DO YOU MAKE THESE 5 PPC MISTAKES?
AND ARE THEY BURNING YOUR CASH WITH GOOGLE?
Stop Making Common PPC Mistakes
What are you doing wrong with your Google Ads campaign? Perhaps you’ve noticed that you’ve not been getting anywhere recently, and you’re at a loss to understand where you’re going wrong. Well today, we’re going to be looking at the top 5 most common mistakes you’re making with your PPC marketing campaign.
Once you have an understanding of where you’re going wrong in your campaign, only then can you do something about it.
We know that Google Ads can be hugely profitable when done right, it’s such a great way to drive traffic to your website. However, if you’re making common PPC mistakes, you’re most likely throwing money away, so you really need to know where you’re going wrong when managing a pay per click campaign in order to get the best return on your investment >>>
Top 5 PPC Mistakes With Paid Search
1) You’re choosing the wrong keyword matches in your PPC advertising
The wrong keyword types can make a big difference to your pay per click advertising campaign, and if you don’t use the right keyword matches, you’re in serious trouble.
You can add your own keywords to a Google Ads campaign in 3 different formats as follows:
– Broad match – ad will show regardless of the order the keywords appear
– Phrase match – the phrase has to match any part of the search query for your ad to be found.
– Exact match – the term that’s being searched must match the keywords you use exactly as entered in Google Ads, which can be quite narrow, but this does make your ads and keywords highly targeted.
2) You Have No Negative Keyword Use!
This is where you can exclude those keywords that don’t match your product and where a little forethought goes a long way. For example, if you sell a particular product, such as swimsuits, you may want to use the term ‘buy swimsuits’ as a keyword, whereas you might exclude ‘buy clothes,’ because it’s too broad.
Within your campaign you can click under negative keywords in Google Ads for your ad group or campaign and they can be added. You can exclude at group level or through the entire campaign. By going into Google Analytics you’ll find more detailed information about keyword searches, go to Acquisition, Google Ads and Matched Search Queries.
Query Match Type will show you which keyword phrases are working and ones which aren’t. They’re the ones which people are searching for and those which aren’t doing well at all.
When you find the phrases which aren’t working, see if a negative keyword can be added to eliminate the keyword from your ad campaign, and without excluding terms
3) You Link All Your Ads To Your Contact Page (Please Don’t)
Don’t send PPC visitors directly to the contact page on the website where they’re forced to sign up for an email newsletter, this can really frustrate visitors and damage your chances of making a sale.
You may also find it is in contravention of PPC platform guidelines. Forcing your visitors to fill out a contact form in order to get something free goes against Google’s rules and could get you penalised.
4) You Don’t Split Test Ad Text
You must test your ads before running them, this is important in the same way as it’s important to test your website before it goes live.
You can do this by creating multiple versions of your ad text for each one of your PPC ad groups. You can then examine them to see which lead to the most click throughs. You can also check for on-site conversions. You can usually find instructions on how to display your ad versions randomly in the PPC’s help section.
5) You Send All Your Visitors To Your Home Page (Who Told You To Do This?)
You run a PPC ad using the keywords for a specific product you sell, but then set it up with a URL which redirects readers to the homepage of your website. This is hard work for your visitor as they then have to use the site navigation to find your products.
What should be happening, is that they are redirected to your product page where they can make a purchase straight away. Otherwise, it’s too much like hard work for your visitors who may not want to visit your site again.
By sending them directly to the product page you help yourself because they’re closer to making a purchase. It’s far better than having your potential customers search from the home page to find your product.
We hope you found our post on the top PPC mistakes of use and that it helps you to create the perfect ad campaign. If you’re current Google Ads campaign is underperforming, check out our PPC Audit guide for more tips.
Shane McEvoy is a seasoned SEO and inbound marketing expert with nearly 30 years of experience in advertising. He established Flycast Media, a specialist B2B digital agency, and is a published author of two well-received guides while contributing to several industry publications - read his complete profile here.
