This guide is general information for Australian service businesses. Account decisions should be based on your own search terms, conversion tracking, margins, service area and sales outcomes.
Clicks prove only that someone chose the ad
A click does not prove that the search was commercially useful, that the visitor was in your service area or that the page answered their question. The diagnosis has to follow the journey from search term to lead handling.
1. Inspect the actual search terms
Keywords are targeting instructions; search terms are what people really typed. Broad matching, missing negatives and ambiguous service names can bring research, employment, DIY and out-of-area traffic into a campaign that appears relevant at keyword level.
2. Confirm location settings
A service business usually wants people physically inside its working area, not everyone who has shown interest in that location. Review both the location option and the geographic report before assuming the targeting is correct.
3. Test every conversion action
Call buttons, phone numbers, forms and thank-you states should all be tested from an ad landing page. A campaign cannot learn from leads that are never recorded, and it can learn the wrong lesson when page views or button taps are counted as completed enquiries.
4–8. Match the page, offer and follow-up
The landing page should repeat the service and location implied by the search, make the next step obvious on mobile and remove unnecessary form fields. Then the business has to answer quickly enough to turn an enquiry into a real opportunity.
- Match one primary service to one clear page goal.
- Show service-area, ownership and pricing information where it reduces uncertainty.
- Use a visible phone option for urgent services.
- Remove weak conversion actions from bidding goals.
- Feed qualified and unqualified lead outcomes back to the campaign manager.