Generate Success

Setting up a Pay per Click (PPC) campaign with Google AdWords is relatively simple.  But setting up a successful campaign that will earn you money and not cost you a fortune, is less simple.

Here are five tips to help a small business to set up a successful Google Pay per Click (PPC) campaign.

1. Don’t only use broad match keywords
Google offer three ways in which your PPC advert can be included in a search listing – broad match, phrase match and exact match.  By default the keywords use a broad search.  This will give you the most traffic, but it will be unqualified and result in quantity not quality leads.

Broad match catches all searches looking for one or more of the keywords you have listed; whereby a phrase match will only include your campaign if all the keywords are included in the search.

An exact search will only list your PPC campaign if the search exactly matches your keywords.

Read How to be successful with PPC for a more detailed explanation.

2. Mistyping the URL or Landing Page address will cost you
Be very careful when adding the PPC campaign destination URL or what’s known as a Landing Page.  If you mistype your website landing page address you will pay for the traffic being sent to a non-existent page.

Google will take some time to report this problem.  So always test your links from within the Google AdWords admin.  That way you can be confident the link is working and will not be charged for testing the link.

3. Google’s Content Network isn’t good with a small budget
By default, your new campaign will not only show on relevant Google searches, it will also be included throughout Google’s Content Network.  This means your advert will show on blogs, websites, other search engines and web directories.

Google’s Content Network can work depending on the campaigns, but the traffic will be less focused and therefore more quantity than quality.  Therefore, this is best avoided for campaigns with a small budget or low profit margins.

4. Separate your PPC keywords list & setup smaller campaigns
Setting up one campaign with a long list of keywords is another way of throwing money away.  You need to divide keywords into small associated lists and create several smaller campaigns.

Your campaigns can then focus on a few specific keywords and use those keywords in the title and body of the relevant PPC campaign.

Google will reward your campaigns for relevancy.  More keyword-targeted campaigns will also receive a stronger CTR (Click through Rate); meaning your campaigns will receive a higher percentage of quality traffic.  All of which will increase your campaign ranking.

In many cases where I have been asked to turnaround a badly setup PPC campaign I see one generic campaign with a list of hundreds of keywords using broad match.  In many cases the PPC campaign has been setup using automated PPC software.

5. Target your PPC campaigns by using negative keywords
Once you have created smaller, more focused PPC campaigns with specific keywords you will also need to add a list of ‘negative keywords.’

A negative keyword is a way of further concentrating a search with any keyword matching.  For example, if you were a finance company offering a factoring service, and your keyword list including the word factor, you would want to exclude any searches for, say X Factor or Max Factor.

To add negative keywords to your keywords list you need to add a hyphen before each keyword:
-x factor
-max factor

Negative keywords, along with an effective keyword matching strategy will allow you to focus your PPC campaigns which in turn will offer you much greater success with Google AdWords.