Pay Per Click Masterclass – Avoiding common PPC mistakes

This article was written for Bytestart reader by Daniel Jupp.

Pay per click (PPC) is the cornerstone of any search marketing program and with costs incurred each time an advert is clicked on, all aspects of the campaign must be checked and double checked for effectiveness. Failing to use all resources and optimisation techniques drives down the rate of return and can end up costing a significant chunk of the PPC budget.

If your campaign isn’t performing to expected levels or is costing a lot but delivering few targeted clicks, you could be making one of five common pay per click mistakes.

Too many keywords

If you’ve succumbed to temptation and stuffed your ad groups full of as many keywords as possible, your budget is likely being pulled in too many different directions. Especially for advertisers with a smaller budget, discretion is advisable when selecting keywords to bid on. Having too many keywords is like trying to paint a whole house with one pot of paint – resources are spread to thinly and the end product looks a lot less glossy than it should.

Not enough ad groups

A well-structured pay per click campaign will have a number of ad groups. Ad groups are effectively thematic groupings of keywords and should be organised according to common phrases, products or goals.

If the ad group starts to become too densely packed with keywords, it should be split into two ad groups. Trying to arrange everything within a few ad groups will harm the quality score of the account as unrelated keywords will be grouped together, leading to unrelated advert text.

Non relevant advert text

A pay per click advert is often your target demographic’s first impression of your company. That means for best results, it should be tightly integrated with the user’s search query. Non relevant advert text is common on pay per click accounts, especially those with large ad groups featuring a diverse selection of keywords.

Advert text should include the keywords from the ad group in the advert title and advert text. The advert should also display a call to action such as ‘Sign up today!, or ‘Buy online now!’.

Adverts are not deep linked

Sending a user who clicks on a pay per click advert through to the correct landing page helps to increase conversions from PPC advertising. This is called deep linking. For example, if a user has triggered the advert by searching for product A, the advert should go through to the page on your web site about product A.

Deep linking fits within the pay per click good practice code as it helps with conversion rates – by sending browsers through to the exact page they’re looking for, you increase the chance that they will go on to purchase rather than get frustrated looking for the information that they wanted when sent through to non-specific web pages.

Advert performance is not tracked

There’s no excuse for not tracking the performance of your pay per click campaign. Each of the major search engines provides simple tracking codes and in the case of Google Analytics, more sophisticated performance data.

Without tracking, it’s impossible to know which keywords and adverts are converting, which phrases are simply using up the budget and when users actually buy from your web site. Tracking data, when correctly interpreted, guides you towards making the correct adjustments to the campaign set up and so helps you use your budget more effectively to increase return on investment (ROI) and sales figures.

About the Author

Daniel Jupp is the founder and director of pay per click management consultancy Top Position. Top Position is a Google certified company.