September 2, 2009 by Trent Morgan
#1: Minimise irrelevant clicks
The fundamental mistake made by people who start PPC campaigns is almost always the same, their keywords are too generic. When people come to us they tend to have between thirty and fifty keywords, that target their business sector, but in a really non specific way, for instance if they’re a pet supplies company they’ll have broad match words like ‘dog food’, ‘cat litter’.
What’s wrong with that? you might ask, they sell dog food so why not advertise on the term? seems logical, right? Well, unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. Whilst ‘dog food’ might lead to sales it’ll also open you up to a whole load of irrelevant search queries, stuff like ‘dog food recipes,’ ‘what’s the best dog food for puppies?’, ‘How much food should you give a dog?’ None of these search terms are likely to lead to sales because they are being entered by people who clearly do not want to buy then and there. However, they may still generate clicks, which is the last thing you want.
You can avoid this situation by including modifiers and extending the single ‘dog food’ keywords into several other long-tail versions like ‘buy dog food online’, ‘buy pedigree dog food online’, ‘dog food online store,’ etc.
These keywords may be searched less often, though you can guarantee that the searchers are actually looking to buy. This ensures that only people who are actually useful to you get onto your site.
Related posts:
