PPC - Pay Per Click Management

It always seems that we always run out of time and this is the case when it comes to optimising a PPC campaign. For some advertisers, they could spend literally hours a day optimising their PPC campaign because a campaign can always be improved (there is no definitive goal to achieve as more can always be achieved). In this case, these advertisers will end up wasting quite a lot of time optimising a campaign which actually could have been improved in minutes. If you want to quickly improve your campaign, I tend to look straight at the landing page as this is usually an area which many advertisers are lazy at creating (you can learn to optimise any landing page here). The next area you can then look to improve is your search advert itself.

A PPC text search advert has changed over the years from the simple title, description and URL to a title, description, URL, reviews, extra links and more. Therefore, there are lots more things you can now optimise when it comes to your search advert:

• Title – Your title is used to attract the web user’s attention and, therefore, should briefly mention what your whole advert is about. For example, if you are trying to sell an iPad, mention you are selling an iPad in the title (the details of the selling come later…well actually now in the description below).
• Description – The description should include any more details that your title has not included. For example, if you are selling the iPad for the cheapest price on the internet and offering free delivery, these are all things to be included in the description. A must have feature all descriptions should also have is a call to action. You need to make sure the web user has been instructed to do something otherwise they would not be as enticed to click on the advert. A call to action for my iPad example would be ‘Order now!’ (exclamation mark inherits a sense of urgency to buy the iPad to the web user which is also a good technique to encouraging a sale).
• URL – The beauty about the URL part of your search advert is that it can be whatever you please it to be. Therefore, it is wise to include a few keywords in the URL so it makes it seem like the landing page’s URL the web user is about to go on is completley contextual to what the web user has just searched for. An example for my iPad campaign would be something such as www.____.com/iPad.
• Reviews – Some search adverts include reviews to the side of their title (such as GettingPersonal’s advert). My only tip for reviews in PPC is to only include them if you have a lot of reviews that are high rated. As a blogger, you only share the website stats you want to share. The same principle applies to PPC. Only share to the web user a rating of your website if its good. If it isn’t, leave it out – it’s not the end of the world!
• Extra Links – Extra links are great at enabling the web user to click straight onto different areas of your website (which means you could potentially make 3-4 landing pages for one search advert). An example of this is with Apple Macbook Pro’s campaign. Only include extra links if you have optimised all the extra pages and need the extra links. As well as this, there is no point having extra links on your advert if you only really need the web user to go to one page for a lead capture such as Pepsi Max did.