There are now millions upon millions of people that use PPC programs such a Google AdWords to bring traffic to specific landing pages in order to gain a conversions (what the conversion is will differ between campaigns). Truth be told that for those wanting to start an advertising campaign, PPC is the way forward and is the preferred method of advertising for millions worldwide. However, using PPC advertising to it’s full potential can sometimes become quite a challenge: especially if your or your company’s campaign is littered with mistakes throughout. For this reason, here are two mistakes companies make in PPC so you can learn not to make the same.
 
 

#1 Broad/Vague Keywords

The general rule with keyword targeting in PPC is that the broader the keywords you use, the more it is going to cost you and the less contextual the traffic will be landing onto your landing page.
This is because the broader the keywords, the more advertisers that are likely to be bidding on the same broad keywords as you. Therefore, just like with auctions and websites like eBay, the more people bidding on something, the higher the price will be.
So already we are over-pricing keywords, which is not great. Once you have won the bidding war for that broad keyword, the traffic that will be going to it will most likely not be contextual and specific enough to the needs of your campaign. Therefore, you will be over-paying for a keyword that will under-perform for you. This is why it is preferable to go for more niche and highly targeted keywords than vague ones – this way, you are more likely to have less competition when bidding on it and the traffic will meet your needs more.
 
 

#2 Using a Homepage as a Landing Page

The only only time an advertiser could possibly use their homepage as a landing page is when they are bidding for their own brand name to scare of competition from doing the same. Therefore, the PPC search advert will link to the same URL as the top organic search result for your brand name. In every other situation, it is extremely inefficient use of budget, time and effort to use a homepage as a landing page.
A PPC campaign should use a landing page which is tailor-suited to the traffic you are targeting, so that the PPC traffic lands onto a web page that will gain the PPC advertiser the exact conversion they want.
Of course it takes effort to make a dedicated landing page for a PPC campaign. However, it is effort, time and money that will be well spent – using the homepage as a landing page is a lazy alternative to using something that will work better for you: a dedicated landing page.
 
The two above mistakes are critical to the success of a PPC campaign since both the targeting of keywords and the choice of landing page both play a huge role in the overall success of a PPC campaign. Therefore, by making sure you do not do either will reduce two factors that could potentially hurt the success rate of your PPC campaign.