Top 5 Mistakes Made By PPC Newcomers

By Robert Weatherhead, published 1296810908

  The below 5 points outline the top mistakes we see made by PPC newcomers when conducting these health checks.

1. Relying on Google broad match
 
Very few of the Google Adwords campaigns we perform campaign health checks on use anything other than Google broad match.   Whilst utilising broad match will ensure you get maximum coverage on as many search terms as possible it will also mean that you never truly know where your money is being spent.   Your campaign clicks will show against individual keywords in your PPC campaign but you will never truly know whether it was that specific search term the visitor used to reach your site.
 
A broad match strategy also means you are unable to fully optimise your ad text to maximise click through rate and quality score.  As you cannot accurately say what keywords will prompt your ad to be displayed you cannot be sure you have included the appropriate wording to make the ad stand out on the page.

In general, a broad match only strategy will result in higher CPCs due to a lower quality score, lower click through rate.

You will also experience the problems outlined in point 5!

2. Opting in to Google Content Network
 
By default new accounts are opted in to the Google content network and so many new Adwords advertisers don’t change this setting in their account.

Although the Google content network works in some markets, in most, it doesn’t.  And for smaller budget advertisers every click counts, so the low quality clicks from the content network aren’t going to help matters.

3. Broken Links Due to Google Analytics Auto Tagging
 
The option to have Google Analytics auto tag your keyword destination URLs to separate paid and natural search traffic seems the simplest solution when first setting up you analytics account.  But beware!  As in many case Google Analytic ’s auto tagging tool can lead to your destination URLs reaching none existent pages in your website.  Resulting in you paying for clicks and visitors who are going to see an error page and in most cases return straight back to the search results and to into the arms of your competitors!

By all means utilise auto tagging, but make sure you thoroughly test the destination URLs it produces.

4. Poorly Structure Adwords Campaign
 
As the importance of quality score rises, the structure of a Google Adwords campaign becomes nearly as important as the keywords and ads it contains within it.  By splitting keywords into common themes and displaying tightly targeted ad text, CTR will be significantly higher and so will your quality score.  Splitting out important keywords into their own ad groups allows you to monitor their performance individually and separate them from being influenced by other less important search terms.

Don’t, as we see on a regular basis, take 1000 keywords, write one ad text, and dump them all in the same ad group!

5. Lack of Negative Keywords
 
Negative keywords, along with an effective keyword matching strategy, ensure you have complete control over where your PPC ads appear, and more importantly, where they don’t!

On average, from the campaign health checks we perform, 70% of your Adwords budget could be being spent on keywords which don ’t appear in your Google campaign.  Through the broad match reliance described in point 1 you could be spending more than half of your Adwords budget on keywords which are completely irrelevant to your product or service!  Obviously they aren ’t all going to be irrelevant but an effective negative keyword list will ensure you don ’t appear on keywords you wouldn’t want to.


Robert Weatherhead is Operations Director at Latitude, a world leading search marketing agency.  They have developed their own accredited technology, and the passion and professionalism of their people gives you world-class management of your paid and natural search campaigns on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and all other major search engines. Visit www.latitudegroup.com to find out more or contact them on 020 7952 800 to discuss how to improve your Search Engine Marketing (SEM).


View a video of Robert Weatherhead explaining how you can deliver a knockout PPC campaign.

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Follow more of Rob Weatherhead’s thoughts via his digital marketing blog or through the Latitude Group website.