PPC Adwords Optimization with EXACT Phrase Match

As Pay-Per-Click (PPC) web consultants, we often discover clients aren't aware of the significant amount of money they are spending on non-relevant or poorly converting keywords.

Google makes a majority of their income through PPC ads and although they try to provide incentives to advertisers to optimize their PPC campaigns (with good ads, landing pages and keywords being bid on) they adequately fail to provide enough insight into how a small business can lower their monthly budget.

Although, it is important to use the "broad match" types with wide range of keywords at first (in order to "discover" keyword phrases your consumers are using) you will eventually want to evaluate what keywords have a high click-through-rate (CTR) and/or conversation rate.

When using the "broad match" type with a small monthly budget you will most likely hit your daily or monthly spend limits and Google will start suggesting ways to increase your budget but most instances this is the opposite of what you want to do (unless you are using an advanced technique like Google's Conversion Optimizer and are seeing a positive ROI).

After you have a good idea on what are some of your best keyword phrases are (based on conversions, click through, relevancy to the products/services on your landing page) setup a new campaign with extremely focused ad groups set to EXACT match type only. Extremely focused ad groups should met the following criteria:

1. Keyword Phrases - All keyword phrases being bid on should be very similar to each other. For example, the ad group should contain keywords like "men's blue sneakers", "male blue sneakers" "adult male blue sneakers", etc.
2. Ad copy should contain the keyword phrase in the title. Include a keyword variation a second time (in the URL or 3rd line of the ad copy if possible).
3. Landing page – should prominently contain the keyword phrase (eg. in the headline) and variations of the keyword phrase should be used throughout the copy of the page. In addition, put an image of the keyword phrase on the landing page – a men's blue sneaker in our example.

Most importantly setup all your ad groups to EXACT phrase match. This will force Google to only display your ads when consumers search for the exact phrases that you put into your ad group thus lowering your total campaign spend (since Google won’t show your ads on semi-related keyword phrases). In addition, your click-through-rate (CTR) will increase significantly.

A benchmark CTR of between 1-5% percent is considered good in the industry but using the EXACT match bid method described above you will most likely see your CTR’s above 10% and as high as 20%! Best of all, you will be spending less money on the PPC campaign while increasing your CTR’s and most likely your conversion rates at the same time.

Have you tried the tactic above? Did it work for you? Feel free to leave your comments below or contact RWeb Consulting to have one of our PPC web consultants look over your PPC campaign.


Related Links:

• Understanding Google Adword Match Types
• Using Google Adwords Editor to convert Broad Match Keywords to Exact Match
• Exact Match Bidding Tip

Back to the Basics: Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Its amazing how many paid pay-per-click (ppc) ads appear in search engine result pages (serps) that are poorly written or irrelevant to what I was searching on.

Here are some basics principles to keep in mind when launching a pay-per-click campaign:

• Keywords - Only bid on keywords that are highly specific to your business and are likely to convert into a sale. Limit your ads to only display in certain geographic regions if it makes sense to do so.
  
  
• Ads - Include the keyword in the ad headline and then explain your "unique selling point" (USP). Basically, whatever makes your product or service better than your competitors. If you can, offer a teaser of some kind; a free gift, a discount or a trial sample of your product.
  
  
• Landing Page – Include the keyword you bid on, reinforce the messaging of the ad, include product screen shots and a clear call to action.

See our videobelow to see how we used the basic principles described above to achieve a 10.15% click-through-rate (CTR) and 4.79% conversion rate for a client during a 6 week PPC pilot program (even before we did any keyword analysis or A/B testing on the landing page).

Research vs. Buying Intent Keywords

In my "What Makes a Good Keyword" blog I wrote about how important it is to do a through analysis of potential keywords before investing the effort optimizing your website or launching a pay-per-click campaign

If your website sells a product or service, keep in mind the most probably intent of the user between different keywords. Is the user just browsing the Internet on a subject or is it more likely they are ready to make a purchase?

For example, imagine you have a website that sells all types of shoes and are considering which of the following keywords to optimize your website for: "top shoes", "running shoes", "ASICS Gel-1130". In general, the more specific a keyword search is ("ASICS Gel-1130” in our example) the more likely it is that the user is ready to make a purchase and not just researching the subject ("shoes" in our example) anymore.

Beware: While identifying keywords with buying intent (or whatever your definition of a site conversion is) verify the number of searches on the keyword phrase (by using a tool like Google’s External Keyword Tool). Many keywords that are buying orientated are less searched upon but you’ll find that you will be able convert more of these visitors.

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