Pay Per Click Tips: Optimization

After a long break in posts, I am finally back.  It has been a crazy and rough last month, but I always come out on top.  What I like to say is, "Always stay positive and keep your head up."  Well, I want to concentrate this post on optimization for ad campaigns.  This is probably the most crucial part of advertising with pay per click.  This could make you or break you.

So I have already gone over how to write the ad and incorporate it with the landing page.  They must be in sinc so the ad makes sense and the landing page expounds upon what the ad implies.  Once the ad is up and running and people are starting to see the ad and click on it, it is important to monitor your campaigns.  When I first started off, I had one campaign with about 25 keywords and ad groups.  That was plenty to keep me busy.  It took me awhile to go through each one to look at the stats and make sure everything was matching up right.

One mistake some people do is monitor their campaigns too closely and get discouraged if they aren't getting results after a couple days.  It takes longer than that to get a campaign rolling.  So give it some time.  I would say two weeks.  Then you can look at the campaign and see how your keywords are doing.  I made the mistake of letting them go too long and lost some money due to that.  There were some keywords that did great when it came to click through rate, but the landing page wasn't doing too well.  So I was paying for all those clicks and not getting any revenue to pay for them.  Long story short, I learned my lesson the hard way and now check my campaigns every two weeks to make sure they are performing well.  Lessons can always be learned from mistakes.

Sometimes there may be some keywords that don't do well.  If you aren't making money off of them or have low numbers of clicks, get rid of it if you can't fix it in thirty days.  Also keep looking for more keyword phrases.  The more you have, the higher chances you have of getting more clicks and sales.

Once I got used to optimizing my campaign, I started another one and did the same thing.  I think Yahoo/Microsoft (they are joining forces to compete with Google) allow you to have up to 20 campaigns per account.  Take advantage of that.

Once you have optimized, you aren't done yet.  Here are the next steps after you have first optimized your campaign:

• In the first week, check your keywords every four hours and look for these...
  
  
  
  
  • If the ad has 40 clicks and no leads, delete it.
  • If the lead conversion cost goes above $12, pause that keyword.
  • If the conversion ratio is below 8%, pause that keyword.
• At 2-4 weeks...
  
  
  
  
  • Improve the keywords you paused and test them.  Maybe you need to change the title or the ad.  Ask your self, "Does this tie in with the landing page?"
  • If you can't get any conversions, delete it.  Don't wait longer than four weeks.

This is like cleaning out all the junk; the heart of optimization.  If this is done right, you will get results.  Don't forget to keep track of what is generating sales and what isn't.  Run the campaign for 3 months, delete keywords that aren't converting and add new ones.  It's a reciprocal process.

I leave with two more tips.  Number one, don't forget about your budget.  When starting off do no more than $25-30 a day.  Try not to pay more than a dollar per click.  Secondly, focus on conversions, NOT the number of leads you get.

A lot of what I have learned and shared today is because of my mentor and friend, Juan Walker.  Thanks to him, I am a better marketer and advertiser.

Helping you get the upper hand,
Peter Bunn
Rising Leader

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