#1 Be relevant

Google always try to serve relevant ads to the consumers and advertisers must always try to do the same. However we’ve seen many times ads that are not so relevant. Here are some examples.

In this “train tickets” query we see that there are flights in the sponsored links. In fact the first 3 ad -texts are totally irrelevant with the user query.

Here we have the query “rent a studio Crete”, for example. However, most of the PPC is about rent a Car. What the rent a car companies can do is to insert the “studios” as a broad negative word.

• CTR of your ad. The biggest component of the quality score
• Relevancy. This is relevancy of the keywords to the ads and users search query
• Landing page quality. Is your landing page relevant to the user search query?

You can actually see this video to learn much more about how ad auction works

#2 Create simple, enticing ads.

Ads need to be simple and enticing. Try different ads, you ran a campaign with this one, run it again with a new one. A great offer--and clever message—will do the miracle. Understanding that “low prices” does not guarantee conversions is important as visitors will also look for a “homely and welcoming stay on their holiday” or a “safe car to rent” for their family and many more other benefits.
Remember, you should not use misleading promotions either way. Visitors will click your ad, you will pay the click but it is very difficult to convert them to customers

#3 Include prices and promotions.

Google says:
The more information about your product that a user can gain from your ad text, the better. For example, if a user sees the price of a product and still clicks the ad, you know they’re interested in a potential purchase at that price. If they don’t like the price, they won’t click your ad, and you save yourself the cost of that click.
Actually, I prefer to give some indication of the price “Discount up to 30%” “Tickets start at 63 euro” etc.  I don’t think that it is possible customers to compare prices from ad texts alone. You can give them an indication to consider the specific product or service among many other requirements/criteria visitors have when choosing your product.

#4 Use a strong call-to-action.

Google says:
Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases are Buy, Purchase, Call today, Order, Browse, Sign up, and Get a quote; while ‘find’ and ’search’ may be accurate verbs, they imply that the user is still in the research mode, and may not encourage the user to perform the action you’d most like them to take.
I disagree with the last sentence. Sometimes the users are in research mode and want ads/landing page/website that will help them find/search easily what they want so it would good to show them how we can help them.

#5 Include one of your keywords in your ad text.

Find the best performing keyword in your ad group and include it in your ad text, especially in the title. Whenever a user types that keyword and sees your ad, the keyword phrase will appear in bold font within your ad on Google. This helps draw the user’s attention to your ad and shows users that your ad relates to their search.
You can also include dynamic title in your ad text and be more relevant to the user query.  The disadvantage of dynamic keyword is that sometimes you have exactly the same titles with many competitors and there is not any differentiation.

#6 Choose the best destination URL.

Review the website you’re advertising and find the specific page that has the information or product described in your ad. If users do not find what is promised as soon as they arrive, they are more likely to leave your website. Be sure that any promotions and particular products mentioned in your ad are visible on your landing page.
I think that most of the times you need a custom landing page to be relevant to the user query and ad text. This can also help you to improve the conversion rate and may also improve you search engine results positions for certain keywords.

#7 Test multiple ads in each ad group.

Experiment with different offers and call-to-action phrases to see what’s most effective for your advertising goals. Our system automatically rotates ads within an ad group and shows the better-performing ad more often.
This is a bit misleading. There are 2 options in the ad delivery. Rotate and Optimise. If you choose to the “Optimise ” option you cannot test your ads because Google use history in the optimization parameters. So, your older ad will always have the majority of the impressions. In practice that means that even if your new ad is better it will always lose to the older ad text.
I propose to use the “Rotate” option in order to test the ad texts and you can periodically test different ad texts for better results too.
Did I forget something ?Yes

#8 Evaluate ads

Keep in mind that you need to concentrate not only on achieving a high CTR but also on the conversion rate; that is, the number of people clicking on your ad and actually converting into a sale.
Clicks are great, but if your traffic doesn’t perform you’re most wanted response (MWR), then you just lost money.
But how you evaluate on ads with slightly different performance and for how long you leave them running and testing them online?

Avinash has an excellent post regarding the use of applying statistics to tell us when an ad’s outcome is statistical significant to confidently predict success. This post will help you understand what is the correct way to choose between ads will surely convert in the future.

#9 Competitive analysis

Put yourself in your customer's shoes and test a couple of your most important keywords in each ad group. What do you see?

• Your ads are customized to target your exact audiences?
• If you were a prospect would you choose your ad text or your competitors’ text?
• Can you find a more creative ad text to differentiate from your competition?

Making an ad text might seem very easy, in the end of the day you can only write 140 letters. However, PPC is very competitive and we should continually improve to have better results.

What do you think? Do you have anything else to ad here in this list?