Google Ads
Google Ads management that buys intent, not impressions.
Search campaigns built around the moment someone is ready to call, with tracking that proves which keyword produced which booking. Managed from Renton for businesses across King County.
Google Ads works when three things line up: the keywords carry buying intent rather than research intent, the landing page delivers exactly what the ad promised, and every conversion including phone calls is tracked back to the keyword that caused it.
Most underperforming accounts fail on the third. When calls are not tracked, half the return is invisible and the algorithm optimizes toward the wrong outcome.
Where accounts leak money
We inherit a lot of accounts. The same problems appear in most of them.
- Untracked calls. For a local business, the majority of conversions are phone calls. If those calls are not tracked and fed back into Google Ads as conversions, Smart Bidding is optimizing toward form fills that barely happen and ignoring the channel that actually produces revenue.
- Broad match without a negative list. Broad match is usable with tight negatives and conversion data behind it. Without either, it spends the budget on adjacent searches that will never convert. We audit search terms weekly early on, less often once the negative list matures.
- Everything pointed at the homepage. The homepage answers no specific query. A visitor who clicked an ad for water heater repair Renton should land on a page about water heater repair in Renton, with the phone number visible without scrolling.
- Performance Max with no guardrails. PMax will happily consume budget on brand searches you would have won for free and on display placements that convert nothing. It needs asset group discipline, brand exclusions, and honest attribution before it is trustworthy.
- Geographic targeting set to the wrong option. The default includes people interested in your area, not only people in it. For a local service business that is usually wasted budget, and it is a two-click fix.
How we structure an account
Campaigns split by intent and by margin, not by convenience. Your highest-margin service does not share a budget with your loss leader. Brand terms get their own campaign so brand traffic does not flatter the performance of everything else. Geography is segmented when a city performs differently enough to warrant its own bid strategy, and Renton and Bellevue frequently do.
Ad copy is written against the specific query, not the service category, and every campaign has a landing page that matches. Where the site does not have the right page, we build it, which is usually also a page worth having for organic search.
Tracking before spending
No campaign goes live before conversion tracking is verified end to end. That means call tracking with a dynamic number, form submissions firing correctly into GA4 and Google Ads, offline conversion import where the sale closes later, and a defined view of what counts as a qualified lead versus a contact.
The reporting that follows is one number at the top: cost per booked job, by keyword. Impressions, click-through rate, and quality score are diagnostics we use to move that number. They are not the report.
When we tell you not to run ads
If your budget is under roughly $1,000 a month, if your Google Business Profile is unclaimed, or if your site has no page capable of converting the traffic, ads are the wrong first move. In those cases the money does more work in local SEO or on the site itself, and we will say so before taking the engagement.
How it runs
How a campaign gets built.
Account and tracking audit
Existing account structure, wasted spend, search term report, and a full verification of conversion tracking. Nothing launches until tracking is provably correct.
Keyword and intent mapping
Commercial intent terms separated from research terms, negative list built before launch rather than after, and match types chosen deliberately.
Landing pages
Each campaign gets a page that matches its promise. Where one does not exist, we build it, usually a page worth having organically too.
Launch and learn
Conservative bidding while data accumulates, weekly search term review, and negative keyword expansion. Smart Bidding turns on when there is enough conversion data to justify it.
Optimize toward cost per job
Budget shifts toward the keywords and cities producing booked work. Monthly reporting is a read on that number and what we are changing to improve it.
Questions
Straight answers.
What is a reasonable Google Ads budget for a local business in the Seattle area?
For a single-location local business targeting one or two cities, $1,500 to $5,000 a month in ad spend is the range where campaigns have enough data to optimize. Below roughly $1,000 a month you are often better served putting the money into local SEO, because the click volume is too thin for the algorithm to learn from and too thin for you to make confident decisions.
Management fees are typically 10 to 20 percent of spend or a flat monthly fee, and should be quoted separately from the spend itself. An agency that will not separate the two is hiding one inside the other.
Should I run Google Ads or invest in SEO?
Different jobs. Ads buy immediate, controllable volume and stop the day you stop paying. SEO compounds and costs the same whether it sends ten leads or a hundred, but takes months to arrive.
The sequencing that usually works: run ads to generate leads and, more usefully, to learn which keywords actually convert, then use that conversion data to prioritize the SEO roadmap. Ads become a research instrument as well as a channel.
What are Local Services Ads and should I use them?
Local Services Ads sit above the standard search results, carry a Google Guaranteed badge, and bill per lead rather than per click. For eligible categories (home services, legal, real estate, and a growing list) they are frequently the highest-return placement available, because you pay for a contact rather than a visit.
They require background checks, license verification, and insurance documentation, which takes a few weeks. Worth starting early if you are eligible.
Why are my ads getting clicks but no calls?
Usually one of three causes. The keywords are attracting research intent rather than buying intent, which negative keywords and match type discipline fix. The landing page does not match the ad promise, so the visitor arrives, fails to find what the ad said, and leaves. Or the conversion is happening and not being tracked. Calls in particular go uncounted constantly when call tracking is not configured.
We check tracking first, because a campaign that looks broken and is actually just unmeasured is the most common finding.
Want to know what it would take to rank in your market?
Book a free strategy call →