Jan
28
In part one of the series, I gave you a simple outline of a methodology that optimizes your PPC campaigns. Under this methodology, your number 1 goal is to find profitable keywords and milk them for all they’re worth. To do this, you need to increase your Click-Through Rate (CTR). You see, Google AdWords is not really Pay Per Click. In reality, it’s a very complex algorithm that that has more to do with your CTR rate than anything. You’re not necessarily paying per click, you’re pay for every 1,000 impressions. So, if your ad gets 1 click for every thousand impressions, your cost per click is going to be significantly higher than someone who gets 100 clicks per thousand impressions. This is called your CPM (Cost Per Mille). This works the same on the Content Network as well and other PPC networks like Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter are going in this direction as well.
You see, Google is not trying to punish you, rather, they are trying to make the most money off of you as possible–which, in turn, makes you a lot of money. They want to people to click on your ads. They really do! If your ad is not being clicked on, they’re loosing money from other businesses who have ads that people want to click on. So, Google automatically places the best performing ads on the first page of Google’s results and penalizes those ads that don’t perform by increasing their Cost Per Click (CPC).
So, how do you increase your CTR? Believe it or not, it’s really easy. All you have to do is test your ads.
- First make sure that you bid on Exact, Phrase, and Broad versions of each keyword.
- Organize your keywords into AdGroups. Like I said before, it’s a really good idea to create a separate AdGroup for each keyword and put different variations of those keywords into each group.
- Bid on Negative keywords. This will increase your CTR by not showing your ad for keywords that don’t perform.
- Put each keyword into your ad body as much as possible. Make sure it’s in the headline, the body, and the display URL.
- Split test your ads. Remove ads that don’t perform and replace them with ads that do perform.
Most people I talk to about Google AdWords share stories of failure. They simply don’t understand how people can afford to pay $1.00-10.00/click and stay in business. The truth is that although the minimum CPC may be expensive, having a very good CTR will lower your CPC dramatically. I know people who bid on keywords that are $10/click, and they pay only 50 cents because they have such a high QualityScore. In reality, you can build a more successful AdWords campaign than a Fortune 500 company who spends millions by only spending a few thousand. If you know what you’re doing, the possibilities are endless.
Article written by Andrew J. McClary, © 2008, All Rights Reserved.
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