Rick Hecker - Google Ads Optimization & PPC Strategy Blog

Three brown cardboard boxes on a wooden surface, beside a faded patch where similar boxes seem to have stood, and a clipboard with an empty four-item checklist and a pencil.

Cascader Answers

Your account shrank after switching to profit bidding. Should you switch back?

A smaller account after moving to profit bidding isn't proof the move failed. Four checks, worked through on a constructed two-product store, show what shrank it and whether switching back would fix anything.

Abstract illustration: one horizontal scale with three markers that don't line up, a dashed line, a green dot and an amber diamond, plus a simple clock outline.

Google Ads

Target CPA and Target ROAS: How to Choose, Change and Judge a Google Ads Target When the Numbers Disagree

For anyone whose Google Ads targets decide real spend, across Search, Shopping and Performance Max: price a Target CPA or ROAS from your margins or lead economics, judge it on matured data, pace changes to the conversion clock, and find what limits a target that stopped working.

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Cascader Answers

What Moves a Stuck Quality Score (and When to Stop Trying)

Low Quality Scores tempt bid increases, rebuilds and pauses. The score itself can't tell you which one a keyword deserves. Its three components and its cost per conversion can.

Six terracotta pots of young seedlings on a wooden shelf, each linked by a clear curved tube to a copper pipe on a sage-green wall, with a red wheel valve at the pipe's left end.

Cascader Answers

I brought back a long-idle Google Ads account. Everything is eligible, but it's held at a $0 daily limit. Can I get it lifted sooner?

Campaign edits can't lift a $0 account-level limit on a brought-back Google Ads account. Clear what's yours, ask support one precise question, and plan the launch around a date nobody will give you.

Two stacks of blank white cards on a wooden desk, one wooden ruler laid across both, a tray holding a few cards, and two loose cards beside it

Cascader Answers

Should a lead-gen client test ChatGPT ads, and how do you judge the result against Google Ads?

Other advertisers' results with ChatGPT ads can't set the bar for your client's test. The client's own Google cost per qualified lead, counted the same way, can.

A shredder with a DISMISS button consumes a sheet labeled RECOMMENDATIONS. Its paper strips form a 100% sculpture on a plinth labeled OPTIMIZATION SCORE.

100% Optimization Score

Flat illustration of a blue path blocked by six barred gates, with a side path to a door that a thick amber line ties back to the main path.

Cascader Lists

Six Google Ads account gates where the obvious fix makes things worse

Passkey and login prompts, account-type verification, rejected card uploads, manager unlinks and identity-reuse suspensions: for each gate, the route Google documents where there is one, and the workaround that backfires.

Waiting for Humanity

Waiting for humanity to search for it.

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Cascader Answers

When jobs range from small repairs to big replacements, what should Google Ads bid toward?

Counting enquiries, quotes or booked jobs tells Google every win is the same size. Here's which stage to bid on, how to value each quote, and the order to change things in while the campaign is losing money.

Enhance

Enhance.

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Cascader Answers

Most of my Google Ads spend is in "Other search terms." What can I still control?

The searches are hidden; the keywords that bought them aren't. A per-keyword method for small exact-and-phrase Search campaigns, worked through one constructed account.

Three panels: a LOW SEARCH VOLUME keyword gets higher bids, new ads, then a luxury room. “Lovely. Is anyone searching yet?” Its optimizer, now a waiter, asks, “Would you like sparkling?”

The Keyword Concierge

Would you like sparkling?