A picture might be worth a thousand words but a few well-chosen key terms are a much more lucrative prospect if you’re a pay per click advertiser. Daniel Jupp, founder and managing director of PPC management consultancy Top Position has this advice…

For the uninitiated, setting up a pay per click advertising campaign is a lot like playing Russian roulette. Putting in too few keywords will restrict the number of clicks on your advert, leaving you looking at an empty space where your sales leads would normally reside. Too many keywords and you run the risk of casting too wide a net, killing your budget and click through rate.

Fortunately, it’s possible to skew the odds in your favour simply by spending time getting your keywords and advert text right.

Keyword Selection

Choosing the right keywords for your campaign is a drawn out, trial and error procedure. It’s also an ongoing process – what works one week, might not work the next. The first step is to review your web site content and draw up a list of words and phrases which best describe your business. Include your products, services and any brand names which you supply.

After brainstorming, expand the list. Do any of your words have synonyms for example? Ask yourself how your customers commonly request your products and services and work any missing key terms into the list.

Now you have a comprehensive catalogue of words, be ruthless. Although it’s tempting to leave all of your hard-won phrases in the campaign, keywords receiving little or no clicks dilute the overall quality of your campaign and lower the click through rate. Google will actually punish this with a poor quality score, which means your keywords will end up costing more per click. If you really can’t bear to hit the delete key, move keywords that aren’t pulling their weight into a separate ad group and monitor their performance.

The Science of Syntax

Having created a slew of words and phrases most relevant to the site being advertised, play around with the category of keyword. Google allows you to use either broad, exact, phrase or negative matches. When your keyword is broad-matched, it will trigger your ad whenever that keyword or similar term appears in a user's query. This means that your ad will still appear even if other words are included in the query. Broad matched keywords also don’t distinguish between plural and singular search terms so your ad will be shown regardless of the syntax used by the searcher. If for example your broad match keyword is book, users typing in terms such as used book or latest books will be shown your advert.

For precise keyword targeting, it’s worth using an exact match or phrase match. Use exact matches when you want your ad to appear only on a query that precisely matches the keyword you have chosen. With an exact match, your ad won't appear for search queries that include extra words or letters or for queries that don't match the sequence of terms specified in your campaign.

A phrase match works in a similar vein, triggering your ad for any search query that includes your keyword or phrase in the exact sequence and form that you specify.

Adverts

The only way to do justice to a finely tuned keyword list is to write adverts that are similarly well-honed. Badly written advert text is a common cause of a poorly performing pay per click campaign and will be punished with a lowly position and low click through rates.

Omitting important keywords from the advert wording means your campaign misses easy brownie points and therefore, easy sales opportunities. Be as specific as possible. If you sell used books and used books is one of your keywords, use the same phrasing in your advert text. Making your advert relevant to your keywords will raise your quality score, giving you increased visibility and a lower cost per click.

However diligently the campaign is set up, pay per click advertising is not an exact science. The fluid and dynamic nature of the internet, coupled with changing consumer behaviour, seasonal buying cycles and local factors such as stock availability and product popularity mean any campaign worth its salt needs to be monitored and updated on a regular basis. Although this means a heavy time investment, the pay-off is a better return on investment and well-targeted sight traffic.

About Top Position

Founded in 2001, Top Position specialises in reducing AdWords expenditure by as much as 40% while increasing relevant traffic. With specialist teams for small businesses, AdWords, MSN adCentre and the Yahoo Search Marketing Network, you’ll enjoy an individually tailored service and increased online sales. Accounts are managed by Google Qualified Professionals.