It is far too easy to create a PPC campaign that is not obtaining a return on investment that reflects what it should be achieving. At the end of the day, a PPC campaign is there to bring targeted traffic to a campaign to make you money, one way or another. If this is not happening, you need to change things ASAP.

Although there are lots of ways to improve PPC campaigns already out there on the internet, the best tips for PPC tend to be those that are kept secret – people don’t want others taking advantage of their secret tips! From this, here are some great tips that are kept out of mainstream media that you can use to improve your PPC campaign.

#1 Properly Understanding Keywords/Search Terms

Of course, PPC works by allowing web users to specify keywords which relates web users to their advert/s. Keywords are what PPC advertisers specify. However, search terms of web users is what Google uses to link the search term of the web user to the keyword.

With this, it is possible that the keyword/s you have specified could have hundreds of correlating search terms, causing you to be gaining traffic from a whole range of different sources and different target markets.

What needs to be done, to counteract this, is to specify keywords which work to specify search terms. For example, from determining what are common search terms from certain keywords in your campaign, you can regain more control over the traffic you are trying to target.

It’s not the keywords that gain you traffic in PPC. It is the search terms of the web users that relate to your keywords which gains you traffic.

#2 Make the Web User Panic

One of the best ways to get the web user to click onto your advert and convert is through inducing a sense of panic into them. There are a few ways this can be achieved in PPC:

• Using specific words in the English language which induces a sense of urgency, such as ‘Hurry’.
• Include a call to action in your advert, either in the title or description.
• Add a timer. If you have a special offer on that only lasts for ‘X’ days, it is definitely worth including this in the advert to make the web user aware of the fact that the offer will come and go if they don’t act upon it.

#3 Don’t Always Delete Poor Performing Keywords

This is quite counter-intuitive. However, poorly performing keywords can be analysed to help you further improve your campaign – why are such keywords poor performing for you?

• If the CPC of the keyword is genuinely quite high, it elucidates that advertisers are willing to pay big bucks for the traffic from such a keyword. If this is the case, then it suggests it is making them money. Therefore, it cannot be the keyword that is the problem.
• Instead, it could be your:
  • Advert – compare your advert to competition for the same keyword targeting and see how yours differs from the rest.
  • Landing page – if you have a different type of landing page to your competition, you could possibly be targeting the wrong conversion to what is benefiting competitors the most.