Fix Low Traffic Volumes – Here Are 10 Ways On How To Do It!

We know it gets quite frustrating when your campaigns have been running well for a while and then you notice that your campaigns have been decreasing the volume gradually, or your higher-up asks you to increase the volumes. Some of these suggestions can be applied to multiple campaigns, some of them are quite unique to specific campaign types. But here are 10 different ways to help you fix low traffic volumes.

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Observe The Trends & Seasonalities

Before making any changes to the campaigns it’s useful to check out the trends and compare the data to previous periods. Especially if you have campaigns that have been running for a few years now, you can easily look back at the same period in the past year. This can lead to findings of occurring trends that are happening periodically that can give a perfect explanation to the shifts in traffic volumes.

Monitor Competition & Impression Share

In the case where you don’t have much data in your campaigns, you can use Google Trends to get estimated data for longer time frames. It could also be that the drop in traffic can be explained by new competitors arriving on the market. Have a look at your Auction Insights to identify if a new player has joined the game, to do the same you can refer to other external tools such as SEMrush, SimilarWeb, or Ahrefs.

Use Locations, Time Schedule, Devices & Bid Adjustments

These campaign settings can be a big reason for the decrease in traffic. Limiting them too much will inevitably translate into low traffic volumes. Every business is different, runs in different areas and during different times of the day or week, but if you can, check to see what are the options to open these settings up as much as possible. Increasing the target location or extending the time schedule can help you boost the volumes. Also, be wary of the changes you make, adding a location as excluded by mistake can have an important impact on your volumes. Finally, if you are running manual strategy or Max Clicks, have a look at your bid adjustments, they may be impacting also your volumes.

Check Your Audience Settings

This is applicable to almost all of the campaigns, from Search Campaigns to Display and Youtube. When implementing a new audience, be clear on what option you chose. Google will give you the choice to either select “targetting” or “observation”. Observation or targeting, which one to choose? If it’s an audience you’d only like to observe and not target then make sure to select observe. Selecting “target” tells the campaign to specifically target the people within that audience that meet the predefined criteria. This can limit the overall traffic the campaign can receive, but even if you meant to target a given audience, the criteria may be too narrow and specific which would limit the overall volume that could potentially be reached (applicable also in Facebook Ads). For more details check out our in-depth article on audiences in Google Ads.

Keep Your Bidding Strategy Optimized

Another reason why your campaign may be limited in volume is the strategy itself. Especially in the case of Target CPA and Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). If your campaign is signaling under Status, “Limited by Strategy” then most likely is because the defined tCPA or tROAS is too limited. This can also happen with a Max Clicks strategy when the defined Max CPC is too small. Loosening up these targets, within the limits of possibility that is, can help you increase the volumes. Usually, a change of 10-15% is the most recommended and safest as bigger changes than that can have an important impact on the algorithm and disrupt it to a point where it goes back to learning mode. You can also test out a more open strategy like Max Conversions or Max Conversions Value, but be sure that you don’t have specific targets to achieve like CPA or ROAS. To find out which strategy best fits your needs, check out our detailed article on the different bidding strategies in Google ads.

Improve Your Ads & Extensions

This is quite a simple one that many overlooks. Check your ads, within each ad group. Make sure that you follow the 2+1 rule. Basically, it’s best practice to have one Responsive Ad and two Standard Ads. So if you’re missing especially Responsive Ads, it’s highly recommended to add them right away as they can help generate more clicks and volumes. Check also your extensions, if you don’t have a sufficient amount, most probably google will send you recommendations to add more extensions to your ads as they help improve the CTR and also bring more volume. Another setting in the campaigns you may want to check is the “Ad Rotation”. Setting it to “Optimize: Prefer best performing ads” may also help you show your best ads which would help drive more traffic by increasing the CTR. Another recommendation is to keep an eye on your “ad strength”. You can add this column and try to keep your ad strength at Good or Excellent if possible.

Another powerful but quite hidden tool to help you better assess the performance of your ads is the Asset report. It gives insight into the performance of each individual asset of your ads such as headlines, descriptions, pictures, and videos. To learn more about it check out our article on the assets report for responsive ads.

Revisit Your Keywords Selection & Keyword Types

This one mainly applies to Search Campaigns as they mainly focus on targeting keywords and therefore the type of keywords you pick plays an important role. If you are using exclusively Phrase Match keywords or Exact match keywords then sooner or later your campaign will have the status “Limited by Search Volume”. In which case the recommendation by Google will be to add broad match keywords to open up the volume. We recommend going slow and testing broad keywords one by one. Adding broad keywords will not only help with increasing the volumes but also give room to the algorithm to learn what works the best and even improve the performance of your campaigns. If you are in need of new keywords you can turn to the Search Terms Report for new ideas and variations and the Keyword Planner is your best friend. You can check out our article on how to get the most out of the Keyword Planner Tool. Make sure to use it as much as possible, it’s a great tool to help you find new keywords and explore new worlds.

Keep Your Google Merchant Center Up To Date & Healthy

If you are running shopping campaigns and experiencing low volumes this one is for you. Check your Google Merchant Center (GMC) and look if you have any disapproved products. We recommend that you do this regularly because Google checks your product feed and the moment something has changed on the page it could have an impact on your products as well and get them disapproved. Make sure all your products are approved and running smoothly, if you have any disapproved ones fixing them will help you regain your traffic volumes.

Test Out Different Types of Campaigns

If you have done everything well, your campaigns are running great but you are still looking for more volumes there are a few more things you can try out. If you haven’t already you can test out campaigns such as Discovery Campaign or even Performance Max Campaign which is currently in beta. These campaigns take a more global approach and aim to bring a lot of traffic, build brand awareness and also generate conversions. In simple terms, they are a 3 in 1. Search, Display, and Youtube all in one and they can be a great way to bring new traffic. Not so much recommended from our side, but if you are really in need of more volume, you can try out Dynamic Search Ads. These types of campaigns are fully autonomous, they are very personalized and they adjust to each customer. The way they work is they crawl your website and they take care of practically everything except for the descriptions, which you have to provide. There are some benefits to creating Dynamic Ads and Ad Groups, but unavoidably there are some things you should be careful about.

Expand Your Traffic Sources

Another thing you can test out is expanding into different search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. The second best tool which also shows ads to the previously mentioned search engines is Microsoft Ads. Finally, if you haven’t already and you have the resources and authority to do so, you can also branch out to different traffic sources like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, podcasts, or even more traditional ones like radio and TV.

BONUS

• If you are running Search Campaigns, in the settings of your campaigns, check your “Networks”. Enabling Search partners and Display Network will help you generate more traffic. The only downside of this is the quality. Don’t expect crazy performance from these networks.
• Also in the campaign settings, check your Language Targeting. If you can select more languages than one, make sure to do so, it can help you show your ads to many more people.
• A very last option to consider is bidding on a competitor’s name. This can be also a tremendous source of traffic, but be extremely careful because it can easily backfire. The competitor, especially if a bigger one can start bidding on your brand name, and you’ve essentially created a bidding war where CPC and costs can quickly skyrocket.

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We hope these suggestions have helped you identify where your campaigns are blocking, how to approach it, and how to increase your traffic volumes.