Optimize PPC Campaigns

I’ve received a few questions lately about optimizing the pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for websites. It seems that some people aren’t getting the traffic they expected, so I thought I’d give you a few valuable tips on making the most of the PPC strategy.

After talking with a couple of these online marketers, I found out that they haven’t taken advantage of the tools to help them refine keywords or wrap keywords effectively. In one case, adding negative keywords made a difference almost instantly.

First of all, PPC will only be as effective as your keywords. That means you need to have the most relevant and targeted keywords possible to attract the audience you are seeking. Remember that keywords attract visitors and drive conversions – that’s what you want! Once you’ve done some testing and evaluation of keywords and have the ones you think are the most effective, you can do a better job with your PPC.

In a recent posting on October 17 on this blog, “Split-testing for Website Effectiveness”, we talked about the value of split-testing your website. This is also a good way to test your keywords too. You can test different words on different landing pages, titles, and content. Running a 2-week campaign to split-test keywords can pay off big bucks in your PPC strategy. If you haven’t already identified the best keywords, try this option.

Once you have the keywords and key phrases identified, you can use them in your ad campaigns. There are a lot of resources in the PPC Tools section of this blog. One resource that is helpful is the http://tools.seobook.com/ppc-ad-wrapper link. This site is easy to use and will help you organize your keywords into ‘broad match’, ‘exact match’, and ‘phrase match’. This will save you time and make your words more effective.

And don’t forget those negative keywords – you don’t want to attract unwanted visitors and useless clicks. Your PPC strategy may not be working as well as you want because you aren’t using the best keywords so take advantage of the PPC Tools section to help you.

Oh, and don’t forget the cardinal rule of PPC – promote relevant products and services for higher conversion rates.