Avoid Making 5 Colossal Pay Per Click Advertising Mistakes

PPC Services have shown of late they are the quickest way to draw more potential customers to a website. Pioneered by Google AdWords predominantly, Pay per Click Advertising helps target the sponsored results section of the search results pages closely, where visitor eyes focus on. The basic idea behind this advertising model is to charge an advertiser a pre-defined fee whenever a third party clicks on the ad.

If you are fascinated by the rosy side of it, then also beware of the follies. Search engine marketing, of whom PPC is an integral part of, is fraught with risk. It can make you shell out huge sums of money and still not have any customers visit your website. No two cases are identical and despite the risks, you can at least take these precautionary measures while you do pay per click advertising to avoid getting caught in a trap.

1. Never send visitors to your Home Page. Those who have tried PPC Services before say it from experience. Whenever you set up an ad for a product, you need to make sure your URL redirects readers to the page on which the product details have actually been given out and not to the Home Page. Visitors do not have the time to find out the page on which specifications have been mentioned. This creates frustration and they would feel like leaving your website fast. To solve this issue, perhaps you would want to create a custom landing page.

2. Send your visitors to your Contact Page. This will prove to be a masterstroke as far as search engine marketing goes. Businesses have this habit of sending potential PPC customers to the website’s contact page. They use this as ploy to force a newsletter down their throat. What they fail to realize is, that this hurts their chances of making a sale. And yes, if you thought you could bait the visitor into filling up the contact form in exchange for something free, then you better give this a second thought.

3. Never fail to split-test your ad text. This lackadaisical attitude might cost you badly. Never run PPC Ads without testing them first. Split-test them by first creating multiple versions of the same for every ad group. What this will help do is, determine which words lead to most number of click-throughs and on-site conversions. Most PPC engines allow split-testing. Another thing you need to ensure while you split-test is that your ad variations be displayed randomly in order to show meaningful data.

4. Never be too dependent on ‘broad match’ keywords. Avoid writing ads using such keywords. Reason being, you end up compromising highly on the relevance factor. Be smart. Save some money by not entertaining irrelevant searches. Set up your ads such that the phrase used in it is ‘exact match’. Give to users what they search for, not what you wish to show in a broader sense to create more potential for traffic influx.

5. Use Negative Keywords to their Fullest Potential. Most advertisers refrain from negative keywords. What they fail to realize is, this prevents the ad from showing when that keyword gets searched for. When you think of PPC as a subject that ought to be studied first, you realize that negative keywords have their own unique value to add to a PPC Campaign. This also helps control relevancy and does not weed out the possibility to have more potential traffic come in of broad match key words.

Please avoid making such mistakes as far as your PPC campaign is concerned. Making these will make you regret in the longer run. Be smart. Study these carefully and then make a move and chances are you will indeed end up doing well.