What's the best way to optimise search campaign?

Optimising a Google Search campaign isn't a one-time checklist — it's an ongoing discipline that separates accounts generating real ROI from those quietly burning budget. After managing over $350M in Google Ads spend across e-commerce, lead gen, and retail clients, I can tell you the practitioners who win consistently are the ones who treat optimisation as a system, not a series of random tweaks. Whether you're running Search alongside Performance Max or operating standalone campaigns, the fundamentals are the same: structure, signals, and relentless iteration.

Why Search Campaign Optimisation Is More Critical Than Ever

A common question in the r/PPC community is how to properly optimise Search campaigns — and it comes up constantly because the landscape has fundamentally shifted. Google's automation has taken over more of the "what to show" decision, but that doesn't make your input less important. It makes the quality of your input more important.

Smart Bidding and broad match keywords mean Google now has enormous latitude in deciding when and how your ads appear. If your account structure, conversion tracking, and signals are weak, the algorithm fills the gaps with guesswork — and you pay for it. When those foundations are solid, automation genuinely amplifies your results.

1. Lock Down Your Conversion Tracking First

Before you touch keywords, bids, or ad copy, your conversion tracking needs to be airtight. This is the single most impactful thing you can do, and it's the step most practitioners either skip or get half-right.

What "Correct" Conversion Tracking Actually Looks Like

• Primary conversions should reflect real business value — purchases, qualified leads, phone calls with meaningful duration (I typically use 60+ seconds as a threshold)
• Micro-conversions (page views, scroll depth, form starts) should be set as secondary conversions or observation-only — never as primary bidding signals
• Use enhanced conversions wherever possible; in my experience, this recovers 10–20% of conversions that would otherwise be lost to cookie restrictions
• Implement Google Tag Manager with server-side tagging for high-value accounts to future-proof against browser privacy changes
• Audit for duplicate conversion counting — a purchase being counted 2–3x is more common than you'd think and destroys bidding accuracy

Conversion Volume Thresholds Matter

For Target CPA or Target ROAS bidding to function properly, Google's general guidance is 30–50 conversions per month at the campaign level. In practice, I've seen campaigns perform well with as few as 15–20 monthly conversions when the data is clean and consistent. Below that threshold, consider Maximise Conversions (without a target) while you build volume, or consolidate campaigns to pool signals.

2. Keyword Strategy: Intent Layers and Match Type Architecture

As practitioners often discuss, keyword strategy in 2024–2025 looks very different from even two years ago. Broad match + Smart Bidding is no longer the cop-out it once was — in the right conditions, it genuinely outperforms aggressive exact match segmentation. But "the right conditions" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

The Match Type Framework I Use

High-Intent Keywords for Search + PMax Setups

If you're running Performance Max alongside Search — which is increasingly common in e-commerce — the community discussion around this is spot on: focus your Search campaigns on high-intent keywords that drive conversions, particularly branded terms and bottom-of-funnel queries. PMax will cover broad discovery and remarketing territory. Your Search campaign's job is to own the moments where purchase intent is explicit.

Practical implementation:

1. Identify your top 20% of keywords by revenue contribution over the past 90 days
2. Ensure those terms are exact or phrase match in your Search campaigns
3. Use campaign-level negative keywords to prevent PMax from cannibalising your best Search terms (brand exclusion lists are essential here)
4. Monitor the Search Impression Share for these priority terms — if you're below 80%, you have a bidding or Quality Score problem to address

3. Ad Copy Optimisation: Beyond "Test Everything"

The advice to "A/B test your ads" is correct but incomplete. The more useful framing is: test with a hypothesis, measure what matters, and understand what Google's RSA pinning and asset reporting are actually telling you.

Responsive Search Ad Best Practices

• Aim for "Excellent" ad strength — but understand this is a proxy, not a guarantee of performance. I've seen "Poor" rated ads outperform "Excellent" ones on ROAS
• Pin headlines 1 & 2 strategically: your core value proposition and primary keyword inclusion should be locked in position 1 and 2 respectively
• Write at least 12–13 headlines and 4 descriptions per RSA, covering different angles: price/offer, features, social proof, urgency, and brand
• Review asset performance labels (Best, Good, Low) after 4–6 weeks and replace "Low" performing assets — but only when you have statistically meaningful impressions (>5,000 impressions per asset)

Ad Copy Testing That Actually Moves the Needle

Don't test random headlines — test themes. In my experience, the highest-impact copy tests fall into these categories:

1. Value proposition framing — Price-led vs. quality-led vs. convenience-led messaging
2. Offer specificity — "Save Money" vs. "Save 30% Today" vs. "Free Shipping on Orders Over $50"
3. Call to action style — Transactional ("Buy Now", "Shop Today") vs. informational ("Learn More", "Get a Quote")
4. Social proof — Review count, years in business, customer numbers

4. Bidding Strategy Optimisation

Bidding is where most practitioners either leave significant money on the table or blow through budget unnecessarily. The right strategy depends on your data maturity, campaign goals, and competitive landscape — not on what's trending on PPC forums.

Choosing the Right Bidding Strategy

Setting Realistic Targets

One of the most common bidding mistakes I see is setting Target CPA or Target ROAS goals based on aspirational business targets rather than historical data. If your blended CPA over the past 90 days is $85, setting a tCPA of $40 will cause Google to dramatically restrict your auctions. A better approach:

1. Set your initial tCPA at your actual historical CPA or 10–15% above it
2. Allow 2–4 weeks of learning period without major changes
3. Reduce target incrementally — no more than 10–15% adjustments every 2 weeks
4. Monitor impression share alongside CPA — if both are dropping, your target is too aggressive

5. Audience & Signal Optimisation

Search campaigns aren't just about keywords anymore. Layering audience signals onto your Search campaigns gives you additional levers to adjust bids, personalise messaging, and feed the algorithm better data about who your best customers are.

Audience Layers to Add Immediately

• Remarketing lists (past purchasers, cart abandoners, site visitors) — set as observation initially, then bid up on proven segments
• Customer Match lists — upload your existing customer database; use as a suppression list (exclude recent purchasers from acquisition campaigns) or bid adjustment signal
• Similar Segments — Google's lookalike equivalent; useful for expanding reach while maintaining intent signals
• In-Market Audiences relevant to your product category — layer in observation mode to identify any performance skew before applying bid adjustments

Device & Location Bid Adjustments

Pull a segment report by device and location at least monthly. In most e-commerce accounts I manage, mobile drives 60–70% of clicks but desktop converts at 2–3x the rate. That gap justifies a negative bid adjustment on mobile of 20–40% in many cases — but run the data for your specific account rather than applying industry benchmarks blindly.

6. Account Hygiene & Structural Optimisation

Great campaigns get weighed down by accumulated clutter over time. Paused keywords that were never truly cleaned up, duplicate ad groups, campaign settings that haven't been revisited since launch — these create noise that degrades algorithmic performance.

Monthly Hygiene Checklist

1. Review Search Terms report and add new negatives; promote high-converting queries to exact match keywords
2. Check for keyword cannibalisation across ad groups — overlapping terms split your Quality Score signals
3. Review and update ad scheduling based on performance data (hourly reports over a 30-day window)
4. Audit budget pacing — campaigns capping out early in the day are leaving money on the table; campaigns underspending may have bid or Quality Score issues
5. Check Quality Scores for your top-spend keywords; anything below 5/10 needs investigation (landing page experience, expected CTR, or ad relevance)
6. Review location performance and apply bid adjustments for geographic segments showing strong or weak ROAS

What to Do Next

Search campaign optimisation is a process, not an event. Here's where to start this week:

1. Audit your conversion tracking today. Verify that every primary conversion action reflects real business value, check for duplicate counting, and implement enhanced conversions if you haven't already. Everything downstream depends on this.
2. Run a 90-day Search Terms report and build a comprehensive negative keyword list. Add your highest-converting queries as exact match keywords to strengthen algorithmic signals.
3. Evaluate your bidding strategy against your actual conversion volume. If you're on Target CPA or Target ROAS with fewer than 30 monthly conversions, switch to Maximise Conversions temporarily and focus on volume before reintroducing targets.
4. Layer audiences onto your Search campaigns in observation mode. Run for 30 days, then apply bid adjustments to segments showing >15% CPA difference from your baseline.
5. Establish a recurring optimisation cadence: weekly Search Terms review, monthly performance analysis, quarterly structural audit. Put it in your calendar — consistency beats intensity every time.

The practitioners who consistently get the best results from Search campaigns aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated setups. They're the ones who nail the fundamentals, stay disciplined about data quality, and make incremental, measured improvements over time. That's the entire game.