Learn how to subtract additional PPC advert knowledge

We're losing PPC ad data.

While almost all terms used to be displayed, Google AdWords only offers certain keywords that meet a certain volume threshold. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) only contains limited data from European traffic, and further restrictions may be in preparation.

This lack of visibility makes it harder to know what works and what doesn't in PPC. Whether you want more conversions, more organic traffic, or a surge in referrals, your PPC data should tell you whether you're on the right track or need to make adjustments.

How can you overcome these limitations and overcome limited data?

Do more with less: How to deal with Google's changing data transparency

More than 80% of US consumers are concerned about their data being shared. The EU has strict laws in place about what information websites can collect – and what they can do with that information.

With this in mind, it's easy to see why Google and other organizations are restricting data access.

The problem is, data is critical to understanding how effective your PPC and SEO campaigns are.

What terms attracted most users? Where can people find your website? These answers are much less obvious today than they were before.

So what are you doing? Throw in the towel, give up PPC ads?

I mean you could.

Or you can adjust to the new normal and find ways to bypass the current limitations.

Here's the thing: PPC ad data becomes less clear over time. You could wait, use what you have now, and hope for the best.

You might also find workarounds to help now so you are in a better position for the months (and years) to come.

Today I'm going to share several methods that you can use to find the data you need to target effectively and possibly make up for the lack of information created by the limitations of PPC ad data.

Use tools to get more data

Google wants to give you less data – but you're not the only sheriff in town. There are plenty of other places where PPC data can be found. All you have to do is dig a little.

Below are a few tools you can use to get more data, including some of the key features and the data you can find.

Ubersuggest

When you need reliable keyword data, our Ubersuggest platform is an all-in-one tool that you can use to research individual keywords, track competitors and adjust your PPC strategy accordingly.

Here's how to use Ubersuggest to uncover PPC data.

Go to Ubersuggest and enter your url, a competitor, or a keyword that you want to research. In this example the term "PPC data" is used.

Take a look at the left sidebar. You will see a keyword overview, keyword ideas, content ideas, competitor reports and SEO Explorer.

We'll start with the keyword ideas.

Ubersuggest offers 36 keyword ideas, 18 related terms, and questions that we might use in search engine optimization or address in our ads – these could be important weak spots.

When you focus on a specific term, it shows Search Volume, Cost Per Click, Paid Difficulty, and SEO Difficulty.

As you can see, PPC data has fairly low search volume, CPC volume, and paid difficulty. This is likely because people who searched "What is PPC data?" Search, probably not converting. This is not an ideal term for paid ads.

However, if you were to see the same data for a high intent keyword like "Buy SEO Course", it would be a great opportunity.

Other features of Ubersuggest are:

• Top SEO Pages Reports
• Domain overviews
• Backlink data
• Content ideas

Individual plans start at just $ 29 a month, but you can view limited dates for free.

SpyFu

SpyFu is an Arizona-based search analytics company founded in 2005. So you have been around a few times. For $ 33 a month, you can get unlimited SEO and PPC data, keyword research, and competitive analysis tools.

Competitive analysis is worth its core offering and the cost alone.

With this tool, you can see which page types your competitors are ranking with, where they lost the ranking, which top keywords are available today and much more.

This data is useful data for search engine optimization, but can also serve as a guide for your PPC campaign. And they have many other features that are useful for PPC including:

• The most successful paid keywords
• AdWords history
• Top AdWords buy recommendations
• PPC keyword grouper
• Ad history and ad templates
• PPC keyword research and suggestions

Google Trends

You could think of Google Trends for blog post ideas, but it can also be used for PPC information. Google Trends analyzes the most common searches in different geographic areas and over time.

Want to know what the people of Florida were looking for in October 2020? Google Trends will tell you.

However, you may not know it as well as a PPC tool.

You can use Google Trends to identify:

• Valuable PPC Keywords
• Historical popularity
• Keyword Search Trends

You can use Google Trends for keyword expansion by finding keywords related to those already used. Then use these terms in your A / B tests or to improve relevance.

Another area where Google Trends can help is in budgeting. You can compare search volume from year to year and view monthly or seasonal peaks for key terms. You can then adjust your ad budget accordingly.

For example, the search for “gift guides” peaks in December. Spending a lot of ad budget in June on ads promoting a gift guide wouldn't make very good sense.

Google Trends is also a great resource for geographic targeting because you can see the exact terms that are used in specific areas. For example, terms like “pool cleaning” are likely to be more common in Florida and Arizona than in Alaska.

Geographical areas can affect words used when searching for certain things. For example, people in New England might use a different word to talk about carbonated drinks than people in Georgia.

AdWords Grader Plus

WordStream's free tool allows you to compare how well your ads are doing against the competition.

WordStream analyzed over $ 3 million in Google Ads spend to benchmark and find the most accurate KPIs.

A "performance tracker" is also provided to help you track and measure the performance of your Google ads over time so you can see which metrics are increasing and which are decreasing.

Additional features include:

• PPC Mobile Readiness Score
• Quality score tracking
• Track and calculate wasted PPC spend

The best part is that this PPC audit is free and you can have it in your hands in about five minutes.

Follow search query patterns instead of individual search terms

As a marketer, you are likely familiar with individual search terms. However, Google's announcement may mean that search queries are best highlighted.

What is the difference? Instead of focusing on a single word, you want to focus on patterns or real-world queries from searchers. Then target your ads to it.

How is this different from long-tail keywords? Long-tail keywords are phrases that contain key terms, such as: B. "Buy warm-up socks".

Search query patterns go a step further and help you understand the underlying reasons for doing these searches so that you can use the same language in your ads.

If we enter "warm socks" in Ubersuggest, we get the following:

What do these searches tell you? People want to keep their feet warm while they run. This is the search query pattern.

As Kacie Gaudiose of Search Engine Journal writes, search query patterns can help:

• Highlight trends
• Discover new nuances in search behavior
• Rate the opportunities in the category you have chosen
• Understand intent better

Gaudiose adds:

From these patterns, we can further categorize our queries into areas of interest that are specific to our target users. With enough data, this categorization helps us create detailed topics and subtopics that we know will be of interest to our seekers.

Get the most out of incomplete data

You may have heard the term “incomplete data” before. However, you may not be sure of the exact definition. It's dates that aren't perfect, right? Sure – but it goes a little deeper.

Here is a definition from data scientist Lewis Beischer:

Imperfect data is a common problem where extracting and making decisions about information is a very difficult task because certain records have errors and are not exactly what you would like them to be.

Common defects can be:

• Incomplete records
• Corrupted data
• Biased information
• A lack of stability
• Fraudulent data

That probably sounds pretty familiar. What are you doing about it

The first thing to remember is that there is no such thing as perfect dates.

Beischer suggests using the following keys to overcome incomplete data:

• Monitoring failure
• Standardize your processes
• Checking the accuracy
• Use a third-party provider to analyze, cleanse, and compile data
• Introduction to machine learning

In the PPC world, this means aggregating data from multiple tools, deleting duplicate data, and looking for patterns. (Pivot tables are your friend here.) How does your performance change over time? How does search volume affect your cost per click?

Incomplete data is retained. It's up to you whether you dig into the data and learn how it works, or just guess what might work. (And waste thousands of dollars until you find out.)

Modify your reports

Although the visibility of PPC ad data is reduced, you can still customize your Google Search Terms report to suit your needs. In this way, you can determine which search terms triggered your advertising.

You can access this feature from your Google Ads dashboard. Click Reports, then choose Predefined Reports (Dimensions)> Basic> Search Terms.

Then you can see a little more details:

Understanding and using the Google Quality Score metric

As Brad Smith clarifies in a Hootsuite post, Google's Quality Score is critical to marketers because it:

• Increases ad ranking
• Lower cost-per-clicks (CPCs)
• Reduces the cost per action

But what is it exactly? In Google's own words, the quality factor is:

“An estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can translate into lower prices and better ad positions. "

Google rates your quality score between one and ten. Google's Quality Score has three factors:

• relevance
• Landing page experience
• Expected click-through rate

Improvement of the quality factor = better optimized PPC campaigns. Now, I could write a whole post on how to improve your Quality Score (and I did), but here are a few tips to get you started:

• Increase your mobile performance
• Use A / B tests on titles, images and copies – but only one at a time
• Optimize landing pages and make sure they use the same language as your ads.

Conclusion

Limited data is nothing new. We've looked at this a long time ago since Google introduced "Not Served". The question is no longer "How can I replace this data?" but "how can I circumvent the increasingly limited amount of data that is available to me?"

Consumer privacy concerns remain high, and governments around the world are blocking marketers' access to a lot of data that we have relied on over the years.

So what are you going to do about it?

The above methods can help fill in the gaps in PPC ad data and create targeted campaigns to keep those conversions going.

How has limited PPC ad data affected your campaigns? What strategies are you using to replace this data?

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