Mistakes in pay per click advertising are common and often very costly. Doing it right requires some vigilance and micromanaging. Here are 10 of the top mistakes people make in their PPC campaigns.
Too Few Ad Groups For Your Keywords
If you put all your keywords into just a few big and broad ad groups, it's time to restructure your account. You are missing out on important flexibility that pay per click advertising allows. Tighter ad groups allows you more focussed, relevant ads.
Ignoring Negative Keywords
Negative keywords reduce unwanted impressions, and more importantly, unwanted click throughs. However, with increasing priority given to "quality scores" and click through rates in the PPC engines, it's key to trim the fat from your keyword campaigns. If your company sells "widget management software" then be sure that you have keywords like "-serial" or "-free" assigned as negative keywords (unless, of course, you offer it for free in some manner). You can find good negative keywords in your log files or when you build your lists.
Not Enough Testing
Split-testing your ads is critical. Even the smallest of changes can boost results. In addition to testing your ad copy's "call to action" or value statements, every ad has multiple variables to test. The titles, the two lines of copy, and display url all can be optimized. If you don't have time for hands-on testing, a good professional pay per click management company can run daily split testing for you. You'd be surprised how well this can pay off.
Not Tracking Results
If you do get into testing ads and fine-tuning your keyword lists, it's only as effective as your tracking. Any PPC search engine will give you your ad spends and click through rates, but what about the bottom-line success? Knowing that you made $14,000 off of a $7,000 ad spend is fine, but if you dig deeper with your tracking you might be able to make that same $14,000 with only $6,000 a month in spend. That savings ads up.
Not Getting Keyword-Level Tracking
Setting up good analytics yourself or hiring a professional pay per click management company can do the job. Not only do you get more bang for your buck by getting rid of poor performers, but getting tracking to the keyword-level makes all of your testing and work even more precise. You need to know your earnings per click. If one keyword has a 56 cent Earnings Per Click (EPC) and another had a $1.22 EPC, this is important knowledge. Adjusting your bids to an appropriate level can keep you from over spending...or allow you to throttle up your overall traffic for even more success. Don't let poor keywords leak your accounts.
Too Generic of Keywords
Some broad and generic keywords can certainly push a ton of traffic to your site. They may even be very successful. Often, however, they can also do just the opposite -- drain your funds with poor results. A user searching on one of these generic phrases is often doing research in an early part of the buying process. Knowing your keyword-level results and filtering out bad variations with negative keywords can help you get a true read on these generic keywords.
Avoiding the Dirty Work of Building Long-Tail Keywords
This dovetails into the previous item. Building out lists and ads for long-tail keywords can be a time-consuming process, but worthwhile if done right. You are going to have different earnings per click for the keywords "dvd player," "sony dvd player" and "sony dvd player model DVP-NS57P/B." One consumer is doing research, while the other is likely pricing for the specific model they want and is ready to buy.
Not Pulling Apart Content and Search Campaigns
If you don't want to get burned by click fraud or poor traffic, you need to make sure your content network campaigns and your search network campaigns are separated. If you don't know what this means, chances are they aren't separated in your account and you are likely losing money. Ideally, you would have separate campaigns for each, along with precision analytics to know exactly what keyword from which source is converting for you in the content network.
Not Geo-Targeting a Local Business
Local businesses that attract clients from their region must take advantage of the geo-targeting that each of the major PPC engines offer. Bringing that local clientele to your front door on non-local keywords can increase profits greatly.
Not Frequently Monitoring Your Accounts
Alright, so maybe you do not frequently monitor your EPCs at the keyword level (you should). And, you don't conduct split tests every day your ads are up (you should). It is still surprising that there are a high number of pay per click advertisers who don't continually monitor their accounts. The big three PPC engines are cracking down on poor performing ads more than ever. Many advertisers are getting stung with the "Inactive for Search" label on their keywords. If you don't monitor your accounts, Google, Yahoo and MSN may have plucked some of your keywords off their networks. And, with that, some of your profits.
Making mistakes like the Terrible 10 of PPC Advertising are common, but correcting them can have a huge impact on your bottom line. If you can manage your pay per click ads at a high level or if you can hire them out to a professional pay per click management company...the results for your increased precision and effort will pay off.
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Showing posts with label Increase Website Traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Increase Website Traffic. Show all posts
Article Marketing Success Tips
Article marketing is a website strategy designed to get free targeted traffic to your website. Simply writing and submitting your original articles related to your niche to the article directories can increase traffic to your site. Nich? Yes, like vitamins, joint pain relief, anti-aging skin care, natural cosmetics, household cleaning items, travel, dogs, cats, dating... whatever your niche happens to be.
Webmasters and ezine publishers will then download these articles and are allowed to use them freely as long as they keep your resource bio information at the bottom of the article as-is including live links. A well written article that uses the proper keywords that are often searched for can attract a lot of free website traffic to your site.
Getting more website traffic from click-throughs and free searches, article marketing can also help to lift your website's page rank because it provides relevant one-way back links to your site which is a factor search engines use to calculate how popular site is.
To see success with your article, it needs to be well written, easy to read and focused on the area of interest you wish to promote. For example, if you write an article on a topic that is unrelated to your business, you may get curious visitors but they will not be targeted. An example could be if you write an article about weight loss, and your article points to a site about costmetics... well, that's not really that targeted, is it? On the other hand if your article is related to your business in some way, readers who click on your link are probably looking for more information. As a result, they are much more likely to be interested in the products or services you are offering.
For article marketing success, the first step is to choose an attention getting title that includes your keyword. People looking for your keywords are far more likely to find your article if the keyword they are looking for is in your title. The title of your article needs to appeal to a person who wants to read the article itself.
Article content is the most important aspect of article marketing. The content needs to be relevant, informative and useful. It also needs to keep the reader's attention. The whole purpose of the article is to hold the reader's attention for the entire article and impress them enough that they will want to click on your link in the resource box.
The article should also be written with Internet marketing SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Keywords and terms with a similar meaning should be dotted throughout the article. Use your keyword in the first one hundred words of the article, in the last one hundred words and a few times in the body of the article. Keyword density should be kept in the 1-2% range if possible. Don't do what is referred to as 'keyword spamming', because your article won't get published (and it makes it much harder for the reader to get through it).
You also need to peak the interest of the reader so that they are motivated to click on your link in the resource box. A great way to increase the amount of clicks to your website is to divide your article into two parts. Submit the first section to the article directories of your choice and keep part 2 on your own website. On your own site you can insert hyperlinks in the article which can take the reader to other
information on the site. So, when the reader is wanting to read the rest of the article, a click happens and viola... they are on your site. They'll finish reading the article and may even stay a while and make a purchase or contact you for more information about what you have to offer.
Over the long term, to be successful in article marketing, you need to submit your original, interesting articles frequently to high traffic articles directories such as Top Rank articles. If you are consistent and conscientious and follow the tips in this article, you will find that article marketing is a highly effective strategy for website promotion. You cannot expect to write one article and sit back and see it all over the web. You must write multiple articles, even if it's about the same product or service. If your company has multiple product lines, you have a lot of articles you can write to drive traffic to your site. Just make sure that the article resource box points the reader to a site specifically set up for that niche product. Don't send them to a website for anti-aging products when they are looking for hormone balancing creams.
Webmasters and ezine publishers will then download these articles and are allowed to use them freely as long as they keep your resource bio information at the bottom of the article as-is including live links. A well written article that uses the proper keywords that are often searched for can attract a lot of free website traffic to your site.
Getting more website traffic from click-throughs and free searches, article marketing can also help to lift your website's page rank because it provides relevant one-way back links to your site which is a factor search engines use to calculate how popular site is.
To see success with your article, it needs to be well written, easy to read and focused on the area of interest you wish to promote. For example, if you write an article on a topic that is unrelated to your business, you may get curious visitors but they will not be targeted. An example could be if you write an article about weight loss, and your article points to a site about costmetics... well, that's not really that targeted, is it? On the other hand if your article is related to your business in some way, readers who click on your link are probably looking for more information. As a result, they are much more likely to be interested in the products or services you are offering.
For article marketing success, the first step is to choose an attention getting title that includes your keyword. People looking for your keywords are far more likely to find your article if the keyword they are looking for is in your title. The title of your article needs to appeal to a person who wants to read the article itself.
Article content is the most important aspect of article marketing. The content needs to be relevant, informative and useful. It also needs to keep the reader's attention. The whole purpose of the article is to hold the reader's attention for the entire article and impress them enough that they will want to click on your link in the resource box.
The article should also be written with Internet marketing SEO (search engine optimization) in mind. Keywords and terms with a similar meaning should be dotted throughout the article. Use your keyword in the first one hundred words of the article, in the last one hundred words and a few times in the body of the article. Keyword density should be kept in the 1-2% range if possible. Don't do what is referred to as 'keyword spamming', because your article won't get published (and it makes it much harder for the reader to get through it).
You also need to peak the interest of the reader so that they are motivated to click on your link in the resource box. A great way to increase the amount of clicks to your website is to divide your article into two parts. Submit the first section to the article directories of your choice and keep part 2 on your own website. On your own site you can insert hyperlinks in the article which can take the reader to other
information on the site. So, when the reader is wanting to read the rest of the article, a click happens and viola... they are on your site. They'll finish reading the article and may even stay a while and make a purchase or contact you for more information about what you have to offer.
Over the long term, to be successful in article marketing, you need to submit your original, interesting articles frequently to high traffic articles directories such as Top Rank articles. If you are consistent and conscientious and follow the tips in this article, you will find that article marketing is a highly effective strategy for website promotion. You cannot expect to write one article and sit back and see it all over the web. You must write multiple articles, even if it's about the same product or service. If your company has multiple product lines, you have a lot of articles you can write to drive traffic to your site. Just make sure that the article resource box points the reader to a site specifically set up for that niche product. Don't send them to a website for anti-aging products when they are looking for hormone balancing creams.
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