Google’s PPC Optimization Tips

Show Your PPC Ads More Often

Your daily budget determines how often your ad is shown for your keywords.

To maximize the number of times your ad is shown throughout the day, set your daily budget high enough that the ads won’t turn off during the day.

Improve the Position of Your PPC Ad

Your ad’s position is determined by various performance factors, including maximum cost-per-click, your ad’s actual clickthrough rate, and ad text.

Increasing performance factors such as your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) or your ad’s clickthrough rate (CTR) will improve your ad’s position.

Read “Optimize your content and keyword targeting” below to learn how to improve your campaign’s CTR performance.

Optimize Serving for Your PPC Ads

Ads with higher CTRs are more likely to draw relevant clicks and qualified leads.

When there are multiple ads in an Ad Group, our system will favor ads with higher clickthrough rates (CTRs), showing them more often than ads with lower CTRs in the same Ad Group. When you create a campaign, optimization is already selected.

Target Your PPC Audience by Refining your Keyword List

1. Select keywords and phrases relevant to your product or service. – General keywords will generate the most impressions, but will often result in the fewest number of clicks.For example, if you sell tennis equipment, you wouldn’t want to choose the keyword “tennis,” because your ads could appear to people searching for subjects (such as tennis lessons) unrelated to your business. Instead, you should select more descriptive phrases for your products or services so your ads will appear to those who matter—prospective customers searching for what you have to offer. You might want to try:
   • tennis rackets
   • tennis shoes
   • tennis ball machines
2. Use keyword variations to reach more prospects – Not everyone will enter the same keyword spellings to search for your type of product or service. You can increase your chances of reaching more prospects by including spelling variations and plurals in your keyword list.
3. Change keyword matching options to better target your ads. – By specifying the types of keyword matching options that will trigger your ads, you can widen or narrow your focus on prospective customers. Your options are:
   • Broad Match – simply enter your keyword(s), such as tennis shoes
     Your ad will show when users search on the keywords tennis and shoes, in any order, and even if the query includes other terms, such as tennis rackets and shoes. With broad matching, you’ll also automatically enjoy expanded matching. This means that Google will analyze your keyword list, ad text, and millions of daily Google search queries, then show your ads for other relevant terms and variations (such as tennis sneakers) even if you didn’t include these terms in your keyword list. (You may stop these expanded matches by adding them as negative keywords, or by changing your broad match keywords to exact or phrase matches.)
   • Phrase Match – include quotes around your keyword: “tennis shoes”
     Your ad shows when users search for tennis shoes, in this order, and possibly with other search terms in the query. For example, your ad will show for red tennis shoes but not for shoes for tennis.
   • Exact match – include brackets around your keyword: [tennis shoes]
     Your ad shows when users search for tennis shoes, in this order, and without any other terms in the query. For example, your ad won’t show for the queries red tennis shoes or tennis bags and shoes.
   • Negative keyword – include a dash before your keyword: -red
     If your keyword phrase is tennis shoes and your negative keyword is -red, your ad will not show if a user searches for red tennis shoes.

Target Your PPC Audience by Geo-Targeting

Geo-targeting allows you to choose your target languages, countries or, if applicable, U.S. regions.

Target Your PPC Audience by Grouping Related Keywords Together

Organize your campaign by grouping similar keywords and creating a separate Ad Group for each group. This allows you to write more specific ads for those keywords.

PPC Ad Content – What should Your Ad Say?

• Include keywords in your ad text or title
• Adopt a clear style
• Test multiple ads per Ad Group
• Identify the unique aspects of your product or service
• Use a strong call-to-action

Links – Landing Pages & Conversion Tracking

• Link to relevant and informative web pages – • Users click on your ad when they are interested in what you offer. Make it easy for them to find out more by sending them to a relevant destination (landing) page.
• Track your conversions – Conversion tracking allows you to track how many ad clicks convert to purchase, sign-ups, page views and leads…all for free!