A Beginner’s Guide to Paid Search

As a beginner in the paid search realm, learning the ins and outs of the digital marketing industry takes some time. However, sitting in on A Beginner’s Guide to Paid Search, a presentation by Lisa Raehsler, Big Click Co. founder, at SES New York helped aspiring paid search marketers guidance on how to get up to speed in the most succinct manner possible.

Kick-Starting a Successful Paid Search Advertising Program

Paid search advertising offers the chance to pay (by the click) for visibility on major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo when people search for terms related to the product or service that website is selling. These ads, typically known as pay-per-click (PPC) ads, can appear above, to the right of, or beneath the organic (also known as natural or algorithmic) search results.

Before diving headfirst into a strategy, marketers must identify main goals for the account. Is the sale/purchase the most important aspect of the site? Is it persuading a lead? Would you include a link that would allow visitors to subscribe? And also, are you going to track your page views?

The account structure is organized into campaigns, which are then separated into ad groups that combine ads with their respective keywords. It is best practice to have your account campaign structures mirror the website itself in order to budget and report effectively. These campaigns should revolve around a funnel structure that illustrates how searches are general in the beginning, but gradually getting more defined as visitors are moving closer to making a purchase.

Disparate ad groups and keywords in one campaign under one budget can cause your account to perform poorly. Raehsler’s presentation is coherently divided into best practices and optimization strategies for keywords, budgets/bids, ads, targeting, retargeting, and tracking.

Keywords

Best Practices

It is best practice to test keywords in various match types and to make sure you always have a well-developed negative keyword list. You can generate keyword ideas from the keyword tool in Google AdWords, or the Google Insights tool for suggestions and related searches. Reviewing query reports and web analytics is a must when you are trying to maintain accuracy.

There are various keyword match types that must be taken into consideration when inputting – broad matches, broad match modifiers (using plus signs), phrase matches (using parenthesis), exact matches (using brackets), and negative matches are some of the various types out there. You must also go back and review the aforementioned funnel to strategize some general and/or specific keyword match types that makes the most sense depending on the level in the funnel you are at.

Optimization

To devise the most optimal set of keywords, they must be scrutinized on a regular basis depending on the size of your campaign.

Are the keywords too general? Constantly review click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates, and remove anything that is too general with lots of impressions and low CTR (or less than 1 percent) and/or a poor conversion rate.

Do you have low quality score? Sort and filter through by low quality score and no conversions. Check out the keywords, ads, and the corresponding landing page to see if they correlate. Create various filters for specific keyword conditions and work on the CTR by making your ad copy as directly related to the keyword as possible.

Again, you must always review all aspects of your campaign... Read More