Reprinted Articles

Mistakes in pay per click advertising are common and often very costly. Doing it right requires some vigilance and micromanaging. Here are 10 of the top mistakes people make in their PPC campaigns.

Too Many Keywords Per Ad Group

It’s important to target your ad to be as relevant as possible. Don’t group all your keywords into one or two ad groups. Break them out. Keep them tight. This gives you more control over ad variables so that you can be as relevant as possible.

Not Using Negative Keywords

Negative keywords reduce unwanted impressions, and more importantly, unwanted click throughs. However, with increasing priority given to “quality scores” and click through rates in the PPC engines, it’s key to trim the fat from your keyword campaigns. If your company sells “widget management software” then be sure that you have keywords like “-serial” or “-free” assigned as negative keywords (unless, of course, you offer it for free in some manner). You can find good negative keywords in your log files or when you build your lists.

Not Doing Enough Testing

Running split tests on your ads is essential. And, no item is too small to test. Of course, you will want to work on your various call to action statements, as well as your unique value statement, but keep in mind that there are other variables. There are small, but effective tweaks that can boost results by just testing titles, each line of copy and your display url. If running continual tests is time consuming, hook up with an experience pay per click management company. A good firm can offer you daily split testing and optimize your results very effectively.

Not Tracking Results

It’s not enough to know that you spend $6,000 dollars a month and get back $12,000 in profit. Your bottom-line numbers need to be precise. The PPC engines will give your click through rates, but you need to know your ROI or costs per action in detail. Tracking results can help you to spend only $5,000 a month to get you that same $12,000 in profit.

Not Getting Keyword-Level Tracking

Good analytics or a good pay per click management company will get your data down to the keyword level. Why pay for keywords that are not performing? That money could be better spent on keywords that are doing well or on other marketing expenses. If one keyword has an earning per click of 45 cents and another keyword has an earning per click of $1.45, you need to know. You can lower the bid on one and raise the bid on the other to drive more profits. If you aren’t doing this, you likely have under-performing keywords that are leaking your account daily.

Keywords That Are Too Generic

While some generic keywords can drive a lot of traffic and even be very profitable, they also can be filled with pitfalls. Negative keywords may not be enough to save you from going in the red on a generic keyword. Often, the users doing these searches are at a very early stage of the research and buying process. Again, this is another important reason to track results on a keyword basis.

Ignoring the Many Long-Tail Keywords

This dovetails into the previous item. Building out lists and ads for long-tail keywords can be a time-consuming process, but worthwhile if done right. You are going to have different earnings per click for the keywords “dvd player,” “sony dvd player” and “sony dvd player model DVP-NS57P/B.” One consumer is doing research, while the other is likely pricing for the specific model they want and is ready to buy.

Combining Search and Content Networks

If you don’t want to get burned by click fraud or poor traffic, you need to make sure your content network campaigns and your search network campaigns are separated. If you don’t know what this means, chances are they aren’t separated in your account and you are likely losing money. Ideally, you would have separate campaigns for each, along with precision analytics to know exactly what keyword from which source is converting for you in the content network.

Not Geo-Targeting a Local Business

If you draw most of your business from a local area, the big three PPC engines allow you to geo-target your keywords to that area. This will bring the local market to your doorstep on non-local keyword phrases. This can be hugely profitable.

Not Frequently Monitoring Your Accounts

Okay, so you don’t do daily split testing even though you should. Maybe you don’t continually monitor your earnings per click at the keyword level, even though you should. Still, a lot of PPC advertisers don’t even frequently check into their accounts. Google, Yahoo and MSN are increasingly slapping keywords with the “Inactive for Search” status to get you to improve your quality. They may be slowly picking off your keywords — and your profits — one by one and you aren’t even aware of it.

The Terrible 10 of Pay Per Click Advertising is a lot to consider, but it’s vital for healthy pay per click campaigns. Whether you can actively manage your PPC accounts at this level or you need to hire a pay per click management company to do it, vigilance and precision can make a huge impact on your bottom line.

Last 5 posts by Josh Prizer

• Tired of Lead Generation Services? Turn to Pay Per Click - June 7th, 2008
• Tips for Better PPC Management - May 6th, 2008
• poor pay per click quality scores in google? - March 1st, 2008

Tags: Advertising