October 3, 2008 by Simon King
Pay per click advertising can be overwhelming for the novice. The following simple tips will help avoid some of the common pitfalls
1. Do Your Own Keyword Research
• Don’t just rely on the Google keyword tool. Prepare your own list in advance and make sure its specific to what you’re selling.
2. Start Small
• Initially keep your budget small and manageable. Ad words can be overwhelming to begin with so starting small is often a good idea. You can always expand later on.
3. Turn off the Content Network
• Don’t mix the content network with your search campaign. The content network will bring down your campaign CTR thus affecting your quality score. Keep search and content in separate campaigns.
4. Use Match Types
• Knowing the difference between Broad, Phrase and Exact match will really help.
• Exact match, surprise, surprise matches the term exactly. So if you have “hockey player” on exact match your ad will only appear if someone types in “hockey player” exactly.
• Phrase matches a phrase exactly. If you have “hockey player” as a phrase your ad will appear for any query that includes the phrase “hockey player”. So it will show for good “hockey player” & “hockey player” union for eg
• Broad match will match any query that encompasses the words hockey and player. So for hockey player on broad your ad would show for queries like: “ he is a good player of hockey” OR “he bashed his cd player with a hockey stick”
5. Split Test
• Have two adverts running simultaneously and see which performs best in terms of CTR and Conversion Rate.
6. Master CTR
• Click through Rate, or CTR, is the number of clicks your advert gets divided by the number of searches (impressions) for a term. The better your ads the better your CTR. Google will reward you for getting clicks. They want you getting clicks. It makes them money. Google loves money!
7. Be relevant
• Don’t just send all of your traffic to your home page. Send your traffic to specific pages for your search terms. This will dramatically increase your conversion rate.
8. Use negatives
• Use negative keywords to prevent your ad from appearing unnecessarily. Negatives also help improve your ctr and contribute to your quality score. They are particularly useful for broad matches.
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