Google AdWords PPC Training

Pay-per-click (PPC) is a term used in Web Marketing to refer to a type of Internet advertising in which advertisers pay a pre-determined fee for every click from online users on their ads.

In other words, paid-per-click or PPC campaigns, or simply PPC, is keyword advertising on search engines and other websites. Because advertisers pay for every click, PPC is often used synonymously with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and opposed to organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of a site.

PPC Benefits

Paid-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective and quick ways for acquiring customer leads. As a rule, people don't click on ads for no reason. Click fraud is a money-losing issue for advertisers, no doubt about it, but on the whole, people click on PPC ads only when they see something they might be interested. Hence, PPC brings substantial benefits:

• PPC provides small websites with a chance to be found by customers. In fact, PPC is often the only channel of revenue for small websites
• PPC instantly puts you in front of people who have a high chance of becoming your customers 
• PPC provides good tracking capabilities, thus allowing you to identify and focus on the most profitable aspects of your business
• PPC helps you understand user behaviour and make improvements to your site, which subsequently helps you acquire more leads
• PPC spending is very predictable, since advertisers can set maximum daily spending amounts
• PPC yields great ROI, if managed properly

PPC Campaign Management Elements

Paid-per-click (PPC) campaign management does not need to be a daunting task. Here is what is included in PPC campaign management:

• PPC competitive analysis
• PPC keyword discovery
• PPC keyword optimization
• PPC ad copywriting
• PPC campaign setup
• PPC campaign optimization
• PPC landing page setup
• PPC synchronization with website analytics
• PPC conversion tracking and optimization
• PPC reporting

To help you manage your PPC campaigns, you can use such tools as WordTracker, Google AdWords keyword tool as well as Yahoo Site Explorer tool.

The minimum industry rate for PPC services is $150-200 per month (setup is usually extra). Some companies charge a percentage of your overall PPC spending (between 5% and 15%, depending on the size of the PPC company). Others charge per campaign and/or per number of keywords included within each PPC campaign.

If you need help with PPC campaigns, give us a call to talk about your PPC needs. We offer flexible options for various PPC budgets.

Google AdWords PPC Training Overview

For most small businesses a 2-hour training on PPC campaign management is all that is required to get a successful PPC campaign. Here is a PPC AdWords guide by Google itself, it is a bit old but still applicable.

Paid-per-click or PPC campaigns allow you to drive pre-qualified traffic to your website within minutes after signup. If your website is new, PPC campaigns are a great way to start generating revenue. There are a few things you can do to maximize the benefits of your PPC campaigns. Here is what we include in our PPC training:

1. Signup with Google AdWords
2. Signup with Google Analytics, if you have not done so already
3. Link your Google Analytics with your Google AdWords (follow the instructions)
4. Conduct keyword research using Google keyword tool 
5. Also check these keywords via Wordtracker free keyword tool (look at the results in relative terms, not in specific numbers). Select 30-50 potential keywords. 
6. In Google AdWords, set up one campaign. If your business is large and you are offering many different products and services, create a separate ad group for each product or service offering. If your business is small, create just one ad group, so you will have one campaign containing one ad group. Include 10-15 keywords in each ad group.
7. Do not dilute your best keywords. The system is setup per advertiser, not per campaign or per ad group, so your keywords would compete with one another in your different ad groups and different campaigns, if you have more than one. This means that for a higher ROI, fewer but better performing keywords are preferable over a larger number of keywords with poor performance. If you have multiple ad groups and campaigns, avoid using duplicate keywords in them (they will be competing with one another, diluting your performance).
8. In Google AdWords, in campaign settings, define specific geographical areas for your ads. Define language. Define time of day for your ads to run (turn them off at night).
9. In Google AdWords, create 2-3 different ad variations for each ad group. Use a question tag line in one; a judgement statement in another; and a generic business offering in the third one. Example: 1) Need a new website? 2) Best web design in town; 3) Affordable web design. Run all variations equally for 2-3 weeks and then pause those ones that don't perform well (i.e. don't receive clicks).
10. In Google AdWords, in campaign settings, de-select “content network” and "partner search" if your keywords are performing well on Google search alone. Google wants you to use their content network to get more money from you (remember, you are paying per click), but you might not get the right traffic from them and might end up spending a large chunk of your budget on "mindless" clicks. If your ad is set up properly, and your score is good,  but your are not getting enough clicks, then you can turn on "content network" and "partner search" and see what it gives you. But at first, select Google search only.
11. In Google AdWords, start with 10-15 different keywords for each ad group for the first 2 weeks, then pause all keywords that do not perform well. You might end up having only 3 keywords for your ad group that perform well. To determine your best performers, check the number of impressions, the number of clicks, and the click-through rate or CTR. The CTR is impressions divided by clicks. Anything over 2-5% is acceptable for CTR, but in some cases, you can get 25% or more - which is fantastic. An impression is an instance of your ad "shown" on search engines in response to a keyword query ("shown" does not mean users necessarily "see" it). Do not pay for impressions! You will go broke. Pay per clicks only.
12. To get your quality score higher (5/10 and more), which means getting the most out of your buck, ensure 1) consistent repetitions of the same keywords across the following: your ad copy (all 3 lines); your landing page URL, Title tag, H1 and the actual copy. Do not worry if you can't get more than 6/10. As long as there are "no problems" in the Google report, you are fine. Then, specify position 1-2 (enable position preference in campaign settings). 2) Pay more than the minimum bid.  3) Add negative keywords if it does not affect your minimum bid by a lot (try with the negative keywords and without them and pay attention to the minimum bid number that appears automatically). Then wait to see what happens.
    If your ads are not running, Google would probably tell you that you need to pay more for the position you've selected. Change your position preferences to 1-5 and wait. Wait 30 min or so. Then, either increase your bid or broaden your position range. Make sure you wait between each increase, or else you might end up "setting up" the bar for your keywords higher than necessary. Remember, your goals are totally opposite of those of Google when it comes to PPC campaign management. Google wants you to pay as much as possible, whereas you want to spend as little as possible, so be shrewd. Take small incremental steps towards increasing your bid and broadening your position preferences and wait between each step. We suspect that the waiting time might matter as well (the software might "understand" that you are ready to proceed with your increases if you only wait 10 minutes between each increase), but those are our speculations only. When you see your ads running, check to see what position they appear in. If they are anywhere between 1-3, then go back and set your position preference to this range.
    In some cases, you might want to opt for position 9-10, actually, because human eye tends to first glance at what is located at the top right and then at the bottom right. So if your budget is tight, you can target those "bottom" positions. Tweak your keywords bid and positioning until you get what you want. You need to remember, it is a bidding system, so if your competitors decide to out-position you, they will pay more than you did for the same keywords. Keen an eye on your campaign and check daily. 
13. On your website, create a separate landing page with meaningful “sales offers” for each of your keyword ad groups. Make this landing page “orphan”, i.e. inaccessible from anywhere else other than your ads on Google AdWords. In other words, do not place this landing page(s) on your Site Map or link to it from your other pages. This will ensure accurate statistics tracking and reporting.
14.  In Google Analytics, set up goals, i.e. trace user paths from the first landing page URL to the last registration URL (Google will ask you for a series of URLs).
15. Use Google URL building tool for important buttons and links (use descriptive names for these links and buttons, so that you can clearly identify them in your Google Analytics reports).