If you have all your AdWords down but still are not seeing the kind of returns, you would like or if you have set up a new Pay Per Click campaign account and are not getting any impressions. It is a hint you need to do a bit of account troubleshooting. The fact that your ads have not racked up impressions is proof that there is something wrong with your account.
Unfortunately, there can be a plethora of possible reasons why your ads are not working the way they are expected to. However, on the plus side, we have most of these figured out. Hence, one of them will undoubtedly work for you.
Mistakes that may lead to a lower number of impressions
Before moving on to what could be wrong with your PPC account, let’s take a look at the mistakes you need to avoid. If you have done any of these, it is advised that you fix it asap. Since these mistakes usually lead to a lower amount of traffic.
- Create an ad for the cause of creating an advertisement without focusing on the end goal.
- Target the wrong audience, which gives you an increased number of clicks but does not increase the customer base.
- Avoid testing and experimenting with different versions of your ad.
- Choose the wrong amount of audience, i.e. either too broad or too narrow.
- You are not using quality images.
- You are pausing your ad due to the lower number of impressions. The patient is an important trait when it comes to ads.
Account issues that might mess with your ads
If you are new to the world of advertisements and PPC accounts, there is a massive chance that you might not understand how the account works and might not be familiar with how things work. Most common mistakes newbies make which lead to paid ads not working are
- Billing issue: You might have the wrong billing information set up. Make sure it is not expired.
- Ad status: every ad campaign has a status of its own if it says ‘active’ this means your ad is out there however if it says ‘paused’ or ‘removed’ your ad is not working. You might also see other statuses like ‘Limited by budget’, ‘below first page’, ‘Rarely Shown Due To Low-Quality Score’, ‘No/Low Search Volume’, etc. you might want to contact the customer service for this.
- Ad approval: once you submit an ad, it goes through a set wise approval process. If your ad is still in the approval process or is rejected, you will not see any impressions for the ad.
- Ad scheduling: if you are not receiving the proper amount of impressions or traffic on your ad, there is a massive chance that the ad schedule that you have selected is pretty limited. It only reaches the audience for a fraction of the day.
- Target location: this is the part where you choose the geographical area you want to target. If your targeting location is too narrow or if it is set to a location where people are not interested in your ad, you might not get any impressions at all.
- Keywords: Keywords are one of the most critical factors that can make or break an ad campaign. There is a list of negative keywords; if your targeting keywords overlap with the list, you might not get any impressions or your ads whatsoever. So, before sending your ad out, put a lot of thought into finding the right keywords.
- Display network: this refers to the audience that will be viewing your ads. There are a few targeting options when it comes to sending out ads, if you select a few of them, the ad might not reach the audience you are expecting. With lesser targeting options, you get a narrow list of audiences.
- Campaign exclusions: there are a few things like negative keywords that you can exclude from your ad campaign, if you make too many exclusions, the algorithm gets confused which means your ad is not reaching many people.
All the above-mentioned reasons for not getting enough clicks on your ad are related to your account settings. Most of the ad-related issues are solved by looking into the reasons highlighted above.