or managing any pay-per-click campaign. Is this all there is to know about
pay-per-click advertising? Absolutely not, but for those new to PPC it
should serve as good place to start. Additionally, pay-per-click veterans or
at least the moderately-seasoned will want to touch upon these points now
and then to brush up on their fundamentals.
1) Do your keyword homework. Use Google's free Keyword Tool or sign up for a
WordTracker account to find out which keywords are the most competitive. The
more competitive the keyword, the more expensive your clicks will be. While
you're finding out which keywords are too expensive you'll come across some
that aren't being targeted heavily by advertisers. Take a good look at
these - they may be your keys to a successful niche campaign.
2) Don't bunch your ad groups. You should be striving to separate your ad
groups by keyword. Whatever your target, separate your keyword lists into
closely related groups containing the same target words and write ads geared
specifically to those words. Your ads will show up higher in results based
on their quality, and search terms show up bold in results - a click-through
rate booster.
3) Drive home your selling point. What's your offer? Why are you better than
the others? Remember that your ads are going to display with your
competitors. The difference between a user clicking your ad and clicking a
competitor ad is about 100 pixels on the screen - or a millisecond of time.
You need to convince them that you are the one they want. You are better.
Grab them.
4) Don't send users to your home page. This is perhaps one of the worst
things you can do to your Pay-Per-Click campaign. Internet users are
notoriously impatient. Send them to your home page when they were searching
for a specific product or service and see how fast they leave. Don't waste
your advertising budget - send them to optimized landing pages.
5) Optimize your landing pages. Your landing pages need to drive something
home immediately for your users: "you have landed in the right place." They
need to know that, yes, this is what they were looking for, here it is, here
is why it is better than the rest and here's the easy thing they need to do
to get it. In most cases you'll need to create multiple landing pages based
on your different ad groups and keywords, but look at it this way - if your
users aren't landing at pages geared exactly to their search phrases they'll
leave and take your advertising budget with them.
6) Don't lie in your ads. People aren't dumb. If you promise something in
your ads you had better well deliver. Otherwise you'll not only waste
advertising dollars but damage your brand. Be honest, and focus on points
that make you stand out from the competition. Grandiose ad text might bring
in clicks, but if it isn't the truth it won't bring in conversions.
7) Your domain name counts. In most cases you can display a domain name that
you own as the "display domain" but point the ads to a page on a different
domain. Why does this matter? If you own a domain name that contains the
keyword text it will show up bold and increase conversions. Enter the
optimized domain as the displayed domain, point the ads to your landing
pages and you can expect higher CTRs in most cases.
8) Utilize negative keywords. Google has a new Negative Keyword Tool that
will allow you to find negative keywords that you should specify for your
ads. Negative keywords are those that you don't want your ads to display
for. For example, if you're selling "blue widgets" you don't want to display
your ads to those users searching for "free blue widgets." If you don't use
negative keywords you are missing out on a chance to get more targeted
traffic to your landing pages, and this can really hurt your conversion
rates.
9) Test, test, and test some more. The greatest thing about internet
advertising is the ability it grants you to measure your success. It's easy
to create A/B split tests with Pay-Per-Click advertising. Change one word,
add a comma, include a value proposition. . .just make sure you only change
one thing for each split or you won't know which variable it was that made
the difference! You'll find out right away that this is a great way to
optimize your click-through rates - just don't forget that clicks aren't
everything!
10) Don't focus too heavily on CTRs. Getting tons of clicks isn't always the
name of the game. In fact, if you aren't using proper techniques to ensure
that you're getting targeted traffic and sending it to well-optimized
landing pages you can blow through your advertising budget in no time flat.
Remember that the success of any advertisement is getting back more than you
put in. It's an investment, not a cost - so do all that you can to better
your rate of return!
11) Don't pigeonhole yourself. We all know that Google AdWords is the most
popular Pay-Per-Click service out there. Your competitors know it, your
users know it - even your grandma might know it. It would be foolish to
ignore Google as a venue for advertising, but don't forget that there are
other search engines out there who offer similar services. Yahoo!'s new
Panama search system is catching on, and Microsoft's adCenter is nothing to
sneeze at either. Both companies are currently offering sweet promotional
deals to new Pay-Per-Click advertisers to stay competitive so take advantage
and diversify!
If you have any questions or comments please contact me.
Regards Gerald
Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru
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