What is printed below is not by any means meant to be the be all and end all to PPC optimization. The lists and ideas are by no means exhaustive and are in fact just the tip of the iceberg in terms of PPC Optimization tips.
However, if you are a new PPC Manager looking for a little bit of security in the very insecure and forever changing world of PPC Management, the PPC optimization tips found below will at least help you to feel more secure by knowing what is likely to happen when you choose to take a particular action within one of the PPC Campaigns that you happen to be running at the time.
Therefore, take on board the following advice and expand upon it.
The most important thing to remember is that PPC Management testing, PPC Optimization and PPC experimenting are positive actions to take in PPC Management. You must make changes, you must explore and at times, with experience, you should try taking risks too. It is the only way in which a PPC Campaign can really be improved and the only way in which a PPC Manager can become better at their job too.
Read on, take notes and start optimizing your PPC Campaigns with more certainty without delay.
How to increase click through rate:
- Find trends on the advertisements that are performing well and create more advertisements using those insights
- Tighten up your geotargeting to areas that have high conversion rates
- Tighten up your dayparting to times of the day/week that have high conversion rates
- Use negative keywords to be sure your advertisements aren’t shown to the “wrong people.” A good example is “bread”—you may be a bakers selling bread online, but your advertisement is appearing every time a user searches for “Bread,” the music band or “Bread,” the British 1980s TV sitcom
- Split ad groups up into tighter keyword groups so you can use more specific advertisements
How to lower CPCs:
- Lower your maximum bids on your keywords
- Use more long-tail terms vs. general terms: “buy used cars” and “buy cars online” will yield better results than “cars”
- Create separate campaigns for geotargeting. If you’re running nationally, you may be paying too much in some markets. By creating separate campaigns, you can control your bids better
- Gap surf—find position changes that don’t move you down too far on the SERP but that do offer a huge saving in costs. Try lowering your bids by a couple of cents every day to find these opportunities more easily
How to increase traffic:
- Increase your bids
- Increase your budget
- Use more broad match keywords to appeal to a “wider net” of internet users
- Create more general advertisements as opposed to specific advertisements in order to appeal to a wider audience *
* Be careful that you do not ruin your quality scores in taking this approach to the extreme
How to increase your conversions/return on investment (ROI):
- Lower your CPCs to get the most clicks possible for your budget—twice the traffic could mean twice the purchases
- Use negative keywords to filter our poor performing topics
- Optimize your landing pages further
As noted above this checklist, there is a lot more to consider when testing and experimenting with your PPC Campaign on a daily basis, but if you are new to PPC Advertising or PPC Management, this checklist will at least give you an idea of what things you can do in order to achieve particular kinds of results.
We hope it is of use to you all!
