For some marketers, especially B2B companies, the holidays may be a time of year when things slow down, which can be the perfect opportunity to thoroughly cleanse your PPC account and get it to deliver more bang for your buck. On the heels of my blog post on landing page optimization, here are 10 ways to make your PPC campaign more profitable.

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1. Make changes that matter.


Don’t just look for what is not performing well in your campaign, look for areas that would have a big impact on your ROI if it were working better. See what campaigns and ad groups within each campaign represent the greatest share of your overall paid search budget.

Once you’ve identified the most critical areas of your campaign to optimize, start by taking a look at your Quality Score. Improving it will help you reduce your cost-per-click in relation to the position of your ads. This involves looking at each keyword’s CTR, associated ads and taking some of the following steps:

2. Create better targeted ad groups.


Look through your ad groups to find keywords with low Quality Score or low CTR and see what ads are showing up for them. Consider placing these keywords in another ad group with ads that are more relevant. In the case of broad match keywords, use the “See Search Terms” report to find some common queries you are getting clicks for. If some of the keywords that often get clicks are relevant to you, consider using them as a phrase or exact match in the same or new ad group.

Besides using the “See Search Terms” report to better target relevant keywords, use it also add to list of keywords that you do not want to target.

3. Curate your negative keyword lists.


Add negative keywords to your list so that your ads show for more relevant searches. You can find these in the “See Search Terms” report.

4. Use broad match modifiers.

If you have not done so already, add the new broad match modifier to your ad groups. This type of matching is more flexible than phrase and exact match while doing a better job of targeting than broad match. Bid on this match type higher than you would on broad match, and lower than phrase and exact match.

Your CTR does not only rely on your keywords, so it’s important that your ads get users to click.

5. Test your ads.


Look for ways to make your ads stand-out against your competition and test different ideas. Let ads compete against each other and gather sufficient data before eliminating one or more ads. When you come across a test result in one ad group, consider applying what you learned to other ad groups.

Everything I’ve listed so far is primarily meant to increase your CTR. But what about making sure that each click is the best click you can get?

6. Filter out unwanted clicks.


Provide information in your ad copy that will deter your most common unwanted customers. For example, if your services start at $5,000, consider using that in your ad copy. This may go against our strategy of increasing our CTR, but its benefits may outweigh the loss by increasing the value of each click.

7. Use match types to control bids.

Look at broad match keywords that are consuming a lot of your budget, without delivering the goods in the form of conversions. Consider reducing your bids on some of those broader keywords and increase bids on phrase and exact match keywords that are delivering good results.

8. Show ads at the right time.


After doing some preliminary testing by showing ads throughout the day and days of the week, configure your bidding schedule to get your ads more attention when it counts.

I’ve covered most things leading up to the click. Now let’s look at what to do about what visitors see after they click on your ad.

9. Improve device targeting.

Make sure that if you are targeting mobile devices that you are sending traffic to a mobile-friendly page and that this mobile traffic is in a separate campaign from your desktop computer targeting.

10. Conduct landing page optimization.

Work on continually improving the conversion rate of your landing pages. At the end of the day, no matter how cheaply you can generate traffic to your website by improving Quality Score or how well you can filter out unwanted clicks, if your pages are not focused on turning each visitor into a client, then you will always be spinning your tires in the mud. If you need a few tips to get you started, check out 84 Tips For A Killer Landing Page Design.

Below is a demonstration of the effects of conversion optimization on ROI:

Keywords are the focus point of every Internet marketing campaign. Finding a free keyword builder isn’t hard, but you have to understand their limitations.

Free Keyword Builder

Building a keyword list for a pay-per-click or search engine optimization campaign is a critical step. To be honest, you should break out the credit card and pay for a top notch keyword analysis tool. If you insist on doing it for free, there are a couple of ways to go about it.

At one time, overture was the dominant pay-per-click search engine. Over time, Google Adwords has surpassed it, but it still dominates in one area. The Overture inventory tool is simply the best free source for developing keywords. You simply enter the most general keyword you are interested in and it kicks out all relevant stats for the last 30 days period. The stats include the keyword phrases incorporating your word, which were used by surfers on MSN and Google. It will also tell you the number of total searches each month and how much it costs to bid on various positions on Overture.

The Overture inventory tool has one distinct disadvantage. It doesn’t really differentiate where the searches are occurring, to wit, on Yahoo, MSN or another location where it places ads. As a result, the keyword phrases can be hit and miss because some might be generated by European traffic or what have you. Personally, I only use the tool to determine if there are enough searches in a particular area to warrant developing a site or section of a site. Since it is free, however, one can hardly complain about the results.

A better keyword builder is WordTracker. You have to pay, but you can buy a two day membership for a miserly $8. If you can’t afford $8, you might be in the wrong game. Regardless, Wordtracker essentially does the same thing as Overture. The primary difference, however, is it is far more accurate, surveys a longer period of time and tells you how many other sites are competing for the keywords it reports. This lets you identify primer keyword phrases that might have 500 searches a day, but only a few sites competing for them. On top of this, it even analyzes Overture and tells you how the traffic is divided up.

Developing accurate keywords is critical to your marketing. Find a free keyword builder like Overture isn’t a problem, but you are far better off spending the $8 on WordTracker.

Keywords this and keywords that. The term is mentioned in nearly every article you will read about online marketing. So, how do you write good keywords?

How To Write Good Keywords

If you want to write a list of good keywords, you need to take a couple of definitive steps. The first is to give some serious thought to your business. What is the subject matter of your business? What sub-categories are there for your subject matter? Just start making a list and include everything you can think of regardless of how relevant each phrase is.

Assume I want to open a site in the travel industry. Let’s say I want to offer trips to Europe. The subject matter of might site is “travel.” Without putting much effort into it, I would also list Europe, travel, vacations, France, Germany, Italy, England and so on. Just make as long a list as you can.

We have created a list of keywords, but are these the ones we are going to use on our site and for our marketing? No. This is where most sites blow it. All we have created is a list of subjects, not keywords. To make your site a success, you have to identify the keyword phrases your prospects are searching for within these subjects. Fortunately, this is fairly easy.

Allow me to introduce you to WordTracker. Wordtracker is a program you will grow to love. The program is tremendous because it allows you to analyze a subject matter to find out every phrase your prospects are using in searches for that subject matter. Put another way, you don’t need to write good keywords. Wordtracker does it for you!

Going back to our travel site, I would go to my Wordtracker account and do an analysis of the word travel. You literally type the word into a box, click a button and the program kicks out all of the phrases used. These are the keywords you should use in your marketing.

I am often asked how to write good keywords. The simply answer is you don’t need to. Follow the above directions and let Wordtracker do it for you. You can get access to the program for two days for a measly $8. Once you get the hang of it, you will buy a year subscription and use it every day.

Undoubtedly, you have been reading about online marketing and keep seeing references to keywords. So, what exactly are keywords? Here is a definition of keywords and some advice.

A Definition of Keywords

Surprisingly, there are a variety of definitions for keywords. You are probably wondering how that can be, but it becomes pretty clear when you consider the different applications that use keywords.

Generally, keywords can be defined as a word or words identifying something on a page. This article is about defining keywords. As such, the title of the article is the keyword phrase which identifies the content of the page, to wit, “Definition of Keywords.”

More accurately, however, keywords can be defined as the specific terms used by person to search for something on the net. To find this page, you may have searched for “keyword definition” or “define keywords” or some such thing. This application is of great interest to Internet marketers. We want to know how you search for something so we can get our sites listed under those keyword phrases.

For pay-per-click advertising [ppc], keywords are defined as words used by prospects for which advertisements can be created and placed on search engines. In this sense, keywords are defined broadly. Because of the way ppc platforms like Google and Overture work, I just need a general idea of how you search for a subject of interest to me. I can place an advertisement under “travel gift” and the platform will list the ad for all searches close to this phrase, to wit, “traveler gifts,” “gifts for traveling” and so on.

For search engine optimization [seo], keywords are defined as the exact phrases used by prospects to search for something. Unlike ppc, seo requires the identification of the exact phrases because the page will rarely appear under similar keyword phrases. Using our previous example, I would have to build three individual pages for travel gift, traveler gifts and gifts for traveling. The different arrangement of words and tenses require as much.

Identifying a definition of keywords is entirely dependent upon how you intend to use them. In general, you want to identify the phrases being used to search for your produce or service and then incorporate those in your Internet marketing.

Keyword research is a vital first step to any Internet marketing plan. Fail to take this step and you are going to have a very difficult time making money on the web.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is critical because it tells you the exact phrases potential customers or clients are using to search for your service or product. Put in practical terms, the research will reveal the problems your prospects are having. Your job is to provide solutions on your site to those problems. If you provide a quality solution, prospects will gladly convert into paying customers. It really is that simple.

Keyword research can be done in a couple of ways, but I prefer using the Word Tracker program. This program is really the key to everything you will do on the net. You can read how to use Wordtracker here, but a quick overview should show you the value.

Assume I want to start or have a dog grooming business providing grooming services and selling grooming products. I would log into Wordtracker and do a search for all keyword phrases related to “dog grooming”. Here are a few of the keyword phrases being used by my potential customers:

• Dog grooming
• Dog grooming supplies
• Dog grooming supply
• Dog grooming products
• Professional dog grooming products
• Dog grooming tools
• Dog grooming tips

You would expect to see a number of these phrases, but a few are surprises. “Dog grooming tools” is one I didn’t expect, which means there may be a marketing opportunity. To verify this, we use an additional tool provided by Wordtracker.

Wordtracker gives you the ability to perform “competition analysis” for keywords. Essentially, this tells you how many hits you can expect for a keyword and the number of other sites trying to get rankings for it.

Having performed a competition analysis on the above keywords, I find a couple of prime marketing opportunities. “Professional dog grooming products” has roughly 60 searches a day and only 372 sites trying to get ranked under the phrase. On the other had, dog grooming tools has over 12,000 sites trying to get ranked under it. What this research tells me is I should focus on professional dog grooming products instead of the tools keyword phrase.

Obviously, this example represents an analysis of only one keyword phrase. When you do keyword research, you want to run the analysis on all phrases related to your site, service and/or product.