Pay-per-click advertising is an effective way for corporations to grow their businesses. Whether or not they are selling products online or attempting to generate leads for services, that is least expensive and usually generates a favorable return on investment.

Google AdWords is the leader in paid search advertising, with an 80 percent market share within the U.S. While there are other PPC platforms, advertisers seeking maximum reach should include Google AdWords of their PPC marketing mix.

But Google doesn’t make it easy for novice advertisers. There are several default campaign settings which can negatively impact your results — and a few of them are obscure, or maybe hidden.

Here are four AdWords campaign settings which could work against you.

Standard Campaigns

To Google’s credit, it’s simple for brand new advertisers to start. Just navigate to AdWords.com and create an account. From there you can begin building your first campaign. While you click “create your first campaign,” it truly is what you spot.

A “Standard” campaign is the default and is pre-selected. “Standard” sounds fine, right? Indeed, Google makes it appear as if here is best for many advertisers.

However, Standard campaigns don’t include the choice to include many campaign best practices.

This is where the campaign settings page ends with Standard campaigns.

Compare that to the tip of the page for the alternative campaign type option, “All features.”

You’ll see “Advanced Settings” that weren’t available inside the standard campaign option. Many of the features missing from standard campaigns are complicated and aren’t recommended for brand new advertisers.

But a vital feature missing from standard campaigns is the power to settle on ad rotation.

Ad Rotation

Google’s default ad rotation choice is “optimize for clicks.” Meaning that Google will rotate your ad variations evenly for a quick amount of time, after which will start showing the ad with the better click rate more frequently.

To novice advertisers, this appears like an excellent thing — needless to say you could generate more clicks. But clicks don’t necessarily translate to conversions. Site traffic is never the important thing goal for PPC advertisers. Rather, the goal is sales or leads. And simply because an ad is generating traffic doesn’t mean it’s generating leads. Advertisers have to be measuring conversions, either with web analytics or with AdWords conversion tracking, and may optimize their campaigns in line with ads which are converting the neatest, irrespective of click rate.

To do that, advertisers should select the choice to “rotate evenly” or “rotate indefinitely.” Google discourages this selection — that’s why it’s not available with the normal setting.

In the picture below, Google says that optimizing for clicks is the “ideal setting for many advertisers.” In fact, it’s the best setting for Google, but not for many advertisers. Google also discourages advertisers from choosing “rotate evenly” with a warning that ads won’t perform besides.

Don’t fall for these roadblocks. Choose “All Features” in campaign settings, after which choose either “rotate evenly” or “rotate indefinitely,” and use conversion data to make a decision the ads which might be achieving your marketing goals.

Geotargeting and Language Settings

Geotargeting and language settings are other standard campaign settings that work against you.

One of the good stuff about PPC is the power to settle on the geolocations during which your ad will display, and the languages searchers should be using. It offers significant control for advertisers.

However, the default location for a normal campaign is the U.S. and Canada, and the default language is both English and French.

If your customers can be found in both the U.S. and Canada, that is fine. But many advertisers don’t sell to both countries. Similarly, it’s a best practice to create separate campaigns by language. So to be able to target both English and French, you’re creating two different campaigns as opposed to lumping them together like they’re by default with standard campaigns.

Change the position to the rustic you ought to target, and judge the best language — either English or French, but not both.

Bid Strategy

One of the scarier default campaign settings is the bid strategy setting, seen below.

Google desires to set your bids. Have you ever heard the expression “the fox is guarding the hen house?”

First of all, as mentioned earlier, your goal shouldn’t be to maximise clicks — it can be to maximise conversions. Second, why would you trust Google along with your money? PPC offers nearly unparalleled control for advertisers — don’t hand it over to Google to control your bids. Instead, select “I’ll manually set my bids” and choose what makes probably the most sense for you and your online business.

Remember, Google AdWords is a good technique to grow your small business. But it’s also the way in which that Google makes money. By adjusting your campaign settings, you’ll be sure that both you and Google cash in on AdWords.