Google Ads generates vast sums of money for the online search company, but what about the funds you receive?
Standing apart from the competition can be incredibly hard for marketers, mainly if they are new to the business. With numerous ads out there, it can be difficult to make a lasting impression. There’s a finite amount of area on a page of search engine results.
At the beginning of the 2018 holiday period, it’s an appropriate moment to analyze your old advertisements. It’s time to breathe some new life into them.
With that in mind, here are the features the pros use to stand out from the competition:
The Latest Expanded Text Ads
In 2016, Google broadened their standard text advertisements by creating expanded text ads (ETAs). The new higher character limit was beneficial for advertisers because it allowed them to better express the most important components of their message.
Specialists embraced this fresh style quickly, despite the fact that Google did not insist that they modify until January 2017. Advertisers still had the option to run standard ads but could not alter them or introduce any new ones.
There was initial hesitation, but those who took their time to move to the fresh format were in an inferior position to those that shifted right away. The go-getters had the advantage due to Expandable Text Ads (ETAs) which generated more clicks than usual ads.
Having a good click-through rate (CTR) equals a high quality score, which leads to lower cost-per-click (CPC), and in turn, better ad placement.
Now you have this opportunity again!
In August, Google widened the scope of their text ad format – said more clearly, they widened the number of characters allowed – though using all the extra characters is not obligatory (though it is suggested).
The most recent edition of expanded text ads provides space for an additional headline and lets you use additional characters in all text fields, which results in more noticeable text ads. Here’s what’s new:
- An additional, optional headline of up to 30 characters
- An additional, optional description line
- Both description lines can now be up to 90 characters (increased from 80)
The extra length seemingly realized through these longer character tallies may not seem like a lot—ten additional characters!—however, absorbing these can have a noteworthy effect on how your advertisements appear (as well as how well they produce revenue).
The new ETAs offer substantially more words than the “standard” format, with an increase up to 218%. Search professionals are already customizing their adverts to take advantage of the most recent adjustment and you should follow their example!
Adding a secondary headline and description to your ad won’t always be seen, yet when it is, it will make your advertisement larger, helping it to be more noticeable. An additional 30 characters with blue highlight text are featured at the beginning of your advertisement for the third headline.
Ad Extensions
Supplemental pieces of information can be added to advertisements by users if they wish to do so. Google introduced the first extension—sitelinks—way back in 2009. These brief connections can be seen under the advertisement, leading users to various pages on the advertiser’s website.
But why stop there?
Generally, an advertisement can have its click-through rate (CTR) improved up to 10-15% with each addition. In addition to providing extra features, extensions increase the area your placement covers and they aren’t expensive to incorporate, so they should be a no-brainer.
The Best PPC Tools to Help You Spy on Your Competitors
Before engaging in the details, let us review the top Google Adwords detective programs that are useful for gaining superiority over your rivals.
1. Auction Insights via Google Ads Campaign
The Auction Insights tool provides you visibility into the domains that are competing in the same Google ad auctions across the spectrum of campaigns, ad groups, and keywords. This can offer an insight into how well your ads compete with competitors’ ads.
2. SimilarWeb
Using SimilarWeb, you can see how many visitors your competitors get to their website on a monthly basis, discover what channels are bringing them the most visitors, and determine the exact origin of these visitors.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs can be employed to investigate aspects of your competitors. This will provide you with a comprehensive overview of your competitors’ top pages, IP addresses, and outward links. Ahrefs can be very advantageous when it comes to researching and examining advertisement keywords.
4. SEMRush
SEMRush specialises in competitor data. SEMRush enables you to ascertain the advertising keywords and the website visitor counts for your competition.
5. iSpionage
iSpionage is a keyword tracking service that allows you to enter a rival and see their highest performing keywords for natural search engine results as well as for pay-per-click (in both Google and Bing). In addition to the PPC keyword inventory and quantifiable metrics, you can also ascertain how much your competitors are investing in their PPC promotions. This is essential information that can help you maintain a high conversion rate and minimal expenditure.
6. SpyFu
SpyFu is an uncomplicated and productive technique for uncovering your rival’s finest paid keywords, the CPC (cost per click), as well as the regular cost. By recognizing what money your adversaries are investing in, you can make a decision as to which words are worth focusing on.
7. KeywordSpy
With KeywordSpy, you can keep tabs on your rival’s keyword phrases, website addresses, promotional material, and money spent on Google AdWords. Their program will also propose precise combinations of keywords and ads that are judged to be lucrative.
It is advisable to take advantage of all ad extensions, but particularly four in particular that are emphasized in yellow. Unless they are already being utilized, they should be incorporated. Since they are simple to put in place and provide the opportunity to feature essential incentives and information regarding your organization which would otherwise require a lot of advertisement copy, they are beneficial.
1. Sitelinks
Sitelinks are beneficial as they permit you to navigate below the surface level of your website. The quantity of associated links on your advertisement fluctuates from two to eight. Creating dedicated landing pages tailored to each of your sitelinks can be an effective way to understand how visitors interact with each link, while ensuring they are heading towards the goal you want them to achieve. You can tailor your sitelinks according to the ad group, which will make the links even more appropriate to the specific search.
:
The Unbounce Builder
is an excellent tool for quickly creating landing pages that match your ads’ sitelinks.
2. Callouts
Outreach specs allow as many as 25 characters each and they cannot be clicked. They highlight the advantages, positive aspects, and marketable aspects of your enterprise. They can be an excellent way of emphasizing positive qualities of your organization that there is no opportunity to include in the main promotional material. For example, 250 glowing appraisals, 5 convenient spots, all credit cards accepted, and so on.
3. Call Extensions
Call extensions allow the inclusion of a phone number without sacrificing any of the main text. Using mobile phones, callout extensions enable people to press a button to instantly dial your business. Adding call extensions to any ads which are suitable is a speedy and simple process, so these should definitely be used.
4. Structured Snippets
This extension provides the possibility for people to add a catalog of products or services underneath their advertisement. Structured snippets have a headline, typically a classification (e.g., offerings), and then a summary of separate items (such as dog grooming, pet sitting, pooch schooling, and de-shedding).
Including different snippets of information in your ad will help make it unique compared to other advertisements. You can get creative too. For instance, if you are an operator of a B2B data base, you could put out the advantages associated with your facility (likely including Cloud Automation, Improved Security, and a Facile Data Browser).
It should be taken into consideration, however, that you are limited to Google’s provided list when deciding upon the categories. The complete selection of header headings is on this page. Here are some other structured snippet examples based on different ones:
- Amenities: Free WiFi, Sauna, Early Check-In, Concierge Service, Continental Breakfast
- Brands: Urban Decay, bareMinerals, Nyx, Tarte, Too Faced
- Courses: Financial Training, Investment Banking, Business Economics, Fundraising
There are several possibilities for grabbing the attention of your potential customers if you take advantage of a few of the existing tools. It can make your competitors less noticeable on the page.
4 Tips for Highly Effective Google Ads Competitor Analysis
Now that it has been established how advantageous it is to observe the rivals, let’s examine tactics to implement this properly.
It’s not complicated and nearly anyone can attain success. If you take the time to do your research, you can get plenty of useful data.
1. Search for your main keywords
At this point, it is widely understood in the SEO community that it is critical to identify the appropriate keywords.
Using the optimum mix of key phrases can decide the success or failure of your campaign.
Despite this, many individuals choose the same words for use as keywords, so it becomes quite difficult to distinguish from the rest. The main difficulty lies in uncovering outstanding key phrases that your adversaries have not focused on.
To start, conduct a search for your main terms and observe who appears next to your advertisements.
Remember that it is wise to begin this form of thinking. The purpose of this is to evaluate the competition you are up against.
Which competitors are vying for the top ad spots? What type of words and phrases are being used in the advertising material? Is it action-oriented? Aspirational or fear-driven?
Then you can dig deeper.
Are the advertisements the same as the words used in the inquiry? You might have come across a chance to craft an advertisement that is more pertinent and stands out more than the other one.
What about their landing pages? Are they relevant to the search query? Relevance affects quality score. If you are able to create a landing page that is more relevant to a keyword than those of your competitors, then that keyword would be a potential target for you.
Your goal is to identify your rivals and assess the amount of effort they are investing in targeting every keyword.
Repeatedly performing this behavior will damage your click-through percentage as it generates views without generating any clicks.
Once you ascertain the identity of the individuals in question, you can continue on to utilizing more thorough techniques.
2. Use Auction Insights
You are aware of the fact that Google Ads offers you access to different kinds of advantageous data concerning the promotions of your adversaries.
Auction Insights can be especially advantageous.
It is up to you to decide if you would like to view the accounts at the ad group, campaign, or specific keyword level.
This will provide you with knowledge concerning how well your competitor is doing in comparison to you, in addition to the causes of their successful ranking. For instance, you may find that your Position-Above Ratio is inferior compared to a rival. It implies that they are utilizing their advertisements in a way that differentiates them from you. You can look for the advert to examine its content and its destination website.
3. Use SpyFu to find your competitors’ keywords
SpyFu is excellent for conducting research into keywords of rivals. It significantly reduces the amount of time spent and provides an in-depth understanding of your competitors’ strategies. It’s a dedicated competitor research tool.
You don’t need to spend your time looking at unnecessary details.
This tool provides you with the required information immediately.
Here’s how it works.
Just type in the web address of your competitor in the search bar and you will get the information you are looking for. Thus, it is critical that one takes the first step discussed in this article.
Once you’ve discovered the other businesses competing with you, utilize SpyFu to gain a better comprehension of their strategies. The most advantageous characteristic you will note is the past feature. This is where you can observe the strategies that have been successful for other people in your field.
You will be given understanding of how good their ads were previously, as well as the most successful and cost-efficient keywords they used.
This reduces the likelihood of using the wrong keywords in your campaign since you can forecast the most effective ones to include.
4. Compare the Competition with SEMrush
Investing a bit of money in SEMrush will yield more data.
This group of tools gives you a thorough and complete set of resources to gain meaningful understanding of your competitors. Amongst dozens of features you get:
- Learn about new organic competitors
- Distinguish the keywords that have worked for them
- Uncover the keywords that didn’t
And more…
You get a thorough breakdown that covers nearly all angles of the keywords used by your competitor.
You can obtain instantaneous notifications regarding the organic search outcomes of all the search terms that you are studying.
Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
But it doesn’t end there…
Another extremely useful feature is the Topic Research button.
If you are looking to create novel content for your website, this is an excellent way to save time.
When you type in a query, SEMrush reveals what content your opponents have made about it.
It provides you with an understanding of the inquiries your clients need responses to. It virtually eliminates the difficulty in figuring out which topics to write about in order to attract more visitors.
As a rule, you would have to systematically analyze the material of your adversaries to find this information. The Topic Research tool eradicates the demand for manual labor.
Conclusion
In summary, the tools you saw here can help you:
- Identify your competitors
- Learn about their previous campaigns and results
- Get all the information you need on the keywords that they’re using
- Use the data you collect to create a superior strategy
You have plenty to maintain your standing as a top-notch player.
Using these resources together can give you an advantage over others in your field and ensure that you remain on top.
Interested in what OMG could potentially offer?
Let us assist you in increasing your site traffic, generating more leads, and boosting your sales by 10 times with the assistance of skillful SEO and PPC techniques!
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