If you have a PPC campaign that isn’t performing as well as you like, there are several different steps you can take to improve your campaign.

Keyword Planner

There are many tools available to research into keywords. Google have their own AdWords Keyword Planner which is free and simple to use. You start by brainstorming your keywords – list keywords that you think are relevant and what you think your audience would be using.

Once you put your list into the keyword planner, you can get an expanded list of suggestions and similar keywords. As well monthly data and estimated searches for the term with average bidding costs.

Organise similar keywords into campaigns and ad groups

Once you have researched into your keywords, group together similar terms together. Segmenting your keywords will build a stronger campaign and make it easier for you to analyse the data later.

Write ads with the specific keywords

Each ad group should contain a specific keyword for that ad group. This will improve the ad’s quality score which will help toward the campaign ranking higher.

Send traffic to the correct pages

You should send your traffic to the page with the most relevant information. So instead of sending your traffic to your homepage, you can send them to the page about your product or service. This will help improve your quality score and click through rate.

Use location targeting 

If you only provide your product or service in a certain area, offering a special offer to one geographical area or want to attract more local customers, you can use location targeting. If you don’t use location targeting on your paid campaigns, you will be paying for clicks from people who you can’t provide your service to.

Track your campaigns 

Make sure you have Google Analytics and conversion tracking set up on your campaigns. All the data you collect from your campaigns, you can use to help improve them. You will see the highest peak in traffic to your site from your campaign so you can spend more during that time. You’ll also be able to collect data on the amount of time they spend on your site, bounce rates, new or returning customers and much more.

Pause underperforming keywords 

Check up on the performance on you campaigns regularly. You will start to see which keywords are driving traffic but not converting or keywords that send traffic with high bounce rates. You are paying for them clicks so pause those keywords as they aren’t helping your convert but still costing you.

Adjust your bidding 

You should check the bidding on your keywords on a regular basis. You should be placing bids that help your campaign place a position on the first page. You should check the position of the keywords and adjust your bid to achieve a higher position. However, it’s not just about your bidding and you shouldn’t place a very high bid assuming you will be number one. Relevance and SEO are factored in as well.

Expand your keywords list 

If you see keywords that are driving quality traffic and conversions, you should consider expanding on them. Google make a suggested list of keywords that you can pick from. You should also consider changing some of your keywords from exact match to broad match.

These are a few of our tips to improve your PPC campaigns. Even though Google PPC can be quite tricky, Google do have support pages for every step. Alternatively, you can get in touch with Google PPC professionals. We are proud Google Professionals as we have passed the Google AdWords exams. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help.