Maintaining a Google Ads campaign of any size can be time consuming, and a struggle when you’re a business owner with many other responsibilities on your hand. Every account is different, but below are our suggestions on how to eliminate wasteful spend and make sure you're allocating your time and budget wisely.

Adding negative keywords
A quick way to find negative keywords is to look at your Google Ads search query report, and review your recent matched search queries. This report reveals to you the searches that have been triggering your ads. When reviewing the report, ask yourself if your offer is relevant to the keywords that were searched. If you see any search phrases that don't match your product offering, mark them down and add them as negative keywords. Adding negative keywords will cut wasteful spend by raising your click-through rate and quality score.

Tweaking underperforming broad keywords
Another quick campaign fix that can be made to cut wasteful spend, is tweaking broad keywords that are underperforming. Advertisements on broad keywords often receive many impressions, and if those impressions aren't generating clicks, your declining click-through rate will increase your overall advertising cost. When advertising on broad match keywords, we recommend paying close attention to performance, and controlling their impressions through negative keywords. After tweaking, if the keyword still isn't delivering, consider changing match types or deleting it all together.

Turning your display network off
Save yourself some money by ensuring your ads are showing to Google's search network only, and not to its display network. Your campaigns click-through rate and targeting will be healthier when your ads are showing only to Google searchers that you can actually target. With Google's display network enabled, your ads will be shown to thousands of web surfers who typically aren't even looking to buy anything, and are ultimately harder to convert. If you've got Google's display network enabled, turning it off can quickly and dramatically slash wasteful spend.