settings

When choosing locations to target, be sure to look at the advanced settings to understand how you’re reaching those users.

For example, if you choose to target the United States, it’s not enough to enter “United States” and save it.

There are two options for location targeting that many fail to find:

• Presence or interest: People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your included locations.
• Presence: People in or regularly in your included locations.

Google Ads defaults to the “presence or interest” setting, which I’ve seen time and time again where ads end up showing outside of the United States, in this example.

Again, the success is in the settings.

There are more settings to keep in mind when setting up your first paid search campaign, including:

• Ad scheduling.
• Audience targeting.
• Device targeting.
• And more.

Step 5: Write Compelling Ad Copy

Your ad copy is the gateway to attracting qualified customers.

Crafting the perfect mix of persuasion and relevancy into your ad copy can significantly impact your campaign’s success.

Create Attention-Grabbing Headlines

The headline is the most prominent part of the ad copy design on the search engine results page. Since each headline has a maximum character limit of 35 characters, it is important to make them count.

With Responsive Search Ads, you can create up to 15 different headlines, and Google will test different variations of them depending on the user, their search query, and multiple other factors to get that mix right.

Below are some tips for captivating a user’s attention:

• Use Primary Keywords: Include your main keywords in the headline to improve relevance and Quality Score.
• Highlight Unique Selling Points (USPs): Showcase what sets your product or service apart, such as free shipping, 24/7 support, or a unique feature.
• Incorporate Numbers and Statistics: Use numbers to catch attention, like “50% Off” or “Join 10,000+ Satisfied Customers.”
• Include a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Encourage immediate action with phrases like “Buy Now,” “Get a Free Quote,” or “Sign Up Today.”

Write Persuasive Descriptions

Description lines should complement the headline statements to create one cohesive ad.

Typically, two description lines are shown within any given ad. Each description line has a 90-character limit.

When creating a Responsive Search Ad, you can create four different descriptions, and then the algorithm will show variations of copy tailored to each individual user.

• Expand on Headlines: Provide additional details that complement your headline and reinforce your message.
• Address Pain Points: Highlight how your product or service solves specific problems your audience faces.
• Use Emotional Triggers: Appeal to emotions by emphasizing benefits like peace of mind, convenience, or excitement.
• Incorporate Keywords Naturally: Ensure the description flows naturally while including relevant keywords to maintain relevance.

Make Use Of Ad Assets (Formerly Extensions)

Because of the limited character count in ads, be sure to take advantage of the myriad of ad assets available as complements to headlines and descriptions.

Ad assets help provide the user with additional information about the brand, such as phone numbers to call, highlighting additional benefits, special offers, and more.

Some of the main ad assets used include:

• Sitelinks.
• Callouts.
• Structured Snippets.
• Calls.
• And more.

You can find a full list of available ad assets in Google Ads here.

Step 6: Ensure An Effective Landing Page Design

You’ve spent all this time crafting your paid search campaign strategy, down to the keyword and ad copy level.

Don’t stop there!

There’s one final step to think about before launching your first paid search campaign: The landing page.

Your landing page is where users land after clicking your ad. An optimized landing page is critical for converting traffic into valuable conversions and revenue.

Ensure Relevancy And Consistency

The content and message of your landing page should directly correspond to your ad copy. If your ad promotes a specific product or offer, the landing page should focus on that same product or offer.

Use similar language, fonts, and imagery on your landing page as in your ads to create a cohesive user experience.

Optimize For User Experience (UX)

If a user lands on a page and the promise of the ad is not delivered on that page, they will likely leave.

Having misalignment between ad copy and the landing page is one of the quickest ways to waste those precious advertising dollars.

When looking to create a user-friendly landing page, consider the following:

• Mobile-Friendly Design: Ensure your landing page is responsive and looks great on all devices, particularly mobile, as a significant portion of traffic comes from mobile users.
• Fast Loading Speed: Optimize images, leverage browser caching, and minimize code to ensure your landing page loads quickly. Slow pages can lead to high bounce rates.
• Clear and Compelling Headline: Just like your ad, your landing page should have a strong headline that immediately communicates the value proposition.
• Concise and Persuasive Content: Provide clear, concise information that guides users toward the desired action without overwhelming them with unnecessary details.
• Prominent Call-to-Action (CTA): Place your CTA above the fold and make it stand out with contrasting colors and actionable language. Ensure it’s easy to find and click.

Step 7: Launch Your Campaign

Once you’ve thoroughly completed these six steps, it’s time to launch your campaign!

But remember: Paid search campaigns are not a “set and forget” strategy. They must be continuously monitored and optimized to maximize performance and identify any shifts in strategy.

Create a regular optimization schedule to stay on top of any changes. This could look like:

• Weekly Reviews: Conduct weekly performance reviews to identify trends, spot issues, and make incremental improvements.
• Monthly Strategy Sessions: Hold monthly strategy sessions to assess overall campaign performance, adjust goals, and implement larger optimizations.
• Quarterly Assessments: Perform comprehensive quarterly assessments to evaluate long-term trends, budget allocations, and strategic shifts.

When it comes to optimizing your paid search campaign, make sure you’re optimizing based on data. This can include looking at:

• Pause Underperforming Keywords: Identify and pause keywords that are not driving conversions or are too costly.
• Increase Bids on High-Performing Keywords: Allocate more budget to keywords that are generating conversions at a favorable cost.
• Refine Ad Copy: Continuously test and refine ad copy based on performance data to enhance relevance and engagement.
• Enhance Landing Pages: Use insights from user behavior on landing pages to make data-driven improvements that boost conversion rates.

Final Thoughts

Setting up your first paid search campaign involves multiple detailed steps, each contributing to the overall effectiveness and success of your advertising efforts.

By carefully defining your goals, linking relevant accounts, conducting thorough keyword research, configuring precise campaign settings, crafting compelling ad copy, and optimizing your landing pages, you lay a strong foundation for your campaign.

Remember, the key to a successful paid search campaign is not just the initial setup but also ongoing monitoring, testing, and optimization.

Embrace a mindset of continuous improvement, leverage data-driven insights, and stay adaptable to maximize your campaign’s potential.

More resources: 

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Featured Image: vladwel/Shutterstock

Squarespace announced updates to their Blueprint AI, automating website creation, and enhancing their tool suite—further strengthening their website building platform for small and medium-sized businesses.

Squarespace

Squarespace is known for their easy to use drag and drop interface that allows user to select a template, modify it with a few clicks and to drag and drop web page elements in order to create a professional looking website. Over 2% of all websites are reported to use Squarespace, showing that it’s a popular choice website building platform for small to medium size businesses.

Blueprint AI

Blueprint AI, launched in late 2023, is Squarespace’s proprietary AI website builder that helps users create a website by answering questions related to what kind of site they’re trying to create. The AI then creates a template based on the answers to the questions. Users can then use Squarespace’s full suite of editing features to further modify their website then modify to suit their needs and create a true custom website.

Other Improvements

Squarespace also announced other improvements that help users switch web page layouts and apply changes, a one-click style changer that instantly creates new style combinations, and a new hub for managing the website brand identify.

The announcement explained:

“Layout Switcher:
An adaptive layout menu that enables faster website design experimentation—offering a set of flexible compositions with one’s content automatically embedded, then applied instantly to a page.

Site Themes:
One-click styling combinations that make it easier to preview and apply a new website aesthetic—via handpicked font pairings, color palettes, button styles and more, with recommendations aligned to a customer’s brand personality.

Brand Identity Management:
A central hub for crafting and storing one’s unique brand identity that guides Squarespace’s AI writer to instantly generate first draft, on-brand copy populated across key surface areas, including website text, content descriptions, and client documents, among others.”

Takeaways

Squarespace has about 20 years experience helping businesses easily build websites and start doing business online. This announcement shows that Squarespace continues to improve the already excellent platform that gives businesses the chance to effectively compete online.

Read Squarespace’s announcement:

Squarespace Refresh 2024: Introducing a New Era for Entrepreneurs

Featured Image by Shutterstock/IB Photography

Content is SEO. More specifically, it’s one side of the SEO relationship. One core function of search engines is to connect users with the information they’re looking for. That information might be a product listing, a review, a news story, an image, or a video.

The other core function of search engines is to retain users.

Search engines retain users by ensuring their confidence and trust in the displayed results. Over time, they build expectations that using their platform is a safe, streamlined experience that quickly leads users to what they want.

SEO success depends on being found by your target audience for what they are looking for and consistently providing a satisfying user experience based on the context of the queries they type into search engines.

Search Is Built On Content

The core function of search engines is to help users find information. Search engines first discover webpages, they parse and render and they then add them to an index. When a user inputs a query, search engines retrieve relevant webpages in the index and then “rank” them.

Search engines need to know what pages are about and what they contain in order to serve them to the right users. In concept, they do this quite simply: They examine the content. The real process behind this is complicated, executed by automated algorithms and evaluated with human feedback.

Google constantly adjusts and updates it algorithms with the goal of ensuring the most relevant content is served to searchers.

This relationship between searchers, search engines, and websites, has come to define the internet experience for most users. Unless you know the exact URL of the website you intend to visit, you need must find it via a third party. That could be social media, a search engine, or even discovering the website offline and then typing it in. This is called a “referral,” and Google sends 64% of all website referrals in the U.S. Microsoft and Bing send the next largest amount of referrals, followed by YouTube.

Getting discovered by people who don’t already know you depends on search engines, and search engines depend on content.

The SEO Value Of Content

Google has said it prioritizes user satisfaction.

It’s confirmed that user behavior signals impact ranking.

At this point, whether this relationship is causal or correlative doesn’t matter. You must prioritize user experience and satisfaction because it’s a key indicator of SEO success.

Written language is still the primary way users interact with search engines and how algorithms understand websites. Google algorithms can interpret audio and videos, but written text is core to SEO functionality.

Enticing clicks and engaging users through content that satisfies their queries is the baseline of SEO. If your pages can’t do that, you won’t have success.

High-quality content and user experiences aren’t just important for SEO; they’re prerequisites.

This is true for all advertising and branding. Entire industries and careers are built on the skills to refine the right messaging and put it in front of the right people.

Evidence For The SEO Value Of Content

Google highlights the importance of content in its “SEO fundamentals” documentation. It advises that Google’s algorithms look for “helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people,” and provides details about how to self-assess high-quality content.

• Content, and how well it matches a user’s needs, is one of the core positive and negative factors in Google’s ranking systems. It updates systems to reduce content it deems to be unhelpful and prioritize content it deems to be helpful.
• In fact, Google’s analysis of the content may determine whether a page enters the index at all to become eligible to rank. If you work hard to provide a good experience and serve the needs of your users, search engines have more reason to surface your content and may do so more often.
• A 2024 study in partnership between WLDM, ClickStream, and SurferSEO suggests that the quality of your coverage on a topic is highly correlated with rankings.

Content And User Behavior

Recent developments in the SEO industry, such as the Google leak, continue to highlight the value of both content and user experience.

Google values user satisfaction to determine the effectiveness and quality of webpages and does seem to use behavioral analysis in ranking websites. It also focuses on the user intent of queries and whether a specific intent is served by a particular resource.

The satisfaction of your users is, if not directly responsible for SEO performance, highly correlated with it.

Many factors affect user experience and satisfaction. Website loading speed and other performance metrics are part of it. Intrusive elements of the page on the experience are another.

Content, however, is one of the primary determiners of a “good” or “bad” experience.

• Does the user find what they’re looking for? How long does it take?
• Is the content accurate and complete?
• Is the content trustworthy and authoritative?

The answers to these questions reflect whether the user has a good or bad experience with your content, and this determines their behavior. Bad experiences tend to result in the user leaving without engaging with your website, while good experiences tend to result in the user spending more time on the page or taking action.

This makes content critical not only to your SEO efforts on search engines but also to your website’s performance metrics. Serving the right content to the right users in the right way impacts whether they become leads, convert, or come back later.

Leaning into quality and experience is a win all around. Good experiences lead to desirable behaviors. These behaviors are strong indications of the quality of your website and content. They lead to positive outcomes for your business and are correlated with successful SEO.

What Kinds Of Content Do You Need?

Successful content looks different for each goal you have and the different specific queries you’re targeting.

Text is still the basis of online content when it comes to search. Videos are massively popular. YouTube is the second-most popular search engine in the world. However, in terms of referrals, it only sends 3.5% of referral traffic to the web in the U.S. In addition, videos have titles, and these days, most have automated transcripts. These text elements are critical for discovery.

That isn’t to say videos and images aren’t popular. Video, especially “shorts” style videos, is an increasingly popular medium. Cisco reported that video made up 82% of all internet traffic in 2022. So you absolutely shoulder consider images and video as part of your content strategy to best serve your audiences and customers.

Both can enhance text-based webpages and stand on their own on social platforms.

But for SEO, it’s critical to remember that Google search sends the most referral traffic to other websites. Text content is still the core of a good SEO strategy. Multi-modal AI algorithms are getting very good at translating information between various forms of media, but text content remains critical for several reasons:

• Plain text has high accessibility. Screen readers can access it, and it can be resized easily.
• Text is the easiest way for both people and algorithms to analyze semantic connections between ideas and entities.
• Text doesn’t depend on device performance like videos and images might.
• Text hyperlinks are very powerful SEO tools because they convey direct meaning along with the link.
• It’s easier to skim through text than video.

Text content is still dominant for SEO. But you should not ignore other content. Images, for example, make for strong link building assets because they’re attractive and easily sharable. Accompanying text with images and video accommodates a variety of user preferences and can help capture attention when plain text might not.

Like everything else, it’s down to what best serves users in any given situation.

SEO Content: Serving Users Since Search Was A Thing

Search engines match content to the needs of users.

Content is one-third of this relationship: user – search engine – information.

You need content to perform SEO, and any digital marketing activity successfully.

The difficulty comes from serving that perfect content for the perfect situation.

So read “How To Create High-Quality Content” next.

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