What Can I Do to Improve the Performance of My PPC Campaigns?

Why are my ads getting so many impressions? Why are my conversions low for my display ads? Why is one of my adgroups under performing? The SMX Experts addressed all of these questions and more by providing useful tips and suggestions for your paid search campaigns. Below are the highlights of the discussion:

Quality Score:

• Focus on the quality score for each keyword in your campaign
• Review the quality score of your keywords weekly
• Adjust the budget, match type or destination page for each of your keywords
• Don’t live under the tyranny of quality score : if your keyword quality score is below 3 pause or adjust the keyword

Tighten up your ad Groups:

• Create adgroups with very similar keywords or themes
• Remove keywords in each adgroup that have a low quality score
• Write specific adcopy catered to each adgroup

Impressions Share:

• This metric is a percentage of impressions you received divided by number of impressions you were eligible.
• Understand why there was impression share – was it rank or budget? Make sure to include this metric in your analytical review.
• If you have lost impressions share due to budget, look at the day-parting settings for your campaign as well as the daily budget.
• If you have lost impressions share due to rank, focus on the quality score of each keyword.

Negative keywords:

• Review the negative keywords in your campaign frequently.
• Instead of having very specific, long-tailed negative keywords include common keywords that will ensure that your ad is not shown. For example: add the negative keyword “job” vs. “hotel lobby job in san Francisco”. In this case, you will be sure that your ad will not show for any job related search.
• Run search query reports to discover new keywords to add to the campaign.

Along with these tips it is important to have keyword landing page cohesion, an organized campaign structure, and ad copy testing. All of these tips are extremely helpful in finding solutions to your campaigns problems or optimizing your campaign.

Speakers:

• Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster (Moderator)
• Rick Galan, Director of Paid Search Marketing, Mercent
• Brad Geddes, Founder, Certified Knowledge
• Kelly Gillease, VP Marketing, Viator
• Barb Young, President, PPC Strategies

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Contributed by: Amanda Brinkerhoff, PPC Manager