Pay Per Click can be quite daunting, especially for small businesses who don’t know the tactics necessary for this type of advertising campaign. PPC expert, Ian Howie, explains the seven stages of Pay Per Click, including how to use keyword research to refine your strategy.
What is Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click (PPC) is an online marketing and advertising formula, where the advertiser does not pay a fee to place an advert. Rather, advertisers pay a specific sum of money every time someone clicks on their ad and is taken to their website.
In PPC, you can choose, which keywords or phrases associate with your website during a search. This means you have to decide how much you are willing to pay each time someone clicks on the search result – but the upshot is that you are advertising to people who are already interested in you.
1. What are you are you selling?
For example, if you are selling iPod cases, you must look at your product range and decide, which iPod cases to promote. Are you competitive in terms of price, customer service and delivery? Do some searches on Google to see which ads come up, and which offers your competitors are focusing on.
2. Keyword Research and PPC
SEOs are mainly concerned with keywords included in their copy, but in PPC, you have different match types – broad, phrase and exact.
If this is your first PPC campaign you can use broad matches to try and see what the market is doing and what people are typing in. Use exact match when you are sure they are the best keywords to go for. Another very popular technique is to use broad and phrase matches with a lot of negative keywords.
For example, if we entered ‘iPod nano’ with a broad match, the results would include ‘MP3 nano’ or even ‘iPod classic’. To prevent this we can add negative keywords into our campaign to stop ‘MP3’ or ‘classic’ from coming in: this will eliminate a lot of wastage. It’s hard to believe that people don’t use negative keywords.
3. Build your PPC campaign
Let’s say your iPod cases site has sections for Nano accessories, classic accessories, and one each for iTouch and iPhone etc. Each of these sections is a campaign and has its own ad group – so you will have many ad groups, and each ad group is really just a collection of keywords and adverts. Each type of Nano accessory would have its own AdGroup – furthermore, the AdGroups for iPod Nano cases can be broken down by color and by style.
A good PPC campaign should start with at least 10 AdGroups, and ideally 50 or more. For iPod Nano Accessories you may have over 20 to 30 groups just on Nano cases. The more relevant the keywords and the ads in each AdGroup, the better the Click Through Ratio (CTR). CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions – it is the measurement of response. The better the CTR (ideally 1% or above) – the more likely you are of getting rewarded by Google by lowering the amount you pay for a click and increasing your ads position on the page.
If a customer is looking for a Black iPod Nano case and they see an advert for a Black iPod Nano case, they are more likely to click on this one, rather than on a generic iPod Nano case advert that does not mention color. It’s one of the most common mistakes people make – building generic ads doesn’t mean you are targeting the widest possible range of people. The opposite is true – what you should do is dig into the long tail keywords – and the way we do that is by breaking down the ad groups into tightly themed groups of keywords and ads.
4. Build Different Landing Pages
Each of your products should have their own page, with a very clear ‘buy button’ and a nice description. Amazon does this well. Link the ad straight to that page – the keyword should mirror the ad, which should mirror the landing page. It only takes people three to four seconds to make their decision so you have to make sure the page is quick to load.
5. Create a Variety of Ads
PPC campaigns allow you to have different ad variations, so you can have text ads, which can increase your CTR. By producing different kinds of ad you can monitor any patterns showing, which ads are being clicked, and which aren’t.
6. Report and Analytics
Either Google Analytics or Yahoo Web Analytics can help you examine your SEO and PPC keywords. Pay attention to your bounce rates because it is an important indicator in PPC. Getting a high bounce rate of over 50%, but a high CTR rate means the landing pages need to be fixed.
Ask yourself if your copy matches the PPC ad? Is your copy above the fold? Is it clear what the user should do next? If you are getting both a high bounce rate and a low CTR rate – then you need to look at your PPC campaign. Look at your Ad text and ask yourself – does it match the Keyword Query? You may need more negative keywords so that you can get more relevant traffic.
7. Refine Your Campaign
Study your campaign, learn from it and keep refining it wherever possible. We apply the 80/20 rule. Out of all the keywords, only 20% to 40% may give you real value – i.e. sales. Do not be afraid to pause Keywords or AdGroups that are not delivering a positive ROI.
It’s a very interactive process with the end-users – use PPC to move people onto your Landing Page and use Analytics to understand what they do when they get there.
Following this step will help you make the most out of your PPC campaigns. The best part is that these PPC lessons can be transferred into your SEO campaigns.
Written by Rachelle Money
Originally posted on wordtracker.com