Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns can completely transform your business by bringing in organic traffic via sponsored advertisements on Google. You can still do it wrong, though.
If you don’t do it right your investment will go waste. Take a look at some of these top mistakes if your PPC campaign isn’t going as well as you’d hoped.
Geographical Targeting
You must use geographical targeting to get the most out of your investment. If your ad appears on general searches you’ll find irrelevant searchers clicking your ads. They’re not your targeted audience and they’ll only suck you dry. This is a mistake because your ads should only appear on searches specific to your area or region.
Exclusion
You don’t want anything and everything to appear in the search engines. You only want things like the homepages of specific sites, otherwise you could be wasting thousands of dollars in revenue. Track the progress of each page/site and remove any underperforming sites as soon as you can. A week should be long enough to give you an accurate assessment.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are keywords similar to yours which you don’t your ad to be associated with. If you’re targeting a keyword for legal services you might choose a negative keyword which has free at the beginning. If you don’t offer free legal services you don’t want to appear to searchers searching for free legal services. It’s all about making your site as targeted as possible. The fewer anomalies you pick up the better.
Broad Keywords
A common mistake made by PPC newbies is choosing the wrong keywords. Broad keywords cause a lot of damage. For a start, the cost of launching such a campaign will be much higher. It doesn’t guarantee more customers because it points to such a wide range of customers. If you sell eBooks targeting the keyword ‘books’ will also target customers who hate eBooks and favor old-fashioned print.
More specific keywords are more potent and they cost less. Label your product as accurately as possible and figure out what keywords will fit it.
Ad Testing
It’s tempting to launch an ad campaign and never return to it for the next few months. Ad testing is time-consuming but essential. As a beginner, you have no idea what’s going to work and what isn’t.
To start with, you should launch between 3-5 ads encompassing different philosophies and approaches. Think about the language you use and make it as different as possible. Come back after you’ve received a few hundred clicks on each add and determine which ads have the higher conversion rates.
On a side note, never judge the merits of an ad on the click-through rate alone. It isn’t the same thing as a conversion. It could indicate there’s something wrong with your site, but it often means you’ve targeted the wrong customer. Look at everything, including bounce rates, in your attempt to determine which ads work best.
You might want to consider paying for an audit to help you find the effectiveness of your campaign. The input of a professional can really make all the difference.
Today’s guest post is submitted by Sheldon Kyle. He is a SEO expert, a freelance writer and a professional blogger. He says to start a successful and quality PPC Campaign in Edinburgh, click here.
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