Improve Your Pay-Per-Click Campaigns with These 7 Tips

Most mistakes with pay-per-click come from small companies undermining their campaigns. PPC works through programs like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. There is an agreed upon amount on how much they are willing to pay for their ads to appear in certain places. These places are targeted specifically to gain more exposure and create more traffic. It may sound simple enough but there are a lot of aspects and details that go into PPC.

Check out these 7 tips to help you understand and use PPC more efficiently:

1. Avoid “broad match” keywords. One of the biggest mistakes is ignoring the difference between choosing specific keyword match types and setting all keywords as “broad match,” which means that your ad will appear not just for your chosen keyword phrase, but also for any similar phrases or relevant variations your advertising program deems appropriate. Although broad match placements can help increase your exposure, they can also attract irrelevant traffic that costs you money.

2. Separate search and content ad placements. Search network placement refers to PPC ads that appear in search query results, while content network placement means websites that display PPC ads as blocks within their pages. Most new PPC marketers select both the search and content networks when they set up their first campaigns, and they usually use the same keywords, ad content and payment amount for each click.

3. Use negative keywords, too. PPC marketers often fail to use negative keywords, which allow you to specify where your ad should not appear. For example, in our “show ideas” and “baby shower gift ideas” example, the words “baby,” “shower” and “gift” could be designated as negative keywords to help eliminate such irrelevant ad placements.

4. Efficiently target ad campaigns. Many advertisers aren't precise enough in targeting their campaigns. To increase efficiency, take advantage of features in PPC accounts that allow you to specify who sees the ads.

Here are a few areas to consider in targeting your campaigns:

Multiple countries. If you plan to advertise in several countries, set up an ad group for each. Otherwise, limit your ad to U.S. placements.

Micro-geographic focus. If you create an ad for a local business keyword — “Mexican restaurants in Chicago,” for example — use the micro-geographic targeting features in your advertiser account to select the specific zip codes in which your ad will appear based on your business's delivery area.

Time of day. If your ads generate the most conversions during a particular time of day, set them up to run only during those time periods.

5. Match landing pages to ads. Sending a visitor from your PPC ad to an irrelevant landing page not only disrupts the sales process, but also can also result in the assessment of lower ad quality scores. That means you'll pay more for each click and receive less exposure than advertisers with higher scores.

6. Test ad copy. Writing effective ad copy can be difficult. Unless you test different versions of ads to see which perform best, you aren't maximizing the ROI of your campaign. Most PPC platforms allow you to set up split tests that rotate different ads for each of your targeted keywords. To do the test effectively, adjust your setting so that ads will be served up randomly rather than according to the platform's formula of displaying the ad it determines will result in the most clicks.

7. Track your return on investment. To effectively manage PPC campaigns and improve your ROI, you need to know exactly which clicks are resulting in sales. To generate this data for free, tie your PPC account to Google Analytics to track which ads led visitors to your page and which visits resulted in sales. Without this information, you can't adjust your keyword bids or eliminate less effective ads and keywords.