Pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns are one of the most effective digital marketing strategies you can use to bring exposure to your website. The right campaign can boost you to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), helping to drive traffic, conversions, and sales. But if you fail to plan properly, it can quickly turn into a costly exercise in futility.
Want to ensure that your Google ads generate ROI?
This beginner’s PPC best practice guide is for you.
How Does PPC Work?
On the surface, PPC is a relatively straightforward online advertising model—you bid on keywords and then pay that bid fee every time an internet user clicks on the ad.
Unlike organic search results, PPC ads artificially boost you to the top of SERPs, thus ensuring that your page is visible to interested users. Aside from instant visibility, PPC can provide several other tangible benefits, including:
- Hyper-targeted audience
- Increased web traffic
- Improved local search results
- Retargeting capabilities
- Better ability to measure and refine results
Best Practices for PPC
So, what steps can you take to ensure that your PPC campaign generates value? Best practices include:
- Use long-tail keywords – Each keyword you bid on should be closely associated with user search intent. And for that, you should focus on long-tail keywords. These longer and more specific phrases are cheaper to bid on because there’s less competition. But, importantly, they represent more than 70% of all online searches.
- Create specific landing pages – Every keyword you bid on should have a landing page that’s made unique to that campaign. Done right, optimized landing pages typically convert at much higher rates than the home page, especially if they have a clear CTA, use creative designs and imagery, and include compelling copy.
- Embrace automation – Typically, PPC campaigns aren’t set and forget. Instead, they require constant tweaking and reevaluation. That said, PPC automation can change that, through the power of AI and machine learning, you can automate the management, monitoring, and optimization of your campaigns.
- Refine your campaign with negative keywords – The point of any PPC campaign isn’t to get clicks, but convert. Remember, each click costs you, so it better be generating value. Negative keywords hide your ads from people who search for related content. This makes it possible to maximize relevance and ensure that your ads reach the right audience.
- Focus on top performers – Instead of a shotgun approach to PPC, brands tend to benefit from more limited and focused campaigns. That means you shouldn’t bid on too many keywords. Instead, limit it to a few. From there, closely monitor their results, zero in on the winners, and retire the underperformers.
Searching for a PPC Management Company in NJ?
PPC may seem easy, but that’s rarely the case. Optimizing strategies and ad buys while minimizing overall expenditures takes time, effort, and experience.
This is why many brands decide to work with a PPC management company like the team at Semgeeks. Whether you want to engage in Amazon marketing, Google ads, or paid social, we rely on consumer behavioral data, tracking metrics, and industry expertise to create winning campaigns.
Are you ready to up your PPC game? Let’s chat.
Sources:
Search Engine Land. Back to basics: What does ‘long-tail’ keyword really mean? https://searchengineland.com/back-to-basics-what-does-long-tail-keyword-really-mean-311910#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Search%20Demand,percent%20of%20total%20web%20searches.
Search Engine Journal. PPC 101: A Complete Guide to PPC Marketing Basics. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ppc-guide/
