Many businesses will let their pay-per-click accounts sit idle and running on autopilot once they start to generate some traffic. If you are not utilizing the services of a professional pay-per-click management company, then it is probably a good time to give your Google AdWords account a cleaning. This can also help you to improve the performance of your campaign.
While we perform full paid search marketing audits and complete PPC management, not all companies have it in their budget and must attempt to do it all in-house. The following five tips can help clean up your AdWords account and get it performing better. These tips can help any business that is currently running a paid search marketing campaign through AdWords.
1. Remove Keywords That Don’t Perform
If your AdWords account has been running on autopilot for a while then you probably haven’t added or deleted any keywords in some time. PPC requires constant changing and adapting in order to maximize your ROI. You will want to remove keywords that are not performing, as this can help to improve your overall click-through-rate within your ad groups and campaigns.
This is an example of keywords that are performing well. These you would want to keep active:
You will want to delete keywords that are receiving impressions but not any clicks. Low performing keywords will have a negative impact on your overall click-through-rate of your campaign. Delete keywords that are not performing well and try different variations. Constant changing and testing is what makes a PPC effort successful.
These are prime examples of keywords you would want to delete from your campaign:
2. Improve Your Quality Scores
Many companies will achieve a decent quality score and then just let the campaign sit idle, assuming that the score will remain the same. This is not true, as the quality score will change according to the campaign performance. If your click-through-rate drops then your ad positions can also drop, along with your quality score. Having a low quality score will place your ads in lower positions and you will end up paying a higher cost-per-click, so it is very important to get your quality score as high as possible. If you have specific questions about your quality score then contact us and we will review your AdWords account and see if we can help you improve the performance.
If you notice that your quality scores are dropping and you are unable to move them up it is a good idea to pause the campaign to avoid having them fall even further. You end up spending more money when your quality score drops. Often times we see companies leave their AdWords accounts idle and the quality score continues to drop over time without their knowledge and it ends up delivering less traffic at a higher price.
3. Utilize Ad Extensions
Ad extensions are a great way to attract extra attention to your ads. Google’s ad extensions allow you to add additional information to your ads, including your phone number, address, Google+ profile, and additional site links. Not only can it help your click-through-rate, but also it can help push more actions and conversions. The goal of your PPC campaign is ROI – sales and leads – so why not give your prospects a way to directly contact you as well?
If you need additional information about Google Ad Extensions then click here.
4. Clean Up Your Ad Groups
We see so many PPC campaigns that have a few ads with hundreds of keywords in each. This makes it very hard to achieve a high quality score and this approach will hurt the potential a campaign has. You should create a new ad group for every main keyword. Within that ad group you can include variations, but having it broken down this way really allows you to gather accurate data. This helps to further optimize and improve the campaign.
5. Opportunities
The opportunities feature shows you potential improvements that can be made by following the suggestions provided. In the example below you will see that there could be over 86,000 more impressions by adding the suggested keywords. Now, don’t just automatically add all of the suggested keywords. Going back to the point above, you do not want to clutter the ad groups with a bunch of keywords. Instead, take the suggested keywords and create new ads. This will keep your campaign organized while still taking advantage of the potential missed traffic. The opportunities feature will also show you how many impressions you are possibly passing up because of low bids on keywords. This feature is available with a single click, so make sure to take advantage of it.
Use these tips to help improve your paid search marketing performance. If you have specific questions or would like to schedule a pay-per-click campaign audit please contact us today. We offer audits along with complete campaign management.