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Why Pay Per Click optimisation is just as important as your actual advertising budget

By Andrew Redfern @ 8th July 2009 5:19 pm

It’s fairly obvious that there is much more to pay per click (PPC) advertising than just grabbing a budget, setting up a keyword, writing an ad and setting it all live.

The basic steps to actually getting more for your money (or indeed getting anything at all) are numerous but worthwhile. Indepth keyword selection, copy writing & testing, landing page selection, setting the time you wish to show your ads it is all key to making sure your ads are visible to the right people. What many online advertisers fail to address is how to make sure your aren’t showing to the wrong people.

Google adWords is an excellent system, massively efficient, easy to use and with a huge reach. It is this reach that poses problems for people. It is amazing how many times we encounter adWords accounts that have been set up without due care and attention and just allowed to run with scant regard for exactly where the ads are appearing.

It is an easy just to get your campaign moving along and there is always extra ways to expand the campaign in order to get the most clicks (and therefore spend the most budget).

Although it is such an obvious thing too many times we find that a campaign’s keywords are all set to broad match. This however is just the first step to ensuring your budget is going on the right place.

The Google content network, ran via the adSense system, is a superb way to increase your exposure. It opens up your ads to literally thousands of extra sites and means potentially millions of extra impression. It is, however, an automated system. It will never be perfect and no matter how much effort Google put into their targetting systems it is always encumbant on the adWords user to monitor which sites their ads are appearing on.

There will always be sites that will not provide relevant clicks, every one of these clicks means one less click from a relevant source. Volume doesn’t always mean enquiries.

The other analysis tool that is generally underused is actually monitoring what terms people are actually typing into Google and it’s search partners to be matched to your adverts. Again Google is brilliant at doing this matching for you but unless you have each and every keyword set to exact match it is vital to continually monitor these queries. This can be done either by careful analysis of the in-built adWords reporting system or via your website monitoring software (for example Google Analytics). Whichever way you choose to do it it is vital exercise because only when you understand exactly what search terms make your ads appear can you begin to make sure that the wasteful, irrelevant terms won’t continue to take up any of your budget.

It’s too easy to see the conversions coming in and assuming your keywords are performing to their maximum. It’s only via constant attention and tweaking can you be sure your budget isn’t being wasted.

Would you like to know more about this subject? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

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