Jeremy Durant — December 30, 2016 Follow @BopDesignSD
If you want to drive more relevant traffic to your website, AdWords is often a quick, effective tactic. It can take years for your website to rank organically for targeted keyword phrases and AdWords allows your company website to rank immediately for search queries.
If you are new to AdWords or to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, you need to be very careful since it’s easy to exhaust an advertising budget quickly.
Here are some PPC best practices as you implement an AdWords campaign and maximize your budget.
- Be Highly Targeted with Keyword Matches. When targeting keyword phrases on a small budget, do not use broad match but instead use exact, modified broad and phrase match.
Broad match means that your ads will show up for search queries that are not ideal—Google essentially makes the decision for you on when the ads will show up. With more targeted matches like modified broad, phrase and exact, you can make sure your ads show up for ideal searches.
- Stack Your Bids. With modified broad, phrase and exact match, “stack” your bids with the highest bids on ideal keyword phrases. Typically, exact matches are ideal search queries, so bid highest for those matches with modified broad and phrase matches at a lower bid. You want to bid highest for the search queries that match exactly.
- Build Out Negative Keywords. If you are targeting modified broad and phrase matching, it’s critical to build out your negative keywords list so that your ads don’t show up for the wrong search queries. Be both proactive and reactive. There are many negative keywords you don’t want that you can proactively add before starting the campaign.
Often, negative keywords like “jobs,” “careers,” etc. don’t make sense unless you are using the campaigns as a recruiting tool. Also, more research based search queries like “how to” or “what is” are typically good to add to a negative keywords list. Always target positive keywords that are buying signals and remove negative keywords that are not.
- Pay Attention to Campaign Settings. Set up your campaign so that your ads are showing at optimal times and places. If you are a B2B company, typically you want your ads only showing during business hours or all day Monday through Friday. If you market a high-end, luxury product, utilize demographic targeting to show ads to locations with the top 10% household income. Adjusting the settings ensures that you are spending your ad budget efficiently.
These four PPC best practices make sure the launch of your AdWords campaigns are a success and you can start generating viable sales opportunities from paid search.
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