Google AdWords PPC (pay per click) advertising can be a very effective way to drive qualified traffic to new Web site, and can also provide incremental traffic even after a mature site is ranking well in search engines. While it is not difficult to learn to use Google AdWords, many users have trouble running cost-effective campaigns. The following are a few tip to help you to more effectively manage your advertising campaigns.
- Consider the geographic scope of your business and select the appropriate geographic area in your campaign settings. If you have an auto repair shop in Arlington Heights, Illinois, you are wasting your money if you leave the default campaign setting as Global. Ads should not be displayed in areas outside of your targeted market. If you sell products in different countries, consider setting up a different campaign for each country so that you can better see where your user clicks are originating.
- Set a monthly budget. A daily budget is required when setting up a campaign. The monthly budget is automatically set at 30 times the daily budget. According to Google’s policy, they can exceed your daily budget by 10% if on average your click billing is less than your daily budget,
but they will not exceed the monthly budget. Use budgets wisely. If your average daily click charges are $15, don’t set your daily budget at $100. If you run into a problem with a competitor or malicious user who creates a click fraud problem, it may cost you a lot of money. Reasonable daily budgets are one of the few ways to prevent excessive click fraud charges. - Keep your ads tightly focused on a small group of related keyword phrases. As a general rule, 5 to 15 keyword phrases is all that you should need for an Ad Group. If you have a large number of keyword phrases, break them up into small groups of related phrases.
- Start a new Ad Group with a maximum bid for the approximate positioning you want. Once the ads mature, start bidding differently for each individual phrase to maintain the average position you want. You can change the bidding for individual phrases by checking the box next to the keyword phrases and then clicking on the Edit CPCs/URLs button just above the keywords on an Ad Group page.
- Always run competing ads. This means running at least two differently worded ads for each Ad Group. This is also called A/B testing and is used to fnd the most effective wording for your ads. Google provides statistics regarding the number and percentage of times each ad is clicked. If one ad is being clicked 10% of the time, and the other 90% of the time, it’s easy to see which ad needs to be reworded. The ideal for two ads is a 50%50% or a 60%:40% balance.
- Use negative keywords to prevent ads from displaying when certain words unrelated to your campaign are used in a search. This can be a great way to help focus your ads more strongly on users searching specifically for your products or services. See Using Negative Keywords for more information.
kirt says
Great tips on handling your PPC Campaign, especially the first one, most internet marketers tend to post their ads or set them to global knowing that that can only be available in their area, its a waste of time and money if you do that. PPC Campaign doesn’t guarantee overnight success thats why you continously keep testing your ads to see which really works best for you. Also be content wise with your landing pages.
Michael says
This is a great post! Only thing I would add that is really high up on the list of biggest mistakes, is not leveraging the conversion tracking system. As you probably know but maybe some of your readers do not is that this system when installed and used properly allows you to make bid adjustments, conclude multi variate tests, remove keywords, and other analysis based on which keywords, ad text, and so forth actually produce a confirmed lead or sale, or even a pageview of an important page. For clients of mine who have a lot of phone call volume I optimize on pageviews of the contact us page, in other cases I optimize only based on the thankyou page or a completed sale/lead. Either way, this should definately not be ignored. This can literally save a PPC effort for having to shut down and turn it into a cash machine if leveraged properly.