It can be pretty easy to set up a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaign, but getting the most out of your investment takes a bit more work. This latest series of Top 20 tips, from James Parker, senior PPC Consultant at Stream:20, gives you top tips on how to optimise your campaign.
1. There are lots of ways to find key words, so don’t just rely on Google’s keyword suggestion tool to generate new keywords for testing. Use other sources such as log file data or meta search engines (that collect data from all search engines)
2. Keep ad groups tightly defined with all keywords sharing a common theme. This makes the task of writing targeted ad copy that much easier
3. Separate match types – broad and exact – into different ad groups to ensure you protect the quality score of your exact match (converting) terms
4. Get in to the practice of running Google Search Query reports regularly to find the actual search queries that trigger ads and drive conversions
5. Once you have found these converting terms, isolate them on exact match and bid separately from broad. This typically allows you to be more aggressive
6. Regularly remove poor quality keywords that do not generate sales, this will improve your overall quality score by campaign / ad group
7. Attribute value to keywords that begin the conversion process and not just to those keywords that are the last step before conversion
8. Apply any negative keywords ie words you don’t want to be associated with, at ad group level. This is particularly important if you are channelling a majority of spend through broad match keywords
9. Repeat the search term in your ad titles and descriptions where possible. Not only is this best practise, it generally also aids click through rates
10. Use site link ads – individual deep link to specific and relevant content on your site – to improve user experience
11. Make sure you continuously work at improving your keyword quality score, the higher your score the lower your click costs
12. Build highly targeted landing pages relevant to the keyword and ad group themes. These will improve conversion rates and keyword quality score
13. Test new ad copy regularly even if your existing ads are performing well.
14. Regularly audit your competition using spyware tools
15. Optimise content network activity by managing your top performing sites separately – Advertising on other websites not just search once you get conversion data use this to target
16. Switch on google ad words mobile targetingcor at least test search for mobile devices, as it is now becoming a good source of quality traffic
17. If using an agency, confirm what is happening with Yahoo and Bing rebates. They should be passed back to you the client
18. Audit both Yahoo and Bing programs regularly for missing converting terms present on Google. These programs often get neglected due to their relative importance
19. Test the Google content network again, the quality has improved in recent times!
20. Last, but certainly not least, ensure you have set your campaign budgets correctly. You might find keywords that are performing well are coming offline prematurely as budget caps are hit
By James Parker
Senior PPC Consultant
Stream:20
www.stream20.com/
