The very best pay per click management companies have a secret wish…and that is they want customers who are NOT looking to buy!

WHAT, you say! Have you gone out of your mind? My answer: No…I may not be out of my mind, but I AM thinking out of the box on this one.

There is a tool called the “Commercial Intention” tool. It is made available by Microsoft adCenter Labs. Now the purpose of this tool is help you decide the commercial intent of a searcher’s input into a search engine.

You can use this tool by placing a query into the box and hitting “Go”. The tool will return a calculation that measures the searcher’s commercial intent – in other words…what are the chances that the searcher who enters this query will be a searcher who has the intent of spending any money.

Some examples:
If someone types in “bass lures” the tool returns an estimated commercial intention probability of 0.81. This means that the tool “thinks” that there is an 81% chance that the one who searches for “bass lures” has an interest in buying something.

If someone types in “trouble catching fish” the tool returns an estimated NON-commercial intention probability of 0.84. The tool thinks that there is an 84% chance that this particular searcher has NO intention of buying anything.

Now, here is the problem: There are many gurus instructing their students to use this tool to help them decide the value of keywords – teaching that if there is little commercial intent, then don’t bid on that keyword — but they are leaving out one HUGE important piece to the puzzle…and that is the estimated CPC (cost per click).

The value of a keyword is NOT measured in commercial intent. It is measured in cost per conversions of that keyword…period!

I went to Google’s external keyword tool and found the following information:

“bass fishing lures” – estimated $0.89 cost per click – estimated ad position 1-3
“trouble catching fish” – estimated $0.05 cost per click – estimated ad position 1-3

So now the question becomes…do I want to bid on the keyword “trouble catching fish”. Of course, I do. I am going to at least try it and see whether I can get any conversions. In fact, I know that I can afford to fail a LOT more with this keyword than the other one.

How can I afford to fail more? Let’s assume I have a decent conversion ratio on my website and can somehow make the $0.89 great-commercial-intent keyword work for me from a profitability standpoint. That being the case, I can afford to fail 18 times as much with the “trouble catching fish” keyword! I get that with an easy formula: CPC (cost per click) that I can afford to spend / CPC of non-commercial keyword

In this example: So $0.89 (assuming this is the amount I can afford to bid and still make money) / $0.05 = ~18.

So what have we learned? Many PPC management companies don’t even bother with “non-commercial-intent” keywords. That means there is less competition on these words. Since there is less competition, the cost to bid on them and get top position (1-3) ranking is lower as well. And I don’t care that my sales conversion percentage on these keywords is lower — as long as the overall cost per conversion is near what I can afford, I am happy.

Now the only thing I need is MORE of these keywords that I can pick up for little or nothing. Let my competitors duke it out over more competitive keywords that have higher volumes of searches, but I will make up my volume by having LOTS of low-converting, but much cheaper keywords.

Now, I am not saying this strategy works all the time. There are times when you definitely should NOT use it…and you should definitely structure your search campaign in a fashion so that these lower-converting keywords do not bring your higher-converting keywords’ CTRs down. (There is a certain way to do this.)

In conclusion, give me customers who are not necessarily looking to buy…just give me LOTS of them. And if I can get them cheap enough…I can afford to fail more, so long as I can still make a profit. Yes, sometimes PPC management can be counter-intuitive and downright complicated, but the best PPC managers love this game and thrive on making their customer’s PPC campaigns profitable.

When it comes to pay per click campaigns, a smart PPC manager knows something that most amateurs don’t: When you advertise with Google or any of the other major search engines like Yahoo or Bing, you are not necessarily competing against your competitors!

I can hear you now saying…”What do you mean? Of course, I am competing against my competitors.” My answer again is NO, you are not. Let me explain.

I just typed in the keyword “cars” into Google. On the first page alone, here is what I found advertisements for:
-car auctions
-car buying guide
-used cars
-new Chrysler cars
-DVD of the Disney movie called “Cars”
-information about the CARS Car Allowance Rebate system
-car insurance program for high-risk drivers

Now, let’s get real. Do all of these company really compete directly with one another? The answer: Yes AND no.

No – they don’t directly compete for the same customers. Yes – they DO compete for the same ad space with other companies that happen to be bidding on the same keywords that they are bidding on.

Now, I will tell you, the company advertising the car buying guides (as well as the company selling DVDs) probably make a lot less revenue than the company selling high-risk car insurance or the one selling new Chrysler cars.

The lesson…don’t be one of these low-volume companies advertising on broad, wide-appealling keywords. The problem is with the keyword itself. “Cars” is WAY to broad of a keyword to bid on. If you don’t know what you are doing, you will lose money. Chances are that the larger volume sales companies already know this fact and are willing to take a calculated risk and waste multiple clicks by folks who are not necessarily prospects in their quest for a certain volume of clicks that may end up resulting in a high-volume-revenue sale.

Smaller-volume sellers have to be smarter. They must choose keywords that are extremely targeted. And if these targeted keywords that they choose are super-competitive keywords, then they have to have a strategy for getting these keywords at an affordable price and /or have a better conversion percentage than their competitors.

And if this fails, they must target long-tail keywords that don’t necessarily have the competition of the shorter keywords. If these long-tail keywords don’t have much traffic, then they must make it up in volume – by bidding on a large number of these super-targeted, non-competitive long-tail keywords.

Sound complicated? It is. Think you need help? You probably do. That’s why you may need to consider hiring a full-time employee, dedicated to managing your search marketing campaigns. If you cannot afford a full-timer, then perhaps it is time to consider outsourcing your pay per click campaign to a professional PPC campaign management service so that you can stop competing with companies that aren’t even your real competitors…and start making sales to prospects who want and need your wares.

A successful Google Adwords campaign begins with proper keyword research. Many businesses use Google Adwords for attracting customers, but few really become successful with their campaigns. Truth be know, most folks advertising on Google probably fail. Why? Because they tried to advertise without researching what their customers are actually searching for. They failed to do proper keyword research.

First let’s define the phrase “keyword research”. Many newbies to the internet mistakenly think the term “keyword” is actually one (1) word. Well, it could be, but normally it is not. Anytime you hear the word “keyword” think “key-phrase” instead because normally most keywords are in fact  “phrases” that someone is typing into a search engine in order to find something.

So where is the best place to begin your keyword research? The answer may be right under your own nose. Chances are the best place to begin a successful Google Adwords campaign is to look on your own website. There are actually two places on your website to begin. First, look at the site itself. What keywords are you optimizing for? In other words, what words are you using on your site that makes the average user know that they have come to the right place.

Maybe you are an accident attorney that practices several states in the Southeast. In that case, wouldn’t it make sense to have the keyword phrase “accident attorney” and “southeast” in prominent positions on your site? And if that is the case, then shouldn’t you be bidding on keyword phrases that include the word “accident attorney” and also “southeast?”

Another place to begin keyword research is to look in the not-so-obvious place, and that is on your server. Most hosting companies have a software interface that has many useful programs and tools incorporated into it. For example, many hosting companies such as HostGator and SiteGround use an interface called CPanel. CPanel has a useful software tool called Awstats. Awstats collects collects much information about the visitors to your sites. In many cases not only can you see which sites that arrived on your site from, but also which keywords they used to search for your company. This information is invaluable.

I would bet that over 95% of the users of Adwords don’t access this information. If one customer found your site using a particular keyword phrase, doesn’t it make sense to bid on that particular keyword (as long as you consider it to be a keyword that is pertinent to your business)? If you don’t know how to take advantage of this tremdously valuable information already sitting on your hosting server, then ask your hosting company or a techie to help you get it. It only takes a minute or two to access, but the information could be invaluable.

There are many more tactics for the doing proper keyword research, including legally spying on your competitors. What? You don’t know how to legally spy on your competitors and swipe some of their best performing keywords for your own? In this case, what you don’t know about running a successful Google Adwords campaign can definitely hurt you.

There are many free and paid resources on the web that will educate you about doing proper keyword research. Take the time to learn them and if you don’t have the time, then pay someone with experience in adwords campaign management to manage your Google Adwords campaign for you.

One of the first steps to running a successful Google Adwords campaign is bidding on good keywords. You want well-thought-out keywords  that your prospect is likely to type into Google when searching for a solution to their problem. But you ALSO want keywords that lead to conversions. If you sell widgets, which keyword do you think will actually convert better for your product…”widgets” or “where can I buy widgets”? My money is on the latter.

But here is where most folks have a problem. They stock up only on obvious keywords and are missing incredible opportunities for attracting more searchers. Thinking “out of the box” means pondering the non-obvious ways that prospects may be looking for your company.

The number one rule that you have to remember when doing your keyword research is that you have to get into the mind of your prospects. You have to think like they think. So how do you do that? There are several ways.

First of all, why not ASK them? What’s wrong with asking your customers what led them to your website. If you take leads over the phone, make sure that you have a form that is required to be filled with that information. If you sell a product online, follow up with an e-mail that asks them why they needed your product or how they found you. The answers may surprise you.

Let’s say that you sell a software product that fixes registry problems. Here are a few obvious keywords you would may want to bid on:

-fix registry problems
-problems in registry
-how to fix registry problems
-having pc registry issues

Of course, you would bid on many more keywords than those, but you get the picture. However, you are missing out on many opportunities because you are not thinking “out of the box.” You are what we like to refer to as “too close to your business.” You may have heard it another way: “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”

Do you really think all of your clients know what they want when they first begin searching for a solution to their problem? Of course not! More thorough research would have revealed some of the following keywords:

-error 403
-what does error 403 mean
-kernel 32 dll error
-spool 32

These keywords reveal examples where users don’t know that they even need registry software. They just know that they are having problems and are searching for the solution to that problem; and more than likely they need an answer fast. If you had gotten into your prospect’s mind by thinking out of the box, you would be running a more successful Adwords campaign.

The same scenario works in any business. Let’s take an entirely different profession and say you are an attorney that specializes in workers compensation issues. I just took a pause from writing this article and typed in “workers compensation” into Google. Guess what? Pages and pages of paid Google Adword ads, advertising the wares of workers compensation attorneys all across the nation.

But what if I don’t know I need a workers compensation attorney? So let’s type in another keyword phrase: “what if I got hurt at work”? Guess what? FAR fewer ads show up. In fact, there are so few that I could probably be on the first page of Google for under $0.05.

Now granted, that keyword phrase is probably not searched on very much, but don’t you think that folks who ARE searching on that keyword term would be much more likely to be a prospect than someone who just enters the words “workers compensation” into Google? After all, just because I search “workers compensation” doesn’t mean I need legal services. I may need insurance instead.

And don’t you think “what if I got hurt at work” would be a highly PROFITABLE keyword as well? Now all you have to do is find lots more highly profitable keywords and soon you will be well on your way to absolutely dominating your competition in your Google Adwords campaign.

Thinking out of the box is not hard, if you just…well…think out of the box! Get into your prospect’s mind and soon you will be getting into your prospect’s pocketbook – in a legal way, of course – and you will be well on your way to managing a highly successful Google Adwords campaign.

Can you capitalize on others’ mistakes and be wildly successful with your Google Adwords campaign? Yes! But it’s not your competitors’ mistakes that you should always focus on. Let me explain…

Your prospects are not necessarily the best spellers in the world. In fact, the word “misspell” (mispell) is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language. There are many other commonly used words that are misspelled. Unfortunately, many of these words are typed into search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN every day. So why should you care? Because your competition usually doesn’t care!

Armed with this knowledge, you can dominate keywords in your market that no one else thought of bidding on. Since there is normally little competition for these keywords you can get them a lot cheaper than the correctly-spelled versions.

But let’s say you serve a clientele that is more sophisticated than most; perhaps your average customer has a college degree. Well, first I would like to ask you if you have read any college essay papers lately, but (seriously) even if you believe that those searching for you CAN spell, there are other reasons besides ignorance that many people misspell words:

-In their hurry, people leave out letters in a word.
-Letters get switched because of “fast fingers”.
-Ocassionally keys on keyboards get “stuck” and they add extra letters.
-People know how to spell common words, but don’t remember exact names of companies – especially if your business uses a surname in its title. (“Thompson” or “Thomson”?)

So how do you know which keywords people are misspelling to get to your business. First of all, start with good keyword research and make sure that you get the correctly spelled keywords first. Next, take a list of the most commonly used words in those keyword phrases and think about how people could misspell them.

There are several “typo” tools on the internet that can help. A free tool that you can use is located at http://www.selfseo.com/domain_typo_generator.php . Let’s do a real example. I will type in the word “attorney” and see what comes up:
-zttorney
-sttorney
-qttorney
-attornet
-attorndy

There were many more misspellings generated, but notice that all of these examples have nothing to do with the searcher not knowing how to spell; but in each case, the letter mistyped was a key in close proximity to the one intended.

So if you are going to dominate your competitors and take advantage of your prospects’ typos so that you can get inexpensive clicks, let’s go over some “Do’s and Dont’s.”

DO include variations of the most commonly misspelled keywords in your Adwords campaign. DO set up a SEPARATE ad group for these misspelled keywords so that you can better track their effectiveness. DO make sure that you have the misspelling of your own company name.

DON’T try to use the misspellings in your headlines or ad copy. That means you can’t use “dynamic” keyword insertion techniques for these particular keywords. Don’t even try. If it gets by Google the first time, rest assured that they will catch it, and you could end up being penalized big-time because Google definitely wants professional, correctly-spelled copy in its Adword campaigns.

Yes, it takes some extra work, but the payoff can be hugely successful. You not only have to know what you should do correctly, but more importantly, what your competition is NOT doing correctly in order to run successful PPC Campaign Management.

So what do horses have to do with PPC management services? Plenty! Bear with me and I’ll explain.

Back in June, 2008, there was a major horse race – the Belmont Stakes. Big Brown, who had previously won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness (and in dominant fashion), was the heavy favorite. All Big Brown had to do was win at Belmont and he would have become the first Triple Crown winner since a horse named Affirmed accomplished this feat way back in 1978.

All bets were on Big Brown. It didn’t take a lot of research for the bookies to make Big Brown the overwhelming favorite – both on the field and at the gambling booths. It was all but a foregone conclusion…the race was over before it began. Big Brown would win and win big – just like he had in his other two races.

According to conventional wisdom (and also according to Big Brown’s trainer) all the other horses did not even need to show up. This was a guarantee, a no-contest, a shoe-in (no pun intended).

Well, once again…”conventional wisdom” was wrong. Big Brown came in dead last. The winner was Da’Tara! This was the same horse who had finished 23 1/2 lengths BEHIND Big Brown in a race just three months earlier. In fact, Da’Tara was so dominant, that he beat all the horses by four lengths!

It’s a good thing horses can’t read because if they could…then Da’Tara would not have even tried. But, alas, horses CANNOT read, and Da’Tara is in the record books forever a winner of the 2008 Belmont Stakes.

No, horses can’t read, but neither can your customers. Yes, most can probably read words, but they can’t read your mind. They don’t know what you think they are supposed to know. You see…you and ever other pay per click advertiser only have 85 total characters to tell your customer about your offer in order to get the click – only about 12-16 words to tell your story – no matter who you are.

Pay per click is the “great equalizer.” It doesn’t matter how big your company is, how long you have been in business, or how many millions of dollars of sales you made last year. Customers don’t necessarily “know” that; you can’t take them for granted like Big Brown’s fans took him for granted because of his reputation. Every day, you must compete to win. You must fight. You must outsmart your competition. Heck, in many markets it’s hard enough just to get on the first page of the search results – let alone get the click – and let alone make a sale or convert a prospect into a lead!

Now, if you are a small company…you should be getting very excited about this scenario. Just like with Da’Tara…each new day brings you a shot at winning. In the pay per click game, everyone is on an even playing field. You cannot buy your way to the top. In fact, if you know what you are doing and practice smart PPC management, you may even get to the top of the page, while spending less than your competitor who is at the bottom!

Yes, some search engine may play favorites to a few previous winners, but not too much and not for too long. For you see…the customer is the one who gets the most favoritism…and that’s the way it should be.

Companies who are not on the top of their game and choose to approach PPC management like it is some sort of “set it and forget it” service will soon be going the way of Big Brown, while an upstart like Da’Tara, who sticks with it long enough to figure things out, becomes the pay per click champion of the day. If you find you can’t compete anymore, then perhaps it’s time to retire or, to consider outsourcing your PPC management services to a company who knows how to breed “champions” and has a track record for turning losing PPC campaigns into winners.

Farmers would more than likely make poor PPC Managers; hunters would make great ones. Now I have nothing against tillers of the soil. Some of my ancestors were farmers. It’s just that I think farmers would not succeed at managing pay per click campaigns for very long.

Why? Because farmers operate from a long-term mentality. An apple farmer plants a seedling and doesn’t expect any fruit for the first 3-4 years — and even then the fruit is normally not edible until the apple tree is 8-10 years old!

Now that might work for an apple farmer, but can you imagine “investing” money in a pay per click campaign with that mentality? Break even in 3-4 years — profits in 10. No way.

But hunters on the other hand would make GREAT PPC campaign managers – especially African safari  hunters. Why? It’s either kill or be killed. If you miss your mark your competitor (in this case the lion) has you for lunch. Sounds a lot more like pay per click to me than the apple tree example.

In the pay per click game, you have to think like a hunter. When a hunter goes on a hunting trip, he has to target what he wants to hunt. Why? Because an African lion can’t be brought down with a squirrel gun. The hunter has to know what he is going after and have the appropriate weapons and ammunition for his prey.

By the same token, in order for PPC campaign managers to be successful, they must target their market with precision, intelligence, and speed. In pay per click you don’t have time to mess around. If the keywords that you are targeting are wrong and don’t convert, then you have to make swift decisions on whether to keep throwing money at them or to toss them aside and focus on better, more targeted and higher-converting keywords.

And unlike the farmer who normally has time on his side…PPC managers don’t have that luxury. Sometimes you have only a few weeks or several months to get things “right” so that you can afford to stay in the game.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of players don’t operate like hunters. They treat their search marketing campaign like it is an apple orchard and they have all the time in the world. They plant small seeds, and make small minute changes that are days apart, while their competitors run about with a gun in their hand and hunt big prey, knowing that if they miss, they can quickly re-load and hunt again later that day or even tomorrow. Guess who wins?

I know…pay per click advertising is not a girl and dating is definitely NOT a game, but that did not stop legendary T.V. producer Chuck Barris from creating one of the most popular television game shows of the 1970’s – The Dating Game.

This creation put one man behind a screen to ask three (3) women various questions. At the end of the game, the man picked the woman whose answers (and voice) most pleased him. All the while, the viewers and the studio audience could see all three potential dates, while these rivals took turns at cutting their competition down, hoping to be the lucky date chosen at the end.

Well…pay per click advertising works the same way…sort of. The PPC manager has to choose between three different match types for his keywords. He can choose from the following:
-broad
-phrase
-exact

There IS a catch, however. He can also choose ANY combination of these three. (Imagine the man in the dating game getting choose two or even all three women to take out at the same time.)

So what do MOST PPC advertisers choose? Broad match, of course. The reason why most choose broad match is because that it the default in most search marketing advertising systems. But here is the problem: Most folks don’t understand the difference between the match types…and knowing this difference is CRUCIAL to success in PPC marketing.

The best way to explain the difference is by example. Let’s take the keyword “colon difficulty” for our broad match example. When using broad matches, you are telling the search engine that you want your ad to show as long as all of your keywords appear in the search query.

You ad will appear if you used the broad match type for the keyword “colon difficulty” and the searcher typed in any of the following search queries:
-having colon difficulty (okay)
-having difficulty with my colon (okay)
-difficulty deciding whether or not to use a colon or a semi-colon (NOT okay)

As you can see in the above example. There is definitely a risk when using broad match as the match type.

Now let’s do an example using the phrase match type. When using phrase match, you are telling the search engine that you want  your ad to appear when the searcher types the combination of keywords in that exact order; however, using phrase matching allows for words to appear before and after your phrase.

Your ad will appear if you used the phrase match type for the keyword “divorce attorney” and the searcher typed in any of the following search queries:
-need good divorce attorney (okay)
-divorce attorney in Texas (okay – if you practice law in Texas)

Your ad will not appear in the following example:
-attorney divorce (It will not appear because even though the words are in the search query, they are not in the exact same order; they are reversed.)

But your ad will ALSO appear in this example:
-how do I hire a hit man to knock off my wife’s divorce attorney? (DEFINITELY not okay)

So you see…there are times that you should use and phrase matching and times when the use of it could be rather unfortunate.

So what is the exact match type? Simple. That is when you select your ad to appear only when the keywords you bid on are used exactly; nothing more – nothing less.

If you used the exact match type for the keyword “state attorney bar” here would be some results:
-state attorney bar (Your ad will be shown. It is an exact match!)
-state attorney bar and grill (Your ad will NOT be shown; there was not an exact match, which is a good thing because the searcher definitely would not be looking for your in this case.

In conclusion, just like the suitor in the Dating Game had to carefully consider which date to choose, those managing PPC campaigns better think carefully before they choose the match type for their keywords. Of the three (broad, phrase, or exact)…broad match is definitely the most dangerous to use! Yes, there are cases where broad matching is applicable, but for most newbies, it is best to stick with phrase or exact matching for better results.

If you are now thoroughly confused, don’t feel alone. Just by reading this article you probably know more about match types than 80% of the PPC advertisers out there. If you think you are in over your head, then perhaps it’s time to play a dating game of your own…choosing the correct PPC management company that you can trust to handle your search marketing campaign so that you can concentrate on something less confusing.

It is true, and Google will love you too if you just take the time to set up your adwords campaigns the right way! You see, there is a right way and a wrong of doing it and if you are like 95% of Adwords advertisers you are probably doing it the wrong way!

When you first set up your adwords campaigns you are either setting yourself up for success or optimizing your campaigns for absolute failure. No one wants to fail, but only a very small percentage of advertisers are actually setting up their campaigns the correct way and optimizing for success. While setting up your campaigns the correct way is not the catchall for Adwords success, (it still requires daily maintenance, split testing and bid management),  it definitely play a huge role in whether your campaigns will succeed or fail.

Google is very judgmental; and rightly so. After all, it is the world’s #1, most trusted Search Engine. What I’m trying to say here is that Google will not reward an Adwords campaign that is set up wrong. As a matter of fact, many times Google actually punishes campaigns that are setup incorrectly. With that in mind, hopefully you understand how important it is to set up your adwords campaigns correctly. When you set up you are either setting up for success or setting up for failure.

Setting up Your Campaigns the Wrong way –
I’m not going to go into to much detail on how to set up your campaigns the wrong way. You probably already know how to do that, but let me tell you a couple things that Google absolutely hates.

Google really hates:
- Irrelevancy
- Keyword Cramming- (this is when you stuff all of your keywords into just one or few
adgroups. Google expects your keywords to be organized into separate adgroups with
your keywords being perfectly relevant to each other.)

You see, Google is all obsessed with “relevancy” and the reason being is because Google wants to provide the most relevant content possible to its users. So, if you cram all of your keywords into just one adgroup, then Google know that there is know way the text ad you have displaying for those keyword can possibly be relevant to each of those keywords. Do you really think that Google is going to display an ad that it thinks might not be relevant to what a searcher is actually searching on? The answer…. Of course, it will, but you will have one heck of a click cost and pretty sorry ad placement! Do you see why keyword cramming does not work? This is why you must be very sure to set up your campaigns the right way in ppc campaign management.

Setting up Your Campaigns the Right way –
Don’t you want to gain favor with the Google Gods? Well here is the way to start. Set up your campaigns right! Begin by carefully organizing all of your keywords into closely knit, relevant adgroups. Divide up your keywords so that each adgroup had a main theme where all of the keywords inside are relevant to each other. This will also force you to write a relevant ad for each of the adgroups you have created. I know, it is a lot of work, but Google will love you for it! If you really want to please Google, try making your campaign super relevant by putting each individual keyword into an adgroup of its own. That technique is a lot more work though, and is better left to us PPC Campaign Management Pros.

If your Adwords campaigns are performing like the average Adwords campaign performs then allow me, “Welcome to Google Hell”. You see, most people involved in PPC campaign management do not have a clue when it comes to setting up and managing successful Google Adwords campaigns. Professional PPC campaign management requires specialized knowledge, a variety of tools and vigorous, daily maintenance. Most Adwords advertisers have none of these crucial factors, which is exactly why they have lost favor in the eyes of the Google gods and have been condemned to suffer the horrors of Google hell.

You are not Alone!

Do not ever think you are alone when you experience horrible ad placement and high click costs. Many advertisers experience these same hardships day after day and week after week, but what do you expect? Only a small percentage of Adwords advertisers are ever extremely successful and that is because only a small amount of advertisers actually take the time to learn how to properly set up and manage Adwords campaigns. There are some crucial steps you must take when setting up your Adwords campaigns if you really want to be successful.

Success = Finding Grace in the Eyes of Google

If you want to be successful in Adwords then finding grace in the eyes of the Google gods is NOT an option. In order to “find grace” there are several things that you must do to setup your campaigns exactly the way Google wants them and that requires getting inside the mind of Google and thinking the way a world class search engine does.

Get in the Mind of Google – The Key to PPC Campaign Management

You must understand that Google, being the #1 search engine in the world, is all about providing the best content possible for its users. Not only is Google concerned about showing the best possible results first in organic search but Google is also very concerned with showing the best, most relevant results first in paid advertising as well. (Even though it is possible to influence your ad placement by raising your bids. However, earning high ad placement solely from paying more money is usually a stupid idea.) Anyway, to make a long story short Google is obsessed with “relevancy”.

I guarantee you that if you have lost favor in the eyes of Google then it is most likely because your Adwords campaigns lack relevancy or maybe Google just hates you… Just joking, but on a serious note the Google gods will hate you if your campaigns are not relevant.

Relevancy is No Secret- It’s Just a lot of Work

If you really want to get back in the good graces of Google then you need to make your campaigns have relevancy. Relevancy consists of three major parts; keyword relevancy, ad relevancy and landing page relevancy. Here is a quick overview of each:

Keywords Relevancy-
This is where your keywords are divided up and organized into adgroups that are VERY closely knit where each keyword is highly relevant to the next. The ppc campaign management pros go even further by putting every keyword into separate adgroups. It may seem like a lot of work but it is worth it.

Ad Relevancy –
Ad relevancy is where your ads are perfectly relevancy to the keywords. Ad relevancy is where the keyword searched on appears 1-3 times in the text ad. Ads containing the keyword searched on generally get rewarded higher ad placement from Google and usually get a higher CTR than most ads.

Landing Page Relevancy-
Landing page relevancy is the process of making your landing page 100% relevant to all of your keywords. There are many factors which make up landing page relevancy but one great way to increase your landing page relevancy is by using a special technique called, “Dynamic Keyword Insertion”.