Saturday, October 11, 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.

Tracking the activity on each ad to see if it is productive and efficient is important. You can use tools like AdWords to help calculate the traffic percentage brought in by each advertising. You can then check information from your web host to find out what traffic makes sales. A click sometimes does not make a sale and, if that's the case, could be viewed as just a waste of money.

For every click, you will pay for it even if it did not produce a sale for you. keyword advertising that is not effective at producing sales are draining your resources. Idle keywords should be replaced with another keyword that is more useful. Keywords that are sending you click traffic only will cost money without giving you a sale.

You can do something about the advertising that is not getting good results. First, you have to make sure your advertising is well put together. Your ad should be in the first five to ten pages of a search. If it is not there, you should address the advertising content and replace what isn't working for you. It could be time to look at your keywords and phrases to see if they are 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.

A good ad keyword, on the other hand, is general enough to be thought of by the average person, but specific enough to reach someone who's definitely going to buy. Think about searching for your own keywords, to see what other ads and sites come up for them. Look at the other competitors for a word, then check out their sites. Are they the sort of site you'd like to be associated with? If not, it might be time to make some adjustments to your strategy.

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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