The term “Pay Per Click” is basically an online marketing technique introduced by Google in which instead of paying in advance, the advertiser has to pay a fee only after someone clicks on their Ad. You decide the amount you would want to pay Google whenever anyone clicks on your ad. Clicking on the ad takes them to the advertiser’s website or a landing page.
PPC is quite effective and shows results in a short time when done correctly. Another great feature of PPC campaigns is that they are meant for mostly those people who are interested in knowing more about your product or for buying your product. Here are some strategies, which when applied can improve the overall rankings and conversions dramatically.
Keyword Research
It is vital that you should know your target audience. First of all, think about each and every term which comes in the mind if you wanted to purchase a product yourself from the website. Select High Volume and Low Competition keywords which can help you drive traffic to the website and also keep the budget within limits. In PPC campaigns, keywords are categorized as Broad, Phrase and Exact. Avoid using much broad based terms; instead, focus on using long-tail keywords.
Basically you should be looking at using the right combination of broad and long tail keywords. Negative keywords should also be used in order to block any irrelevant keywords and to avoid wasted clicks which otherwise might contribute in increasing your overall expenditure. Once you are sure about your final keywords, they can be used as exact phrases. It is also very important to select a geographical area where the business serves or requires reaching out.
There are many other features, such as Bid, Currency, Budget and so forth which are available under the “Settings” tab which can help you to create and kickstart your PPC Campaigns. Every click is crucial for your budget, so be quite careful with selecting the right keywords.
Landing Page
You need to design your landing page properly so that when your audience clicks on the ad, they are taken to your landing page or home web page. In case you fail to do that, you will be losing a lot of your customers and the bounce rate will be quite high. Your Landing page should be targeting the service or product the company wants to sell or promote. Make sure that all your keywords are used in the web page title and within the HTML Headings. Also, you should be able to take the required action (or achieve goals) by the minimum number of clicks without causing inconvenience to the audience. Make sure that you should have interesting and appealing content on the website.
Last, but not the least the page loading speed also should be fast enough so that you retain their interest and they don’t end up going elsewhere. This will also keep search engines also happy as Google has been considering Page Loading speed as one of the most important factors in determining it’s rankings on Search Engine Page Results.
PPC Campaigns Management (Launching and Testing)
Now you have a list of the main keywords which you have decided after the logical conclusion is that they are relevant to your target audience. Now group now these keywords and start developing keyword campaigns. You can use up to ten keywords in each specific ad group based on various themes and carve out your campaign structure.
With every landing page, you will have to write a well-developed and relevant ad copy while using all the finalized keywords. The ad copy should have a call to action and a unique selling point within those stipulated number of words and to emphasize the reason why your visitors should select your product or service.
Usually two ads for each ad group is preferred however, every brand has its own way of running their PPC campaigns. Higher Quality scores by Google are determined by your quality of landing page and the relevancy of keywords. The lower your Quality Score, the higher you will end paying per click.
Monitoring / Maintaining the PPC Campaign
After testing out your campaigns, you will also get a clear picture of which ads to run more frequently and which ones to pause, thus helping you to optimize the campaigns. Monitoring the patterns will let you decide the ones which are successful and the ones which are not.
Minor changes and modifications in the ad copy can bring out big differences in the success of the PPC campaigns. Changing one element at a time (such as keywords, the order of words in ad copy, landing pages) and to evaluate the effect of this change is the basic principle of A/B testing. Another way is to simply create altogether a new ad within Adwords. Lower your budget and see the overall effect after re-running these campaigns.
You can use Google Analytics to help you monitor and look at the PPC keywords in the campaign. Monitor both your CTR as well as the bounce rate which will help you make out whether you need to improve your Landing Pages. Also, keep observing your PPC campaign and monitoring it. The more you will keep modifying it as per the response, the more profitable your campaign will become.
Continue Making Improvements
Looking at the ad text and making sure that the ad copy is in tune with the keyword query is quite vital. Using PPC to get your audience on the landing page you have designed and Google Analytics to study their activities after they land will be quite crucial for the ultimate success of your campaigns
Always remember, the more highly and precisely your campaigns will be targeted, the more successful will be the PPC campaigns. Last but not the least, you should never overspend on Adwords and go well beyond your planned budget. You have to put a limitation on your expenditure that your business can afford. It is advisable to select the Search network initially and direct your expenditure on these websites. Only after carefully analyzing the results of these, you should consider switching to Display Network websites.
To conclude, till the duration you have your campaigns running there is a dire need to monitor their performance and see whether they are driving traffic or not. If not, then taking required steps as discussed will be surely valuable and will help you in re-assessing the entire structure of your campaign.