Internet Marketing Blog » PPC ads

Save Money with Good PPC Management

Alan — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:26:49 +0000

Poor PPC management can soon lead to loss of money and valuable resources though mounting CPC and lack of conversions. There are many ways this can show itself and when managing your pay per click campaigns there are certain things which can have a significant negative impact. Here are some typical examples of influences which can play a large part in that:

A website lacking clear definition

A poorly defined website will soon send visitors running. If the layout is confusing with illogical or poorly designed navigation you will fail to get the conversion rates you need. Creating a winning internet marketing strategy can take time and you can test a variety of website versions if time allows to maximise your conversions. It may be that a simple landing page is more effective than a complex 50 page website. The keywords, site and your ads need to be synchronised to ensure the user has a positive, simple and rewarding experience to help you achieve good conversion rates.

No Google Analytics and AdWords tracking

The great thing about pay per click is that most things are measureable. If you fail to track you won’t be able to identify those ads, landing pages and keywords that work…and those that definitely don’t. Never set up a campaign without setting up tracking and comprehensive analytics tools.

Traffic hitting broken pages

It is a complete waste of money to send traffic to broken pages. Always check back that all pay per click elements relating to a deleted or moved page have been fully removed or correctly forwarded. Not only will you find yourself spending your PPC budget unnecessarily if you allow this to happen but it also looks unprofessional. Users won’t hang around to try and find the right page on your site – you’ll simply try somewhere else.

At www.clickconsult.com we offer expert PPC management services and advice, and a comprehensive range of other internet marketing solutions.

What Is DHTML? When it comes to web design, dynamic web pages are...
Understanding Search Engines Part 4: Algorithms In order to determine which pages rank where in their...
Is Your Code To Content Ratio Hampering Your SEO? One of the factors that search engines look at when...

Maintaining PPC Test Validity

Alan — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:44:11 +0000

Testing PPC ads is a significant part of pay per click management and yet it can be a little confusing at times. What should you be testing and what actually determines a valid test? Are there factors that cannot be tested but could potentially affect performance? To ensure the best possible results test have to be planned out and there must be a knowledge and understanding of all the other elements that could affect your results but cannot be monitored.

You can raise the validity of a PPC test and there are many changes that can be made based on the data returned from campaign tests but there will always be those occasions when tweaks made on the basis of statistics returned reap completely unanticipated performance results. These ‘WHAT?!’ moments when a campaign either soars or crash dives following amendments made on the basis of concentrated analysis may have been caused by outside factors. The question is can they be controlled? This is a question that cannot be answered definitively but by understanding what those factors are we can respond quickly and effectively when things don’t go to plan. We can even avoid those nasty surprises.

There are general things you can do to improve validity such as ensuring you test for up to 1,000 impressions before making changes. However the best way of ensuring statistical validity is to use an analysis tool. For the human eye and brain it can be a tall order to look at results and estimate whether the performance has been affected so use the wide range of tool available.

At www.clickconsult.com we offer expert pay per click management including campaign testing and analysis.

Reducing PPC Click Costs PPC Bid Management is all about ensuring that you do...
Understand What Drives Your Customers For Effective PPC Ads If you are looking to optimise your PPC ad text...
Get the Right Start to Your PPC Campaign When companies first consider using PPC as a form of...

How To Boost Traffic

Alan — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 08:00:28 +0000

If you have a goal to increase sales, sign ups or leads by encouraging more traffic to your website you will get much closer to achieving your goal.

Here are some ways you can drive new traffic to the site without spending more budget on your PPC campaign. This will then lead to increased leads and higher revenue when you embark on your web marketing venture.

Cease your ad text testing for a time

If you are at the end of the month you can drive more traffic by temporarily pausing ad text testing. Leave only the top performing ad to run to attract high levels of traffic. Once the next month begins you can un-pause the ad texts and start testing again.

Separate content network

One way of increasing traffic is to switch off the content network for your sponsored search. Then you can create a new campaign using only the content network. Use general keywords and assess which sites are driving the most traffic by accessing the content network placement report.

Add all match types

If currently you do not apply all match types in Google then it is recommended to do so. This includes exact, broad and phrase. You don’t have to separate them into different ad groups but you will probably get a better click though rate if you do.

Keyword Tools

Use the keyword tool monthly to add new keywords. As more people use Google and Yahoo to search the more keywords will be added to the keyword list in keyword tools.

At Click Consult we can help with all your pay per click advertising.

PPC’s Lazy Landing Pages Part II Last week I was discussing the merits of keyword destination...
Using Keyword Based Pay Per Click Marketing PPC marketing on the Internet is based on search engines...
Using Ad Group Separation To Identify Your Target Audience Although you’ll never get relevant PPC traffic from all your...

Benefit From Holiday Success All Year Round

Laura — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:00:06 +0000

When assessing seasonal campaigns, there are certain questions that you should ask yourself and certain elements that need to be evaluated on your pay per click campaigns.

Impressions

During a holiday period did you get more impressions for your keywords than you normally would? Did the impressions apply to your standard keywords or were they in relation to holiday specific keywords such as ‘Easter bonanza’ or ‘Christmas sale’?

Click Through Rate

Getting tonnes of impressions means little if you aren’t generating more traffic to your website so next ask yourself whether the ads that were holiday themed were more successful than those without a theme. What type of differences can you see and how did the changes to copy affect the results? Was it the fact that you were offering a bonus or discount that increased traffic?

Conversion rates

The increase of conversion rate is your ultimate goal and this is the key metric for determining whether a holiday themed ad has been effective or not. Did you find that conversions increased throughout the holiday period? How did certain keywords convert?

After asking these questions about holiday themed PPC campaigns note down the adjustments that were made that appear to have made a difference to your results. You can take these and use them later in standard ad campaigns to improve performance. Keep some of the keywords if appropriate and test it further.

At Click Consult we provide expert guidance on all pay per click and web marketing campaigns.

Keywords Can’t Be Too Specific On PPC General keywords in PPC campaigns always generate the most impressions,...
Find Your Negatives On a regular basis you should run search query reports...
Buy Today’s Christmas Gifts at Tomorrow’s Prices Today's global economic environment seems to be very unstable especially...

Give Your PPC Campaigns An Overhaul

Alan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:05:08 +0000

Often we have so many elements to a PPC campaign that it’s hard to keep an eye on everything. Even if you are a very proactive manager there can be parts of the account that are silently hindering the campaign’s performance. It is when your PPC account is performing well that you need to pay most attention to these campaign killers.

False campaign settings

When a campaign is set up the first thing you do is check all the settings. However if you have several campaigns going live at once or if campaigns are being added on a frequent basis, you can easily miss something. This is not irreparable but will hinder the campaign from fully performing. To keep on top of things check the settings for bidding and budgets, location targeting, position preference and delivery method, networks, devices and extensions, and finally, ad delivery, rotation and frequency capping.

Ad text tests

By constantly testing payment per click ad texts you will achieve your goals. If you have launched tests in the past but haven’t checked on them recently now is the time to do it. Don’t miss out on following up on split testing. Check for underperforming ads.

Identify underperforming keywords

You may find that there are no obvious poor ad groups but you could have poor keywords lurking within an ad group that may be generating traffic but not converting visits to sales. Run a report to identify any.

We are experts at pay per click campaigns at Click Consult. Speak to us for help with your PPC account and online marketing.

Making Your Early PPC Efforts Pay When starting a brand new PPC campaign it can seem...
Convert Your PPC Ads To Yahoo Google Adwords is used by most PPC… managers, and you...
Beat The PPC Killers With any PPC campaign it can be a challenge to...

Tips For Ad Scheduling – Part 2

Alan — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:06:13 +0000

Before you decide to change your ad scheduling it’s best to do some investigation first to ensure it’s the right thing to do. Following on from our previous article here are more great tips on how you should prepare before opting to introduce ad scheduling:

Assess multiple metrics

On a lead-focused account you will probably be most concentrated on the total spend versus actual leads generated – and this is how it should be. However it is worthwhile including other metrics such as the click through rate and the cost per lead. The Quality Score can be dramatically affected by poor click through rates. You may find that early morning the PPC ads are spending money rather than anything else but you may also have a high click through rate. In this case you might decide to leave those ads running at that time to avoid a drop in Quality Score. You can simply amend the bid setting and reduce it by 50 per cent.

Adjusting bid hourly

As a first step, adjust bids by the hour rather than jumping in and amending bids by the day. Reducing keyword bids by the hour will have a smaller impact than if you went the whole hog and amended them for a whole day. Take baby steps and build up to bigger changes that will have a more significant impact on the performance of the account.

At Click Consult, we can offer professional advice on improving your pay per click accounts.

How Important is Bid Management in PPC? “Surely once my PPC campaign goes live I can...
Google Adwords – first page bid estimates for PPC As part of Google's recent changes to their PPC advertising...
How to get continuous improvements from Your PPC Campaign PPC advertising is renowned for providing marketers with the quickest...

Be A Success Internationally With PPC

Alan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:05:07 +0000

If your PPC campaign is targeting other countries then there are some steps you can take to ensure everything runs smoothly. The key is to target according to location on the campaign level and keep the following pointers in mind:

PPC ads targeting a specific country are targeting that specific country’s Google domain name extension. This means for example ads targeting Canada will be shown on www.google.ca. However make sure you are aware that your language settings must match your target user’s preferences in order to show.

The IP address is also relevant and if a searcher is situated in Canada. By searching on Google you will see ads that are targeted towards Canada.

When targeting an international audience you need to pay attention to your language setting. Google users set a default language setting. If they leave the language preference blank then the Google domain language setting is used.

A way of explaining this is to imagine you are targeting Spanish users. However your language setting is defaulted to English so it’s likely a high percentage of traffic will be coming in from web users who have a Spanish IP address but are using Google. If you choose Spanish as a language then the traffic you get will be from Google.com and Google.es.

With the web now opening channels into international markets it has become important to understand how best to utilise PPC within these parameters. At Click Consult we have years of experience in honing pay per click campaigns and ensuring clients get the best results.

Sign Up for MSN Analytics Now! Last week, MSN released their version of Web Analytics to...
Mobile Advertising Mobile Advertising Although mobile advertising …is only a fraction of...
Developing Global SEO You have a business that operate in a global arena...

PPC – is the risk too great?

Laura — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:18:45 +0000

When it comes to the internet, there is a myriad of different types of advertising you can choose from of which pay per click is only one. However, pay per click is one of the most popular forms of search engine marketing available to you as a website owner. When you take out a pay per click advertisement, you bid on keywords that you want to use.

The higher you bid for a specific keyword, the higher your rank on the search engine will be. The pay per click advertisements on search engines are those you can find under the ‘sponsored links’ section. With all this positive talk about pay per click, is it right for your business or is it too much of a risk?

Risky business or not?

Pay per click advertising is a great way to generate a lot of publicity and traffic for your website in a short space of time. It may well be just the thing that your new, established, large or small business needs to increase your search engine optimisation. The risk with pay per click is that you can lose a lot of money if you do not set the advertisement up carefully.

Directing the wrong traffic to your website will see you paying for each click, but none of those clicks will convert to sales. This is why it is a good idea for you to get some professional help with your pay per click advertising campaign. Professionals will be able to offer you the right advice as to how, where, when and why to set up your PPC campaign.

The Keywords You Use Can Make Or Break Your Internet Marketing Campaign Internet marketing… is a huge concept that covers many different...
Using Website Search Engine Optimisation Your website is your window to the world. This is...
Using Data From Search Engine Reports Online marketing is hugely competitive. For any business that wishes...

Penny teaser

Laura — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:25:33 +0000

Internet marketing is your biggest and most reliable marketing tool in all its various aspects. All advertising is going to cost you something and it is up to you to make the decision as to which advertising avenue is going to work out the most cost effective.

When you look at any type of internet advertising you need to look at and weigh up the potential dividends. Of all the internet marketing strategies, PPC is very easy to get completely wrong. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake but a PPC mistake can cost your business serious money.

Get it right and save

The marketing game plan has changed over the years with the progression from mostly publication based advertising to online internet advertising. The ball game has shifted significantly and the court has been utterly revamped. And so, you need to change your marketing tactics in order to make a profit and not a loss from your advertising ventures.

In the past you could grab the attention of any reader and then try to sell your product. Introducing PPC has changed the rules. Whereas it didn’t cost you a single penny to attract attention previously – that attention now costs you precious pennies. With PPC you cannot afford to have every Tom, Dick and Harry clicking on your ad because you got their attention.

Every single last click that happens on your PPC advertisement costs you money and creating a false hype with false promises attached is a sure way to PPC failure. Get attention and sell your product at the same time. Make sure that every last person who clicks offers you a good chance of business.

Maximising ROI with PPC Internet marketing… is your biggest and most reliable marketing tool...
Is the PPC revolution on its way? CPA advertising (aka Cost-Per-Acquisition/Action, Cost-Per-Conversion, Cost-Per-Phone Call, Cost-Per-Sale and Cost-Per-Enquiry)...
Use PPC For A Fast Boost Pay per click advertising is a well established marketing strategy...

Fast PPC results versus slow free results

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:13:19 +0000

There are many forms of advertising on the Internet. There are search engine optimisation tactics for advertising as part of your overall optimisation efforts. Then there are various free advertising methods available.

You have ad exchanges, online press releases as well as social media marketing. With all these various advertising methods that come mostly free, where does pay per click advertising fit into this? Most people see PPC advertising as a fast method to drive traffic, but also as cutting deeply into your budget. Why then are so many companies making use of PPC advertising?

Benefits of PPC

There are different answers to what benefits a PPC campaign will bring any business. The first answer is that you reach your target market faster than other advertising methods. With articles you have the benefits of building links that bring good traffic to your website. This makes it a great free online tool for marketing. This is slow, though, and will not bring results within hours or days.

This is applicable to all forms of free advertising. It works, but takes quite a long time to show results. Search engine advertising works faster than the other forms of free advertising but none of these matches the speed of PPC advertising. PPC advertising is also easy to track and to measure and this is very important for any business.

You are also able to specifically target the exact group of people you want to reach with PPC advertising. This makes the answer in favour of PPC advertising three-fold. It is fast, measurable and totally target focused, hence its popularity.

Time To Make Some Real Money With Pay Per Click Marketing Traditional advertising methods have always been laborious, time-consuming and very...
Why exactly is pay per click so popular? Getting organic ranking for your website in the search engine...
Budgeting For PPC When it comes to pay per click advertisements, money is...