How to write Google Ads

Google AdWords is divided in 3 customizable parts: the headline, description lines and URLs.

The headline

You are allowed to write up to 25 characters of the most awesome and catchy copy. It appears in colour blue and in a bigger font size than the description lines.

Your goal is to try to write an appealing line that grabs the attention of potential customers. You need to focus on what would your ideal customer be searching for in Google and then perhaps test a few versions to see which one is more effective.

Description lines

These are two lines of text that are displayed one on top of each other or side by side depending on the device that you are using. You can use these lines to complement your headline or to describe what makes you different from your competitors. You have 35 characters to describe this and words such as “best” or “highest rated” tend to give very good results.

If you have a special promotion going on like a free delivery offer, don’t miss the chance to include this here!

URLs

Google AdWords displays one URL in every advert which is normally used for your website address and that must be under 35 characters long. Also, AdWords gives you the option to introduce destination URLs which are intended to take your potential customer to a specific landing page or product page. This gives you the chance to hide ugly URLs as well as to leave the main website link static on the advert for branding purposes.

That said, and now that we know the structure of Google ads, we should move onto the different types of keywords and match types. These are the searches that people make using Google and that you should be writing in your ads. You should be as precise as possible when writing this and put yourself in your customer’s shoes to write exactly what would they be looking for that you can offer.

There are a few match types that tell AdWords which words should be included to trigger your ad:

1. BROAD MATCH

This is the most flexible match type since allows Google to match the words you have chosen as well as its synonyms. This includes suffixes and prefixes added onto your keywords.

This match allows you to benefit of potential searches that look similar to your keywords and to increase your search volume.

If you want to focus more on interested buyers rather than search volume, avoid this type of match since it could bring you irrelevant people who are not really interested in what you can offer.

2. BROAD MATCH MODIFIER

This is one of the most popular match types since will likely bring potential customers who are willing or looking for something that you can offer them.

The more words you include in your keyword the more specific your search becomes. This strategy might give you less volume of people but will bring quality customers with a higher possibility of converting.

The syntax for this match is to add a plus sign in front of the words that need to be included in a search (+keyword+keyword+keyword).

3. PHRASE MATCH

This is a relatively easy match to work with and a mix of the two above. The phrase match will allow you to choose a number of keywords to be included and in the order that you choose with possible prefixes and suffixes around that keywords.

The syntax for this match is to put quotes around your keywords (“Keywords”).

4. EXACT MATCH

This is exactly what its name suggests. AdWords will be matching just and only the exact keywords that you have given. This is a good choice to promote specific product campaigns or for keywords that you know have a high conversion rate.

The syntax for this match is to wrap your keywords or phrases in square brackets ([Keywords]).

5. NEGATIVE MATCH

This tells AdWords to not trigger your ads if there are any of the keywords you have selected as negative. You could use this to avoid users that are still undecided and just looking for information as well as to avoid users looking for this product far away from you if you have a brick and mortar business.

The syntax for this match is to add a minus in front of a keywords (-keyword –keyword -keyword).