6 Top Tips to Avoid a PPC Credit Crunch
As the pay-per-click (PPC) market grows and becomes more competitive it also becomes more expensive to obtain high position. It has been quoted by some that inflation is making the PPC marketing channel too expensive and that PPC inflation is killing online profits. Positions are calculated on Google by the amount you bid times your quality score, the advertiser with the highest outcome of this calculation appears top.
So as the market gets more competitive to avoid constantly raising your keyword bid you need to raise your quality score. Both MSN and Yahoo use a similar calculation to determine your position on their search engines and similar things can be done to improve their version of quality score to reduce your average cost per click (CPC). Below are my top 5 tips to improving quality score and avoiding PPC inflation.
1. Structure your campaign's into highly targeted themed ad groups. This means that all the keywords in the same ad group should all be very similar to each other e.g 12V Drill, 12 Volt Drill, 12V Drills and 12V Drills.
2. Try using different keyword match types to drive the most targeted traffic to your site. Some believe that if your keyword research is done thoroughly then having all your keywords on exact match only is the best policy. I personally often have keywords on all three match types at least till I have enough data to make a valid decision.
3. Really be rigorous with your negative research and include as many as possible. With some broad match keywords Google can drive extremely irrelevant traffic to your site wasting your money without the right negatives. Add as many broad match negatives as possible and then add phrase and exact match negatives to stop non-targeted traffic.
4. Make all of your ads keyword rich, this is always easier when you have highly themed ad groups from 1. This will make the ads highly relevant to all the keywords in the ad group improving quality score and click through rate (CTR).
5. Choose landing page's at keyword or ad group level that are highly relevant to all the traffic that the keywords will generate and have at least one obvious call to action. If you can, make bespoke landing pages for your campaign that are keyword rich and have all the information a visitor will be looking for with several quick calls to action.
6. Continually review and improve on all areas of your campaign. Constant monitoring of bids is needed and extra attention is needed whenever you make any big changes to the campaign. Remember the top position doesn't necessarily have the best CPA, keep varying your strategy to best meet your objectives. Also make use of Google's tools and reports like Google Analytics, Search Query Reports and Ad Performance Reports to constantly improve all areas of your campaign and quality score in the process.
