As I attend search marketing conferences and stay up to date on search engine marketing news, reviews are always a question as big companies seem to get under performing search engine referral traffic from their pay per click programs. Sometimes it is the smallest things that cause this such as a global exclude on their robots.txt file and other times it is just poor pay per click management.
The basics are just that yet and not performing the basics in the paid search world will cost you thousands of dollars and stop your business from growing. Let’s talk about applying the basics to your pay per click services and see how we can make your dollars go further.
Yes, the internet is global but are you really a global company and are you optimizing your pay per click campaigns from a multiple campaign level? Split up your paid search campaigns into geographical sections and stay close to them as you could be outbidding your terms and costing you money.
Use the networks carefully – Google Adwords opts you into both the Google Search, the partner network (Ask, AOL, and the like), and content targeting (AdSense publisher Web sites) by default. You need a specific strategy around distribution, so go back and don’t just take the opt-ins as given. If nothing else, bid differentially (usually lower) on content targeting, and manage to your target metric. That’s not the only refinement you’ll need to incorporate, but it’s a start. I am not a big fan of content networks (both image and text) as I feel you spend more than what you get so I would suggest opting out of it until you business needs more traffic. If you are at that point and need the content network I would suggest planning to spend 3-4 times more energy in optimization than your Google network optimization.
Ad optimization – Testing you ads is the backbone of optimizing your pay per click campaigns. You need to test your ads but the default set by Google is “optimize” which can actually hurt your paid search campaigns more than help them. You should have 2-3 ads you are testing consistently while comparing the performance. I would only use “optimize” setting if you have a low click through rate which has a direct relationship with your Quality Score thus your average pay per click rates will increase. Remember the better the click through rates the lower you pay per click. If others tell you differently about what makes the most impact to your Quality Score like landing page quality they are telling you the truth.
Did a pay per click agency set up the account or somebody who was in charge of your pay per click services no longer with the company? Have you checked the account’s conversion tracking and how it is defined in your paid search campaign? Make sure the conversion tracking is set up the way you want conversions to be tracked today. This can mean the difference between thousands of keywords you keep active or pause.
Matching options – This in a beta form so you might or might not have this as an option in your account. If you do have it shut it down as basically you are giving Google the opportunity to find ways to spend the rest of your budget. Where and how they do that only the shadow knows but I doubt it is more efficient than your normal PPC campaign can do.
I think of managing your paid search campaign similar to a contact management system where it is garbage in/garbage out methodology. Do it half way and that is the results you will get and the only blame you can place is on yourself.
Have Fun!
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