The major search engines continue to improve their paid search networks to provide searchers with the most relevant websites and listings. They are researching and putting into place the most innovative search filtering technology that is out to give everyone exactly what they are searching for. There are still principles that must be followed in order to get the best results without blowing your budget. Here are five great techniques that will help you with your paid ads and to convert a search to a buyer.
- You have got to know who your target audience is. Hopefully you know enough about the product or service that you are offering that this will be a no brainer for you. Knowing the demographic that you are targeting will not only help you to include the right wording and information contained in your title and description but it will also help with the types of keyword phrases you are using.
- Choose the most relevant keywords for your ad. This is a vital part of being successful with PPC because this is where it all starts. You choose the keywords, the keyword gets searched, your ad shows and possibly gets clicked on. When choosing the right keywords for your ad, I feel that it is a good idea to start with about 10-15. I like to start with the most specific keywords for the ad and landing page that my traffic will be sent to. I also like to start out with exact match so I can get my quality score right where I need it. I know that people will say that it is extremely important to have thousands and thousands of keywords. That is true, but spread them across multiple ad groups. There is no sense in stuffing keywords in just to have them, especially if they are not as relevant to that specific ad and landing page. Get your quality score where it needs to be, then add more relevant keywords to the group.
- Send your traffic to the most relevant page on your website. It is never a good idea to just send them to the homepage if there is another page, like a product category page or even a specific product page that is more relevant to what they searched for. Sending a visitor that has clicked on your ad to a page and then making them do more clicking and searching is a sure way of turning them off from your website. Earlier I posted a great article on how to improve your landing pages. If you have a great click through rate, but a high bounce rate you need to check your landing page for possible distractions, broken links or maybe just the page you are sending them.
- Always test your traffic when you are running any PPC campaigns. Like I have said before, PPC is the only sure way of getting traffic to your website. You have full control of your success as long as you are testing and looking for ways that you can improve your conversions. Some of the elements that I like to test are my bounce rate. I look at my entry pages and exit pages and then look for possible causes to why a visitor leaves my website. Split A/B testing is a must. If you want to get the most out of the testing process, split testing will help you dial in your landing pages to a point that they are converting at a healthy rate.
- Once you have gone through the first four steps above you will see an improvement in your conversions. Once you have some statistical data, you can begin your number crunching. I like to find out what my cost is to acquire a new visitor through PPC to my site. To figure this out just take your total profit and divide it by the number of visitors that you have received via your PPC campaign. This will help you to see if you can adjust your budget to increase your bids and eventually drive more traffic and increase conversions.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I love what you have to say. You might also suggest:
1. free tracking like http://prosper202.com/apps/
2. Adwords advanced ad scheduling. Run your ads only when they make money, and/or alter your bid throughout the day to make money at all hours.
3. Adwords conversion optimizer may be an option for some.
4. Although it’s a different animal, the content network provides 20% of sales made through adwords.
Thanks for the suggestions Danger. Those are also some great ideas coming from someone that uses them and sees the benefits. Great comment!
Obviously you got some good grades in English Class! I see your Blog is growing and many really great articles. I wish you success in this area and I will be back to read regularly to continue my research.
I really liked this post. Can I copy it to my site? Thank you in advance.
It’s a masterpiece. I have never thought people can have such ideas and thoughts. You are great.