Best Practices for Google Advertising in 2020

By Sonny Ahuja

Online advertising is essential for companies looking to attract customers or clients in 2020. Long gone are the days where simply putting an ad in the newspaper or on the radio was enough to drive business. Online advertising has become so complex it is now considered a science! Online advertising is especially important in the cleaning and restoration industry since the internet is the first place people look when they need their floors cleaned or have restoration issues. The goal of investing in digital marketing is to improve online ranking and make the company highly visible to internet traffic. Here are five Google advertising strategies to help improve online lead generation.

Google Ads: search marketing

Pay-per-click advertising is when a company pays a certain fee each time their ad is clicked on. One type of PPC marketing comes with search ads. Google Ads allow companies to make various advertisements for their brand.

The first step is researching keywords to associate with the ad. There are multiple tools such as Google Trends that help companies find good keywords to use that people frequently search. Tools like this, combined with expert knowledge, give you an excellent place to start. Examples of keywords for a restoration business could be “water damage cleanup” or “basement water removal.”

Look into a whole list of keywords and pick ones that are relevant to the business. Next, the company will create the ad. When searching Google, you have probably noticed links to various websites with the word “ad” under them. These are search ads. They pop up in your browser based on the keyword you have searched and your location. As a business, your goal is to make that ad stick out so that people will click on it. Use your keyword in the description of the page and then include various links to your website.

Once the ad is published, you will pay each time someone clicks on the link. The goal is that there will be a conversion from the click to the person becoming a paying customer.

It is extremely important to monitor the ads to see how they are doing and adjust the budget, ad copy, locations, bids, schedule, devices, keywords, negative keywords, etc., as necessary.

Google Ads: display marketing

Another pay-per-click Google advertising strategy is display ads. While search ads attempt to draw in new customers, display ads are typically more focused on retargeting and in-market audiences. This means advertising to your existing customers so they will return to do more business with you or advertising to customers who have been to your website in the past. Display marketing can be highly successful when the ads are placed on Google’s partner sites and social media. With display ads, you are focusing on a particular audience.

You can target the display ads to people who have interacted with your brand before as a way of reminding them of your services. You can also target people in specific locations or with selected demographics, including age, gender, and household income.

When dealing with cleaning and restoration services, it is a good idea to target people in the age range of 30 and up with a certain income threshold because that will hit the audience of people who are homeowners and may need services. You can even target the display ads towards people who have been researching services similar to the ones you offer. When making the display ad, pick a visually pleasing picture. Use easy-to-read fonts and short messages so that people can get the gist of the ad very quickly.

Search engine optimization

SEO is crucial when getting a page to rank on a Google search. The best on-page SEO strategies involve practices such as adding specific keywords throughout your website, optimizing titles and subheadings, adding alternate text for images, writing solid meta descriptions, and more. These strategies will help your webpage rank higher when people search for various keywords related to your services. Most people do not look past the first page of Google search results, so your page must pop up on the first page of results.

Google Business pages

Google Business pages are critical to the success of any company. This is where companies share information about themselves including their address, phone number, and hours of operation and link to the website. From the listing, customers can get directions to your location, access the website, write a review, and more. It is also important to add a picture to the Google business listing.

In fact, Google states that when a business adds photos to their business profile, they receive 35% more clicks through to their websites than businesses that don’t. This tool is free, simple to use, and a definite necessity in today’s digital marketing world.

Being on Google Business also populates your business on Google Maps, which is estimated to be the place for over 50% of mobile search results in the next five years.

Google Ads for voice search

With services such as Alexa and Siri, many people are now using their voice to search instead of typing keywords into Google. For example, someone might say, “Hey Alexa, what are water damage restoration companies near me,” instead of typing “water damage restoration services near me” into the Google search bar. The first step to optimizing your advertising for voice search is to check your Google Ads analytics to see what keywords people are using.

Longer statements beginning with things like “where is there” or “what is” give companies a clue that this was a voice search. Also, it is important to note that if you see a lot of searches beginning with “Alexa,” that Alexa uses Bing for searches. If you are only using Google Ads, then you are losing out on all of those Alexa customers.

Once you have determined the number of voice searches you are getting, consider adding in keywords to your list that are “long tail” in nature to fit the voice searches. For example, adding a keyword phrase such as “who does restoration services near me” might be a good way to attract those voice searching customers.

There is so much involved in Google advertising, it can seem overwhelming at first. The most important thing to understand is that the opportunity for return on investment due to conversions from these ads will be beneficial to driving business. Determine your budget, start putting those ads together, and watch as business blossoms.

Sonny Ahuja, a certified Google Partner, is an online lead-generation expert who specializes in high-conversion responsive websites, optimized mobile sites, Google Ads, and SEO. He mainly helps remodeling, disaster restoration, and cleaning companies get more leads by developing their online lead-generation systems. Visit www.killitonline.com for more from Ahuja.