Optimizing Keyword List



Initially, your keyword list may be crowded with keywords that add impressions but not clicks. This can make a campaign very costly with little return, especially if your pockets aren't bottomless. It is important to constantly monitor your keywords' CTR and impressions balance, and weed out the costly, non-converting keywords before they blow a hole in your budget.

Make Custom landing Pages

It's not uncommon to create a campaign using several hundred keywords, only to later find out that it's just a handful of those that are actually generating the bulk of your traffic (and sales). When you spot a keyword that is making tens of times the returns of the rest, it's important to devise a landing page to reflect that keyword to the best possible extent.

Split Testing

One of the most proven, effective methods to optimize individual elements of your campaign is to split test. This is done by creating 2 or more distinct elements for the same category (ads, keywords, banners etc) and letting them compete against each other.

To Split Test text ads, you should first write 2 variations of an ad, and run them both for the same number of impressions (Rotate, in AdWords). The one which, having received the same number of impressions results in the most clicks is the test winner. This procedure can be implemented with landing pages, ads, banners, promotional videos etc.

Cutting Losses

In a typical campaign, some keywords will generate huge profit while some will just drain your cash into a marketing blackhole, from which it will never be seen again. Its important to identify and weed out these money-burners before they cripple your campaign's budget and blunt out the income from the keywords that do work.

However, before removing a keyword that you consider important to your campaign, you may try to improve it by testing other keyword matching types and forms, as well as revising you ad text to better reflect them.

If, however, after several attempts to optimize it still drains out your cash without returning profitable sales, it should be eliminated pronto.

Campaign optimizing should be taken seriously, as ppc can become a cash drain very fast without constant, specific improvements on a regular basis. It should also be noted that optimizing the content itself is not the only important issue at hand.

Sometimes, changing your approach completely is necessary for a better conversion ratio. For instance, some campaigns are better off with keyword ads, and some profit more from Placement ads in specific, niche-targeted websites. These offer a much more focused crowd than when you simply spam your ad on the search engines themselves, as people who are actively looking or using a specific, related content are much more likely to actually buy something than the casual passerby who clicks your ad out of curiosity or because of your catchy phrase.