PPC

Pay Per Click (also known as PPC) are the ads that show up across the top and right hand side of the search results at Google and other search engines.

The ads are activated for search terms chosen by the advertiser and should a searcher click on the ad after searching for the term, the advertiser is charged a fee by Google for that click.

Online marketers like PPC because:

Unfortunately running a PPC campaign is now extremely complex as Google uses a scoring system which rewards well targeted campaigns with lower PPC charges and punishes bad campaigns by drastically raising the costs.

There are lots of unwritten rules about how Google likes campaigns to be set up and run. If not respected and understood, many campaigns are doomed to be unprofitable.

Some of the major mistakes we regularly come across include:

Keyword research – I can almost guarantee that if you are already running a PPC campaign you are leaving out important keywords in your campaign.

For example if you have 10 to 30 keywords in your campaign at present we can quickly uncover another 200 or 300 for you, probably more. It’s that big of a difference when you have access to the right tools and strategies.

Ad testing – If you aren’t split testing with at least 2 ads per keyword group you are leaving money on the table.

Conversion tracking – You need to know which keywords result in a lead or sale and which didn’t so you can constantly tweak your campaign to get the best ROI.

Landing pages – We see many campaigns that have decent keyword selection and good ads but then they send all the traffic to their home page and expect the customer to find their way to the item they were interested in…..Not good.

You need to send each keyword group to a targeted landing page to keep both Google and the customer happy.

Example – Someone searches for Manx kippers and you are bidding on the term so your ad shows up in the results. The ad needs to mention ‘Manx kippers’ to get a good quality score AND to attract the potential customer.

When that person clicks the ad they need to land on a page optimised for the term ‘Manx kippers’ otherwise they may feel duped and hit the back button. If customers regularly hit the back button Google knows the page is not targeted.

If you were also targeting ‘Isle of man kippers’ you would require a different ad and landing page optimised for that term.

We can do your keyword research for you and set up and run your Pay Per Click campaign. Check out our services by clicking here to see what we can do for your business.