In this guide
- Review search terms weekly and add negatives. Pay only for relevant clicks.
- Match ads to intent and send traffic to matching landing pages.
- Give smart bidding clean conversion data, ideally with value and qualified stages.
PPC accounts get worse in small ways: broad terms drift, ad copy ages, landing pages stop matching, and the conversion signal gets noisy. Improvement is mostly maintenance done well. This page gives a practical sequence for search campaigns that also applies to other PPC platforms. See improve Google Ads performance and Google Ads conversion tracking.
1. Check the signal first
Smart bidding optimises for the conversions you report. Make sure they are correct: one primary conversion per outcome, values sent, duplicates avoided, offline stages imported for leads. See Google Ads conversion tracking and offline conversions. If the signal is wrong, tuning anything else is a waste.
3 things to remember
Scroll and the points stack up.
Review search terms weekly and add negatives. Pay only for relevant clicks.
Match ads to intent and send traffic to matching landing pages.
Give smart bidding clean conversion data, ideally with value and qualified stages.
2. Search terms and negatives
- Review the search terms report weekly.
- Add irrelevant terms as negatives. Use phrase and exact negatives to avoid over-blocking.
- Create shared negative lists for jobs, free, DIY and other off-intent terms.
- Promote converting terms to exact or phrase match with their own ad groups.
3. Structure
| Principle | Practice |
|---|---|
| Group by intent | Separate high-intent, research and brand terms |
| Keep themes tight | Ad copy and landing page should mirror the keyword theme |
| Use enough volume | Too many tiny campaigns starve smart bidding |
Runs on your domain, anywhere
Your tracking runs on your own domain, so a visit from any country is handled the same way.
4. Ads
- Test several headlines and descriptions. Keep the strongest and replace the weakest.
- Put the keyword and a clear benefit in the first headline.
- Use assets: sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, images where available.
5. Landing pages
- One page per intent, with the same message as the ad.
- Fast on mobile.
- A single clear action.
- Trust signals: reviews, guarantees, delivery information.
6. Bidding and budget
- Use targets that match your margin. See ROAS vs POAS.
- Allow learning time after changes: about two weeks.
- Avoid frequent target changes.
- Move budget to the campaigns with the best profit per dollar.
7. Audiences
- Add customer lists as signals and exclusions. See customer lists in Google Ads.
- Use remarketing lists, mindful of consent.
A weekly routine
- Check conversions against your store.
- Review search terms and add negatives.
- Review ad performance and replace the weakest.
- Check landing page speed and errors.
- Note budget moves and results.
A realistic example
A local services company runs search campaigns for emergency repairs. Cost per lead is acceptable but most leads are people asking for free quotes outside the service area. The team adds location and intent negatives, rewrites the ad to state the service area and price range, and changes the landing page headline to match. It also sends qualified leads, not all form fills, as the primary conversion. After three weeks the number of leads falls by a third, the number of qualified leads rises and cost per qualified lead drops noticeably. The changes were all small and boring. Together they moved the account from buying leads to buying customers.
Ask Ari instead of digging through reports
Ari reads your tracking and ad data and answers in plain words.
Frequently asked questions
How do I improve PPC performance?
Fix conversion tracking, review search terms, match ads and landing pages to intent, set targets from margin and test steadily.
How often should I review search terms?
Weekly for active accounts.
Why does conversion data matter?
Smart bidding learns from it. Wrong data leads to wrong bidding.
How long should I wait after changes?
About two weeks for bidding to settle.
Should I use customer lists?
Yes, as signals and exclusions, with consent.
Do I need spreadsheets to read my results?
No. Once tracking is live, the Open Tracked analytics shows spend, revenue, ROAS and profit, and you can ask Ari, the built-in AI assistant, questions about your own numbers in plain words. Ari's allowance depends on your analytics plan.
Is Open Tracked different from Open Track or Open Space Track?
No. Open Tracked is the official name of our server-side tracking platform, and the website is opentracked.io. Many people search for it as Open Track, OpenTrack or Open Space Track. All of them lead to the same product: server-side Google Tag Manager hosting, first-party analytics and a CRM pipeline.
Fix your tracking at the source
Open Tracked hosts your server-side Tag Manager, keeps first-party cookies alive and shows what each ad is really worth.
The Open Tracked team
We build Open Tracked: server-side tracking hosting, analytics and the tools around them, for stores that spend on ads. Questions about this guide, or an idea for the next one?
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