PAY PER CLICK MANAGEMENT

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a search engine marketing technique that requires you to pay a fee every time someone clicks to your website from an ad you've placed in a search engine's results. The more you agree to pay per click (or bid) for a specific keyword and the more effective your ad, the higher your site will rank in the paid search results.
 

Building a pay per click campaign the correct way means paying attention to detail and continual oversight and management. We've created a  list of 10 typical mistakes that are found in PPC advertising campaigns.
 

- Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group

If you put all your keywords into just a few big and broad ad groups, it's time to restructure your account. You are missing out on important flexibility that pay per click advertising allows. Tighter ad groups allows you more focussed, relevant ads.

- Ignoring Negative Keywords

With quality scores and click through rates playing a bigger role in your pay per click ad rank, it's more important to weed out the keywords that push up your impressions and don't result in desired clicks. If you sell "widget software" make sure you have negative keywords such a "-free" or "-serial." Also, check your log files for your site to look for bad keywords that you are spending money on right now.

- Not Doing Enough Testing

Split-testing your ads is critical. Even the smallest of changes can boost results. In addition to testing your ad copy's "call to action" or value statements, every ad has multiple variables to test. The titles, the two lines of copy, and display url all can be optimized. If you don't have time for hands-on testing, a good professional pay per click management company can run daily split testing for you. You'd be surprised how well this can pay off.

- Not Precisely Tracking Results

Of course, testing your ads and fine tuning your keyword lists only works well if you are tracking results. The search engines will tell you what your click-through rates are ... but you need bottom-line results. You need to know your return on investment or what your cost per action is. It's not enough to know that you spend $5,000 and get back $10,000. You might be able to spend only $3,000 and get that same $10,000.

- Not Tracking Down to the Keyword-Level

Setting up good analytics yourself or hiring a professional pay per click management company can do the job. Not only do you get more bang for your buck by getting rid of poor performers, but getting tracking to the keyword-level makes all of your testing and work even more precise. You need to know your earnings per click. If one keyword has a 56 cent Earnings Per Click (EPC) and another had a $1.22 EPC, this is important knowledge. Adjusting your bids to an appropriate level can keep you from over spending...or allow you to throttle up your overall traffic for even more success. Don't let poor keywords leak your accounts.

- Too Generic of Keywords

Negative keywords may not be enough to keep you from trouble on too generic a keyword. While these generic keywords are often more highly searched and can even be among your best...they can also be riddled with bad traffic. Users who perform a search on a generic keyword may often be at a very early stage in the purchase process. Are you able to turn an effective profit on them? Once again, this is yet another reason why you need keyword-level traffic. It's especially vital on a generic keyword.

- Ignoring the Many Long-Tail Keywords

To follow up on the generic keyword topic, creating your long-tail keyword lists and the relevant accompanying ads may be a major time-consuming process. Do it right and you can also find it to be very profitable. The nature of keywords is that they vary from phrase to phrase. A keyword like "cell phone" can differ in results from a keyword such as "motorola cell phone", which in turn can vastly differ from a more long-tail keyword like "motorola w375 unlocked cell phone." One user is likely still doing research, while the user in the last example knows what they want ... and may be ready to make that purchase.

- Combining Search and Content Networks

If you don't want to get burned by click fraud or poor traffic, you need to make sure your content network campaigns and your search network campaigns are separated. If you don't know what this means, chances are they aren't separated in your account and you are likely losing money. Ideally, you would have separate campaigns for each, along with precision analytics to know exactly what keyword from which source is converting for you in the content network.

- Not Attracting Local Clients Through Geo Targeting

Each of the major pay per click engines offer a way to tightly set up your campaigns. If you are working from a local pool of potential clients in your area, you need to take advantage of some of the area-specific targeting that the PPC engines offer. Fine tuning your campaigns to get the right people in your region to respond can be well worth the effort to your bottom line.

- Not Continually Monitoring Your Campaigns

Okay, so you don't do daily split testing even though you should. Maybe you don't continually monitor your earnings per click at the keyword level, even though you should. Still, a lot of PPC advertisers don't even frequently check into their accounts. Google, Yahoo and MSN are increasingly slapping keywords with the "Inactive for Search" status to get you to improve your quality. They may be slowly picking off your keywords -- and your profits -- one by one and you aren't even aware of it.