Top Tips For Maximising Your Paid Search Spend

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Paid search refers to the listings at the top and right hand side of search engines results pages (SERPs). Each time one of these ads is clicked, the advertiser will pay for that click, which is why paid search is often referred to as Pay per Click (PPC) or Cost Per Click (CPC).

For each search an auction takes place for that keyword phrase with advertisers bidding for the best position on a SERP. The bid is not the only factor that determines position. Quality score is also used. This is a metric out of 10 that search engines use to reward advertisers who have the most relevant ads and landing pages. A higher quality score reduces the cost of clicks. PPC companies can help you business gain the best positions for the least amount of money.

Benefits of paid search advertising

• You can quickly generate visits to your website
• You can easily control your budget by setting up maximum daily budgets and pausing at any time
• You can generate relevant and action focused visitors
• You can track return on investment easily using tools offered by the largest paid search providers

Tips for setting up a paid search campaign

• Make a list of the products or services that your website offers
• Use a keyword research tool to find out what actual terms people are using to search for these products and/or services
• Set up an ad group for each product or service – the more granular the better, and list relevant keywords against the relevant groups
• Set up ad texts specific to each ad group
• Set up conversion tracking so you can see if the terms bring in relevant visitors

Things to avoid

• The Google Content Network: this can be very effective for generating targeted visits, but it’s worth avoiding this if you are new to Adwords as it is easy to burn through money very quickly without getting a decent return on investment
• Bidding on high volume generic terms: these terms can be very expensive and do not always generate the best converting visitors
• Sending traffic to a homepage: you need to make it easy for visitors to complete an action, so send them to pages tailored to specific ad groups rather than making them dig around for the relevant content
• False Offers: you may be tempted to promote an unrealistic offer in your ad text to push up your click through rates, but if users do not find this offer on your website you’ll turn off potential customers and the paid search providers will also penalise you
• Focusing only on advert click through rates: it is in the interests of the paid search providers to encourage you to promote your best performing ads, but you need to make sure that these ads attract relevant visitors