Maybe you have already tried to open up PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN or you will just want to start from one point but don’t know where. For those of you who have past experience with PPC campaigns, this post will make you to memorize the basics of PPC campaigns or point out some issues that you have forgotten. For those of you who will just launch first PPC campaigns, this post will be a fresh guide for a good start.
I am assuming that you have already got an active “Google Adwords” account and “Adwords Editor Software“. “Adwords Editor” is a very important component of your PPC campaign creation process and its free. In addition to PC version, Mac version is also available.
After you have selected necessary keywords, you will probably have almost 2000 keywords for each campaign.
Campaign preparation needs a careful design to reach success. Do not forget that this is a split test environment. You should always give enough time for trial and error.
- Choose an advertiser to promote and develop keywords for this advertiser.
- First of all you should check the competition level for some of the most generic terms in your keyword set. Do not forget to disregard the highly competitive top generic keywords.
- Please check the affiliate network of your advertiser and see whether they can provide you with keyword tracking codes so that you can easily catch up with the converting keywords.
- In order to find the availability of tracking codes, check that network’s web site or ask for it from the support department.
- After finding the way to use tracking codes embed them into your display URL for your campaign.
- Use “Adwords Editor” to be able to better organize your keyword sets into broad, generic and exact search groups.
- Let’s think that you have found 2000 keywords. Divide those keywords into 40 keyword ad groups in accordance with their themes. This way each ad group has 50 keywords in its basket which are thematically related with each other. Each ad group must have a meaningful separate name for itself. This will help you to easily figure out their status individually.
- You must also create other ad groups under separate Campaign names for exact, phrase and broad versions by simply doing a copy/paste function in the next step. Click the account name at the left side of your Adwords Editor, you will see your campaign listed at the right. Right click your campaign name, then select “copy”, go to edit and select “paste”. Now you will have a duplicate of your first campaign, change the campaign name to “campaign_name - Exact” and click its name in the left side of your Adwords Editor. Adwords Editor has a very handy feature which helps you to be able to automatically prepare Exact, Phrase and Broad versions of each keyword campaign group. After you have copied new campaigns with the same ad groups now its time to generate exact, phrase and broad versions of the keywords in the ad groups. Simply select the campaign name from the left column of Adwords Editor, go to Keywords tab, select all the keywords and change their “match type” to broad. Repeat this process for the phrase and exact keyword groups. This way you are watching 120 campaigns.
- You can also increase the number of campaign groups by developing typo keyword sets.
- Prepare at least three or four copies of creative and split test them to see which one is converting the best.
- For broad keyword groups, always bid the half value of the bid amount of your Phrase and Exact keyword groups because broad keyword groups almost always the least converting keywords with the highest level of competition and the bid price.
- When you have found good converting keyword groups always try to add variations of this keywords to this group. If your keyword groups are not converting over a reasonable time period just close those campaigns and stop losing money.
- There is no clear definition for the term “Reasonable Time Period”. This concept is a very personal experience after you have gone the way of many trails and errors, split testing and tracking. PPC is not an automatic money machine instead it is a very risky method involving creative and smart process development for your PPC campaigns.
- If you feel that it is necessary to increase the bid price for converting keywords, first watch your campaigns carefully to see if the ROI (Return On Investment) is still profitable or not.
If you follow those steps very carefully and also split test everything, your PPC Campaigns will have successful results. The only thing that you mustn’t forget is: PPC is a hard and long way to go with patience. There will be lots of ups and downs. The wise thing is not to waste time and money on the most generic keywords. Instead research for the low competition but relevant keywords and niche topics where the bid price and search volume is low but ROI is high.
I wish you all the success and creativity in your PPC Campaigns!
Firuze
this is an excellent post for marketer & affiliates starting in PPC. The beginning experience using PPC and how fast and efficient you are can save a lot of time, money and frustration. Have you been a teacher in the past?
This is a very good education post that is a good example of the kind of info our affiliate partners are always looking for.
Thanks Peter! I am so glad to hear that you found it useful. I heard many positive feedbacks about this post.
For me it is always fun to share something that I know. Otherwise it is a waste of life experience.
I have no teaching experience in the past. However, I like to divide any subject into meaningful pieces and bind them together in a way to make sense as whole.