Wednesday, April 1, 2009

5 Top Tips for Pay Per Click Campaigns

Here's 5 top tips for making Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns work effectively and generate a return on investment.

1. Don't send the the click to your website home page.
Make sure the web page you send your 'clickers' to is absolutely relevant to the search term and the advert wording. Nothing is more frustrating (and likely to cause them to 'bounce' back to the search listings) than being sent to your home page and then having to hunt around for the specific information they were expecting to find.
Create specific 'landing pages' for each of you ads.

2. Don't Have all the keywords as 'Broad' terms.
Keywords can be set as follows:


"driving lesson" - Exact phrase match. Set inside quotes the phrase can appear along side other words. For example someone searching for:
bus driving lesson or driving lesson in london
the ad would show.

[driving lesson] - Exact Term match. set inside square brackets the ad will ONLY show when that phrase, as listed, is typed on its own with no accompanying words. Not even the plural driving lessons

driving lesson - Broad Match. Without anything around it will show your ad for a host of variations:
driving to school for a lesson or teachers who are driving you mad in a lesson


As you can see the Broad Match option can be too far wide and be shown for totally unrelated queries attracting 'tyre kickers' to click rather than real prospects.


3. Don't ignore negative keywords.
Adding in negative keywords, by prefixing with the minus sign, for example -bus , would exclude your "driving lesson" phrase when used in conjunction with bus as in bus driving lessons or bus driving lessons london

4. Research your keywords thoroughly.
Look for unusual, maybe off the wall, ways that your customers might describe your service or product. Seek out phrases that might begin with 'How do I...' or 'What is....'


5. Monitor and manage your account EVERY DAY.
It is far to easy for your cost to spiral if you are not watching what's happening. Click costs on competitive terms can really sky rocket. But if you're careful and diligent you can maximise profit against the cost of clicks.

If you need help to set up ar manage a PPC campaign contact me at Alloy CRM

No comments: