Drive Qualified Traffic
A paid search campaign can be a very profitable way to drive traffic to your website. Unlike SEO, it allows the marketer to direct traffic to a specific page on a website through ad text that the marketer has created. Also, it allows a marketer to have traffic to a site much more quickly than depending solely on organic traffic.
A profitable PPC campaign is based on solid keyword research and relevant ad text directing to a well optimized landing page. It is then essential to track results and conversions in order to measure profitability and make necessary adjustments. All elements of a PPC campaign can be tested (keywords, ad text and landing page elements) but should be tested on an individual basis in order to note which change made the improvement.
Getting Started
We suggest creating an account with one or all of the following major search engines:
Once you have created your account(s) it is time to organize your keywords into theme related groupings. For example, if you are driving traffic to a website promoting a driver product, your keyword groupings may look like this:
- HP printer drivers
- HP printer driver downloads
- HP deskjet printer drivers
- HP printer drivers for Vista
- HP printer drivers for XP
Because these keywords are closely related to each other, it is easier to write relevant ad text. For example ad text for these keywords could look like:
- HP Driver Downloads
- Repair HP Drivers on Vista & XP
- Free Download – 100% Guaranteed
You then direct each grouping to a specific landing page. It is important to match keywords through to the landing page. Searchers should not have to look for the relevance of the page to match what they are looking for. If they clicked on “HP printer drivers” they should see that on the page. You may have the best phrases, but if the searcher doesn’t see what they are searching for clearly and quickly, they are gone. Then you are paying for clicks that have a low chance of converting.
It is also important to set up a budget and work within it. What can you afford? Go for long tail keywords that may have lower search volume, but cost less and have a higher CTR. For example, don’t start a new driver campaign on “update drivers”.
Once you have the basic structure of your campaign, there are a few more advanced steps you can take.
1. Geo-Targeting
Allows you to determine which regions, countries etc will be shown your relevant ads.
2. Time and Day Targeting (Ad Schedualing)
Allows you to determine specify days and times that your relevant ads will be shown.
3. Keyword Match Type
The search engines allow you to specify how exact of a match you would like for your keywords.
Google & MSN offer
Broad: will allow query in any word order, likely equivalents and misspellings
Phrase: will show queries in exact order, but could have words before or after
Exact: will only show queries that are an exact match
Negative: prevents ads from showing for unwanted phrases. These can be broad, phrase or exact matched.
Yahoo offers
Standard: will include queries with exact word order, common misspellings, singular or plural and words from your ad
Advanced: will include queries in any order, common misspellings, singular or plural and words in ad or website
Excluded: prevents ads from showing for unwanted phrases.
Useful Tools
Google Adword Editor: This is a great free application for managing ad campaigns offline. Using this tool is much easier and faster to use than doing it online.
Google, and Microsoft adCenter free conversion trackers.
