Paid search is hard. But don’t worry! Trada is here to hold your hand and make it better. For this blog post, we have 15 tips and tricks to make your paid search campaign more successful. Some of the tips are more obvious than others, but there’s something for everybody here.
1. Seek Other Sites Besides Google – While Google is clearly the largest search network out there, it doesn’t mean companies should forgo other search networks. With the recent Search Alliance combining the advertising networks of Bing and Yahoo together, those advertising on the Search Alliance have seen conversion rates up by 12 percent by the end of 2010. In addition, cost per click (CPC) on Yahoo/Bing was 20 percent below industry benchmarks. Moving outside of Google allows you to capitalize on less competition from other advertisers.
2. Embrace Negative Keywords – The default setting when creating keywords is a keyword match type called broad match. This match type ensures that search engines will not only search for the keyword(s) you’re using but also similar phrases and relevant variations. While broad match can save advertisers time in creating variations of their keywords, it can also create a lot of untargeted traffic. To combat this, advertisers can use negative keywords. Once you enter a negative keyword into an ad group or campaign, it means your ad isn’t triggered when that search term is used. The benefit of using negative keywords is that your traffic is more targeted resulting in more conversions and less wasted ad spend.
3. Phrase and Exact Keywords – Another way to combat untargeted traffic that can result from broad match keywords is to use phrase or exact match keyword types instead. With phrase match, search engines only trigger ads when keywords in your phrase are matched. Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, and more flexible than exact match. With exact match keywords, search engines only trigger ads when the exact phrase is matched. The plus of using exact match is that it results in extremely targeted traffic that is more likely to convert.
4. Format Matters – The format of your ad copy matters. Keep it simple, easy to read and understandable. Your ads should be written for the 4th grade reading level. Use Title Casing In Your Ad Copy.
5. Use Coupons – While online shopping has grown dramatically in the last several years, the majority of shopping still takes place in brick-and-mortar stores. Using coupons is a way to track the success of paid search campaigns in offline shopping. By offering coupons in your ad copy and landing pages, you’ll make your paid search campaign actionable. It will also turn a branding campaign into a performance marketing campaign, help you collect email addresses and drive offline purchases that can justify search engine marketing spend.
6. Optimize for Quality – Create paid search campaigns that are well executed and meaningful to your intended audience. By optimizing your paid search campaigns for quality, you’ll also improve your Google Quality Score. This score is intended to track the quality of your campaign, and the score uses a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. This ensures no one is using keywords such as “Justin Bieber” to advertise a product or service that has nothing to do with Justin Bieber.
7. Dayparting – Dayparting is a mechanism in PPC that allows you to choose when your ads are shown. Dayparting helps advertisers ensure their ads are being show during prime sales time. Advertisers should review their data and determine when leads are coming in and if they’re converting. For example, you might see an uptick in leads at a certain time but those leads might not be as serious as those who come in during business time. Dayparting can also be used to increase web traffic on slower days.
8. Geotargeting - Geotargeting allows you to target your ads to a very specific ad location. This is the perfect solution for companies that might only have storefronts in four states or ships only to North America or only have a business in one city. Google has a variety of methods to help advertisers show PPC ads exactly where they want to be.
9. Don’t Use Your Homepage as a Landing Page – While it may feel like it’s unnecessary to build landing pages when you have a well designed homepage, this is one of the most common paid search mistakes. Keep in mind that the purpose of a landing page is to get them to make a purchase or fill out a lead form. You don’t want to distract your visitors with unneeded navigation. Landing pages should be short and sweet and homepages are definitely not. By using homepages as landing pages, you’re almost guaranteed to see a decrease in conversions.
More tips after the jump…
1o. Simple Lead Forms – This is where landing pages can go quickly awry. Don’t turn your lead form into a marketing survey. The only information you really need is the information needed to make a sale. Keep in mind, the more questions, the bigger your abandon rate will be. Another key point is to make it as easy as possible to fill out. If possible, auto populate fields and have the input cursor move from field to field.
11. Have a Clear Call to Action – Focus on ONE objective for each page. Define your objective and drive everything on the page to it.
12. Tie AdWords to Google Analytics – Google Analytics is another free tool that can help you track the success of your paid search campaign and the number of conversions each campaign is delivering.
13. Optimize Frequently – A frequently asked question is how often should you optimize your campaign? Unfortunately, the answer is it depends on your budget, the competitive landscape and other factors. According to a survey by SEORoundtable, they found 19% of advertisers optimize daily and 37% optimize weekly. If you’re not checking in at least once or twice a week on your PPC campaign, you’re doing it a disservice. There is a strong correlation between frequency of optimization and performance of the campaign.
14. Bulk Editing Techniques – Bulk editing is an option for editing different components of your campaign via Google AdWords. You can make bulk edits using spreadsheet editing (keywords), AdWords Editor and AdWords API.
15. Always Test – Split testing (A/B testing) different variations of your PPC campaign will show which variation gives you the best results. Don’t set and forget your paid search campaign and continually test out variations. For your paid search campaign, at a minimum, you should be testing landing pages, the format of ads, the time of day ads are show, locations ads are shown, ad copy and ad titles.
About Elaine Ellis
