What does PPC Management include?
Here’s a list of the steps that need to be taken to optimize your PPC campaign:
- PPC Campaign Overhaul
- Keyword Revision
- Ads Copy Improvement
- Landing Page Optimization
- Performance Tracking
PPC Campaign Overhaul
A search engine marketing specialist will review your account and make recommendations on how it can be improved. They will look at:
- Keywords
- Ad copy
- Landing pages
- Tracking
At The Search Guru we focus on what can take your account from underperforming to the most effective search engine marketing for increasing your profits. We identify those points and show them to you. Once we review them together, we can start working on them.
Some of the most common issues found when auditing a PPC account are:
- Not using negative keywords: PPC platforms allow you to use negative or stop keywords which, if appear in a search query, will prevent your ad from showing. One of the most commonly used negative keyword is “free”. Not using negative keywords may results in both low Quality Score and high Cost per Conversion.
- Using too broad keywords: not being specific in your keyword choices may result in having your ad shown to users searching for something totally different. They will either click and not find what they are looking for (extra Costs for you with no conversions) or will ignore your ad which means lower Click through rate (CTR) and lower Quality Score.
No CTA in your Ad copy: your Ad need to be informational, showing your best competitive advantages and telling the users what to do next or a Call to Action (CTA). Some examples of CTAs are:
- Sign up for Free Trial,
- Download Free E-book
- Misleading Landing Page: if you’re taking your users to a page different from what your ad talks about, you’ll most probably end up with high PPC bill and no conversions, as users will bounce away from your page and back to the search results. Make sure you’re sending visitors to a page where they’ll find what they are looking for.
- No Conversion Tracking: if you don’t know how your ads are performing, you’re not able to improve them or invest more in the winning and less in the losing campaigns.
Keyword Revision
PPC Platforms such as Google Adwords and Bing Ads allow for a wide range of Keyword opportunities in order to match best the user intent.
Keyword Match types include:
| Keyword Match Type | Definition | Example |
| Broad match: | The default match type that all your keywords are assigned. Ads may show on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. | Example keyword: women shoes Example search: black boots heels |
| Broad match modifier: | Ads may show on searches that contain the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms), in any order. | Symbol: +keyword Example keyword: +women +shoes Example search: shoes for women |
| Phrase match: | Ads may show on searches that are a phrase, and close variations of that phrase. | Symbol: “keyword” Example keyword: “women shoes” Example search: “women shoes size 9” |
| Exact match: | Ads may show on searches that are an exact term and close variations of that exact term. | Symbol: [keyword] Example keyword: [women shoes] Example search: women shoes |
| Negative match: | Ads may show on searches without the term. | Symbol: –keyword Example keyword: –men Example search: women shoes |
(source: Google Adwords Support)
Keyword Match Types are helpful, but you need to first choose the keywords that best describe your services. Some best practices include:
- Use the terms that describe your services in your business area jargon
- Now try to explain those terms without using jargon — only everyday words
- Include the brands of your competitors
- Use tools like SEMrush to find out on what keywords your competitors bid
- Make a list with all keywords you’ve come up and run them on Google Keyword Planner to see what their search volume and Competition rate is. There you’ll see other keyword opportunities as well.
Once you’ve done all this, you need to start reviewing your keyword data on a regular base: daily, weekly or monthly, depending on your budget of time and money. You need to check:
- Which keywords are performing well and you can increase their bids
- Which keywords are under-performing and you need to lower their bids or add as negative keywords
- Which search terms you may add as keywords
- Check competitors for new opportunities
Landing Pages
The quality of your Landing page is a factor in the Quality Score equation, which Search Engines (Google) use to rank the Ads in their auction. Google want users to be happy, which means to find what they are searching for. If users land on your page after clicking an ad and are not happy with what they see, and bounce back to the search results, that means you might be misleading users and Google will show other ads in front of yours.
Optimizing your Landing Page is also very important in terms of getting more Conversions.
- What users see above the fold of the page?
- Are those the benefits they are looking for?
- Is your sing up form too greedy (asking for too much info) and people just leave?
Those are the questions we ask when offering improvements on your Landing page.
Performance Tracking
Reviewing the results of your PPC Campaign is necessary for many reasons:
- See if the campaign is profitable
- See where it can be improved
- Increase budget if Cost per conversion is reasonable
- Implement changes on your website based on data you’ve collected via PPC
If you need expert help and give your PPC campaigns the attention they deserve, contact us today to talk about how our pay per click consulting, pay per click services and pay per click bid management can make your PPC advertising easy and successful.