Managing one’s pay per click (PPC) account is extremely important if you want to actually see results in the form of increased traffic and visibility. Having a paid search campaign is not for everyone, but once you decide that it is worth putting your money into, you need to constantly pay attention to it or risk losing a lot of money.
For beginners, PPC management can be quite daunting, but they should know that even seasoned veterans can have trouble keeping up with the changes. If your PPC account is just one of many various advertising campaigns that you have under your belt, you could use a few tips on good management.
Avoiding High-End Pay Per Click
You should decide before or even during your PPC campaign whether you are spending much more than your company can actually afford on paid clicks. For lower spending on PPC, shift your attention to the second tier bids of pay per click services rather than the largest, high-end ones. If you have signed up with Google AdWords without any clue on what you are doing, you are probably draining your resources without attaining any converted visitors. Targeting is more important.
Watch Your Conversion Rates
Keep an eye on your visitor statistics. You can determine how your conversion rate is doing by going through analytics reports and figuring out how many clicks result in a single sale for you; this can be termed your conversion rate. The rate will help determine how much should be going out of your pocket into your pay per click. If it is costing you more per click than the value of your average sale according to your conversion rate, step back and reevaluate your campaign. You definitely aren’t working in the direction of the ‘low spend’ part of your goal.
Using Google AdWords? Improve Quality Score
Let’s say you are running pay per click through Google but want to lower spending and maximize results. When bidding on a set of keywords, you are competing against other websites who are somehow getting more exposure than you with less payment. If you want to lower your spending but keep the traffic volume high, think about improving the landing pages that are reached through the clicks. With better quality pages, Google will give you a higher quality score, and you will be able to pay less per click with better page placement!
1. Build Links For Optimal Searching
Adjust your pages according to how you would in an SEO campaign with focus on organic searches. Your landing page in AdWords needs a number of strong pings and backlinks for better quality. Insert high volume keywords that are part of your AdWords campaign into the main text on your page in a natural flow with the content.
2. Internal Linking
It is important for your PPC landing page to be properly linked and integrated with the rest of your main website. This will significantly increase your quality score. If it is not of benefit to link all your pages into the main site, but you don’t want the landing to be hanging out in space either, consider building a site-map. This will help index all your pages and you can submit it to search engines. Check on it frequently for broken links or changed URLs.
3. See What Google Has To Say About You
Use the keywords tool in AdWords to see how relevant your landing page is considered according to your chosen keywords. Having a clearer idea in mind on this front will help you work on your linked page more for better quality scores and eventual reduced costs.
Spread Out Your Ad Groups
Bundling all your keywords into one or two groups to create “high density” is definitely the wrong way to go. You need to spend some time sorting through your keywords and creating smaller, definable groups that are tight-knit and thus, more effective. This will also simplify the management of your account when you do this in the initial stages. The statistics you receive for each group will help keep your campaigns focused and you will be able to easily see which campaign and keyword group is doing better, and which may need some TLC. This is another way to boost your Google AdWords quality score. Remember, a higher score means lower CPC.
Targeted Campaigns: Employ Negative Keywords
Since PPC is all about gaining converted visitors, it is detrimental for your company’s marketing strategies if you are getting dozens of clicks that are not from your target audience. You would be paying for visitors who are not interested in your company or product. One way to improve traffic relevance to your website is to employ negative keywords in your lists. These keywords are the ones that don’t describe your website services, so that when someone types it in, your site will not achieve page placement. This ensures a higher conversion ratio and more accurate traffic statistics.
Conduct Controlled Ad Testing
Without periodically testing your advertisements, you will be a poor judge of the efficacy of your PPC marketing strategies and will not be able to create more leads and sales. This is a delicate process, however, so you need to manage your tests well. Create a strict and clear schedule detailing which ad will be tested at what time so that you can keep the other ads running and you won’t lose out on performance. It is also useful if you create a copy of the ad to help with keeping performance consistent during the testing periods.
Seek Helpful Tools
PPC management can be better done when you seek the assistance of tools which are affordable for you. There are managing programs like PPC Management for Firefox that can help you get through your campaigns and their data in a more efficient manner. You can also seek the services of an organization that is specifically designed to do your PPC management for you. Working with such a company can boost your PPC marketing and lead to better results faster than you could have created alone.
Scott Heron is a freelance SEO based in Edinburgh. For more free advice you can follow him on Google +.
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