Pay-per-click Advertising: Seven Pointers for Smaller Campaigns
Working with a low budget (for example less than $3,000 a month) pay-per-click campaign is, more often than not, a difficult task. The following checklist will help you get the most out of a small budget PPC campaign.
1. Use Negative Keywords to Block Irrelevant Traffic – Negative keywords are filters that disqualify ads from appearing on search queries. For example, if “Laptop” is a keyword, every time a user runs a search on that keyword, it will display your ad. The result will be the same even if someone searches for “faulty laptop”, “damaged laptop”, etc. By adding words such as “faulty” and “damaged” to your negative list you can avoid a similar problem. This will also improve the quality of traffic produced by your PPC campaign.
2. Research Long-tail Keywords – Keywords such as “buy laptop” or “get laptop” represent purchase intent and clicks created by these keywords such as these are more likely to turn into buyers.
3. Separate Search Network from Content Network – Primary search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! Offer search distribution and content distribution. Do not assume that both are the same. Content channel traffic is of different quality when compared to search generated traffic.
4. Split Keywords into Tightly Organized Ad Groups – It is important to organize your keywords in a logical order. Do not mix keywords associated with one product with keywords from another. For example, If your business sells cheese and fruits, the keywords associated with these products should not be in the same Ad Group.
5. Include Different Match Types – Since Match types match your keywords with user search queries, it becomes an excellent tool to improve the quality of traffic to your website. Keep in mind that Google and MSN allow Broad, Phrase and Exact match (the three match types) to run simultaneously, but Yahoo! does not.