Monday, October 13, 2008

How To Keep Your PPC Campaign Running Smoothly

By Brian Basch

All right, your PPC campaign checklist has all the boxes ticked. You've got the right keywords (don't forget synonyms and phrases) and everything's ready to go so you can just sit back and relax for six months. Are you crazy- Would you just open a sandwich store and go to sleep for six months? A PPC campaign is like any other business venture and needs ongoing management if it's going to be effective.

It would be nice to be able to set up a PPC campaign and let it run on its own, that's not likely to work. Instead, it's important to track activity on each ad to see if it's really as productive and efficient if you like. Use AdWords tools to help calculate the traffic percentage brought in by each ad. Then, check out information your web host can provide to find out what traffic actually led to sales. After all, a click that doesn't lead to a sale is a waste of money.

Keyword ads that aren't effective at producing sales are a drain on your resources. Idle keywords could be replaced by those which are more useful. Keywords that bring traffic, but don't lead to sales, cost money without giving you a return. You'll pay for every click, even the ones that don't produce a sale for you.

The good news is that you can do something about ads that aren't bringing in good results. First, see if you have your ads put together correctly. If so, they'll be in the first five to ten page of a search. If not, address the ad content to get better placement. If so, it's time to see if the keyword itself is the problem

When you start with the more popular keywords, you also bring in more visitors. But the problem is that most popular keywords are a bit nonspecific. Customers who are using popular keywords tend to look at different sites before buying, so the likelihood is that you're attracting window shoppers rather than someone who knows what it is that they want.

Use an advertising keyword that can attract the clicks as well as sales is what you really need. Precise and specific keywords or phrases will possibly entice someone to buy the product. Make some adjustments to your strategy by searching your own keywords and see what it is your competitors are doing. Checking other sites might give you an indication of what you need to change if your current campaign isn't as successful as you'd like.

Monitor your results carefully. This will tell you which keywords should be replaced with more effective ones, and which ones are doing their job. Picking the right words is vital to getting ads which are productive, and bring in traffic that earns money. It's important to pay close attention to your PPC campaign if you're going to succeed.

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