PPC: the Times They Are a Changin’
As I look today at what it takes to succeed in Pay-per-click advertising and compare it to requirements of the past, I have but one response – Whoa! That’s not my actual response but I never know who’s reading this.
Anyway as Bob Dylan noted many decades ago – the times they are a ‘changin.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at each of the factors that are critical for a successful PPC campaign, but let’s start with an overview in case you want to take some fast action.
Here are the biggies:
Keywords
Today it’s less important to identify all of your keywords than it is to identify the most highly relevant ones. This is especially important for new advertisers who have to prove their value (ie relevance) to Google before their ads will be shown with any regularity on the first page.
Get your most relevant, highly focused keywords right, perfect the performance of the exact match, expand to phrase and broad match and Google will find more keywords for you.
Ad Groups
Organizing keywords into tightly related ad groups is even more important today than it was last year. The words in an ad group not only must be linguistically similar; they should also represent the same buyer’s frame of mind – in other words, where the searcher is in the buying process.
Match Type
One of the most common mistakes I see in poorly optimized PPC campaigns is the improper use of match type. New advertisers in particular are prone to using only broad match – which means that Google can pretty much run your ad any time one of the words in your keyword phrase appears.
Until Google has a good enough understanding of the words you are targeting, your ad will appear in all kinds of irrelevant searches. This won’t cost you clicks but it will cost you dearly in quality score.
Also, the importance of negative keywords has exploded over the past year. This is how you tell Google what search terms are irrelevant for you. For many campaigns there are far more negative keywords than there are positive ones.
Testing & Tracking
Nothing has changed here. Constant testing of ads and landing pages is the key to a successful PPC campaign. If you can let your prospects show you what they respond to best, why would you not do this?
Google has also made it easy to track your conversions. Unless you’re into branding campaigns, clicks without conversions are just a waste of money. Keep your eye on your conversion rate and conversion costs.
Customized Landing Pages
With pay-per-click search advertising you know exactly what’s on your prospects’ minds when they click on your ad. By all means, send them to a customized landing page. But there’s been a change in the type of landing page that succeeds.
Single-purpose landing pages where visitors can either do what you want them to do or leave are no longer a good thing. One reason is that Google doesn’t like them and will ding you on your quality score. The second reason is they effectively block out people who would have been interested in seeing other parts of your site.
Today “customized” is still good. “Stand-alone” is not.
Quality Score
For years Google has factored more than bid price into ad position, but quality score has become even more important – and click-through rate on exact match keywords plays a huge role in your quality score. This makes is very challenging for niche advertisers who want to filter clicks from broader keywords.
Search versus Content Network
Google continues to perpetuate a huge PPC management mistake by making both search and content network advertising the default in a new campaign. Marketing on search engines to people who are actively searching on a particular keyword phrase is vastly different from marketing to people who are simply reading a website or blog and not actively looking for you at the moment.
Search and content network advertising should always be separate campaigns. Be sure yours are.
Change is rapid and inevitable
As Google continues to make search more and more relevant for its users, rules changes and PPC advertisers can find themselves sinking very quickly. Pay-per-click has never been a “set and forget” tactic, but now more than ever you have to stay in motion to succeed.
Or as Dylan says, “you better start swimming”.
[tags] PPC, pay-per-click, landing pages, quality score, content network, search [/tags]
Category: Traffic
As I look today at what it takes to succeed in Pay-per-click advertising and compare it to requirements of the past, I have but one response – Whoa! That’s not my actual response but I never know who’s reading this.
Anyway as Bob Dylan noted many decades ago – the times they are a ‘changin.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at each of the factors that are critical for a successful PPC campaign, but let’s start with an overview in case you want to take some fast action.
Here are the biggies:
Keywords
Today it’s less important to identify all of your keywords than it is to identify the most highly relevant ones. This is especially important for new advertisers who have to prove their value (ie relevance) to Google before their ads will be shown with any regularity on the first page.
Get your most relevant, highly focused keywords right, perfect the performance of the exact match, expand to phrase and broad match and Google will find more keywords for you.
Ad Groups
Organizing keywords into tightly related ad groups is even more important today than it was last year. The words in an ad group not only must be linguistically similar; they should also represent the same buyer’s frame of mind – in other words, where the searcher is in the buying process.
Match Type
One of the most common mistakes I see in poorly optimized PPC campaigns is the improper use of match type. New advertisers in particular are prone to using only broad match – which means that Google can pretty much run your ad any time one of the words in your keyword phrase appears.
Until Google has a good enough understanding of the words you are targeting, your ad will appear in all kinds of irrelevant searches. This won’t cost you clicks but it will cost you dearly in quality score.
Also, the importance of negative keywords has exploded over the past year. This is how you tell Google what search terms are irrelevant for you. For many campaigns there are far more negative keywords than there are positive ones.
Testing & Tracking
Nothing has changed here. Constant testing of ads and landing pages is the key to a successful PPC campaign. If you can let your prospects show you what they respond to best, why would you not do this?
Google has also made it easy to track your conversions. Unless you’re into branding campaigns, clicks without conversions are just a waste of money. Keep your eye on your conversion rate and conversion costs.
Customized Landing Pages
With pay-per-click search advertising you know exactly what’s on your prospects’ minds when they click on your ad. By all means, send them to a customized landing page. But there’s been a change in the type of landing page that succeeds.
Single-purpose landing pages where visitors can either do what you want them to do or leave are no longer a good thing. One reason is that Google doesn’t like them and will ding you on your quality score. The second reason is they effectively block out people who would have been interested in seeing other parts of your site.
Today “customized” is still good. “Stand-alone” is not.
Quality Score
For years Google has factored more than bid price into ad position, but quality score has become even more important – and click-through rate on exact match keywords plays a huge role in your quality score. This makes is very challenging for niche advertisers who want to filter clicks from broader keywords.
Search versus Content Network
Google continues to perpetuate a huge PPC management mistake by making both search and content network advertising the default in a new campaign. Marketing on search engines to people who are actively searching on a particular keyword phrase is vastly different from marketing to people who are simply reading a website or blog and not actively looking for you at the moment.
Search and content network advertising should always be separate campaigns. Be sure yours are.
Change is rapid and inevitable
As Google continues to make search more and more relevant for its users, rules changes and PPC advertisers can find themselves sinking very quickly. Pay-per-click has never been a “set and forget” tactic, but now more than ever you have to stay in motion to succeed.
Or as Dylan says, “you better start swimming”.
Fri, Jan 29, 2010
Traffic
Written by: Susan Tatum