Common PPC Mistakes

Top 10 PPC mistakes found in today's campaigns

PPC is the Google's most profitable advertising channel and is designed to give advertisers targeted traffic but it's fiercely competitive. To succeed you need to have a formidable strategy and work with the Google algorithm. Mistakes mean the difference between enjoying a healthy ROI or wasting your valuable budget.

1) Bidding broad match only

Bidding with broad match gets you a very wide scope of traffic picking up many “tail end” search terms and is good for building analytics data for future optimisation for PPC and natural search. Broad match traffic is not highly targeted and you may end up with a lot of irrelevant web hits, which you pay for and this can be expensive. By using exact and phrase match keywords and pausing broad match, you may get less traffic volume but your traffic is more targeted.

2) Bidding for the No.1 position and not monitoring keyword positions and trends

Most of the time, being at position No. 1 in PPC is expensive and not necessary.  Market trends show that users conduct research first before they purchase online. Being No. 1 in PPC will certainly get you a high CTR and lots of clicks but by bidding in the No.2 or 3 position could save your company money whilst still retaining market share.

Of course, each keyword position will have a different CPC, which changes daily, and different CPA/ ROI. How frequently you monitor this is up to you but the more frequently and in detail the better. Do you know which position is best for every keyword in your campaign throughout the day? If you are just guessing this is most likely costing your company 20%-30% more!

3) Landing page not optimised for conversion

The sales message and keywords in your PPC ad must be consistent with your landing page(s).

People click through to your website landing page because they liked what theyve seen in your ad. You can save money on your cost per click by getting a perfect quality score from Google. Another important aspect of the landing page is the call to action - if its below the fold or the button is undistinguished, users may not take the action you were expecting.

4) Not separating content from search campaigns

Any PPC campaign should have search and content separated. This allows you to have a cleaner look of your entire campaign and also to better manage reporting, biding, setting different CPCs and differentiated budgets. Both campaigns run with the same keywords, but one should be for search and one for content.

5) Not using the right keywords in your ad copy

Make sure you are using relevant keywords in your ad copy. Not only will your advert become more relevant, this means most likely it will attract a higher CTR and therefore improved quality score which means lower CPC's and higher ad positioning. You ad will also be more visible users, with the keywords appearing in bold.

6) Not tracking the correct metrics

When managing an e-commerce based product site make sure you measure your profitability. Set all values for your sales in the conversion tracking. It takes more time, but it allows you to measure how profitable your campaign is and also to focus more on the converting keywords and ads.

7) No negative keywords

Traffic is expensive so lets get the right quality! If you have no negative keywords you could be getting traffic that is not relevant and this will push up your costs and CPA. Search engines allow you to filter your visitors by inserting keywords for which your ads will not be shown. Negative keywords are important especially when bidding on broad keywords. Broad matches will get you a wide scope of traffic on many keyword variations, but some visitors may not be your target audience. Why show your ad for the keyword free, job or poor credit when this is definitely not what youre offering. Analytics data can help you identify negative keywords. Be selective, this will give you the best ROI, your traffic will be more targeted this means more sales, higher ROI and lower CPAs.

8) Not properly testing your ads

Why use ads which are not effective? Are you watching the market place, competitor ads, market conditions and competitor offers? It is important to keep your ads relevant, to the point and fresh. Test your ads and then decide which ones are driving the highest ROI. But, how do you know which ads are best? Ok, you can reports but using only CTR or CPA as criteria is not enough. Getting more clicks from an ad doesnt necessarily means its performing well and a low CPA may not get you the most traffic/ sales or ROI. We have developed an ad scoring method based on impressions, CTR and conversions. This will help to determine which ad is truly the best.

9) Your agency has set up a really long list of thousands of non-converting and zero impression keywords

Keywords with zero impressions lower your ad groups quality score. It is pointless having a long list of keywords just to lower your CPCs if the keywords are not relevant and do not drive ROI. Before creating an AdWords/ PPC campaign its very important to select the right keywords. Dont make long lists of keywords that may not even relevant to what youre selling its a false economy. In most markets there is plenty of relevant traffic on the keywords, which are specific to your business. You can use deeper buying techniques bidding on tail end specific keywords with a high conversion rate and not buying so much traffic on generic terms, which although may have lower CPCs they have high volumes of non-converting traffic. Of course, if you can afford to bid on both thats great because customers are browsing around the web and often consider up to seven brands before they make a purchase therefore being part of the complete research and buying cycle is very useful.

10) Not actively working to improve Google quality score

Keywords with a great quality score have lower CPC’s and higher ad positions. Building your quality score over time means you can gradually lower your CPC bids and still retain your ad positioning – that's provided you have a great quality score. Ads with Poor quality score will pay higher CPC’s and will have lower ad positions. According to Google, “quality score is the basis of measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keywords CTR on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword and landing page.” In order to achieve a "great" quality score you should as yourself the following questions:

• Is my campaign properly structured? Do I have targeted ad groups?
• Am I using relevant keywords
• Do I have a relevant landing page with good on-page SEO?
• Is my site easy to navigate and does my landing page convert?
• Are my ads relevant?
• Is my CPC/ budget/ CTR and ad positioning high enough to obtain a great quality score?

Each of these points is an important aspect in building quality score.

New for 2009 is the algorithm update which includes "trust" factors such your Google PageRank, this is good news for trustworthy and well established websites. Many people also believe the algorithm will also be looking at other usability and site conversion rate factors.  

Bonus mistakes 11 and 12

More landing page issues

Lading page title, description and meta-keywords are not consistent with keywords and advertisments - This will lead to higher CPC’s due to lower quality score.

Failing to test landing page(s) and landing page does not load or work correctly - we are always shocked to see so many companies bidding position in one of the sponsored search results but their website or landing page does not work. This is amazing when you consider the amount of money which is potentially wasted.

All these points may sound obvious but often we find it's about doing the basics well.

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