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There are a lot of theories on the best practices to manage a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign from how to target keywords, what ad text to use, and what to put on your landing page.  Many of these theories pose good arguments and it’s almost impossible to nail down “the perfect” strategy.  Therefore, I thought I would spend some time on identifying some techniques that, I believe, haven’t been done to death and are great resources to use when every thing is not all rosy…negative keywords.

In short, negative keywords are keywords that you can add to virtually any PPC campaign that you don’t want your PPC advertisement to appear in your search results.  In general, most of the PPC campaigns that businesses set-up (and what most PPC vendors want you to use including Google) utilize broad matching.  Using broad matching simply means that your chosen keywords may appear for more key phrases that searchers may use to find your website.  For instance, if you chose to broad match the keyword “minnesota resorts,” your PPC advertisement may also show up for “best minnesota resorts,” another relevant keyword that you likely would want your ad to show up for if you were a Minnesotan resort owner.  Unfortunately, if a searcher also searched for “best alexandria minnesota resorts,” your ad may show up and get clicked on even if you don’t service that area.

To avoid this above scenario, you can add negative keywords to your PPC campaign that will restrict your ad from showing up in search results for which you do not wish to pay.  In most search engines, you can do this by simply adding a keyword to your list with a
“-“ in front of  them. For example in the scenario above the negative would appear as
“-alexandria.”  There are likely some very obvious keywords that you may want to negatively target such as but not limited to: free, ideas, information, guaranteed, jobs, etc.  However, to be really successful, you’ll need a little help from your website analytics.  If you don’t have website analytics installed on your website, there are many great solutions on the market that are free.  If you need some help, I have a post on how to choose website analytics here.  Simply put, I suggest using Google Analytics because it’s not only a great free resource, but also a solution that many businesses have chosen to use  because it integrates well into Google’s popular PPC Adwords program.

Regardless of what analytics provider you choose, you’ll need to know how to identify which keywords you are paying for.  In Google analytics, you can do this by clicking on Traffic Sources => Keywords => Paid.  Typically speaking, I suggest using a quarters worth of data (3 months) to analyze your results so that you get enough data to determine what to negatively target.  Now here’s where the secret is revealed!  From this screen, you will be able to see what keywords are actually clicked on…not just what you intended to purchase.  Look at this list to see what keywords may potentially not be good keyword buys.  There will also be some keywords that are no-brainers.  However, some may not be so obvious.  So, to drill down deeper, you can review each keywords “bounce rate,” “page views per visit,” and “time on-site” to determine if the searcher actually found what they were searching for was relevant to your website.

The bounce rate is a percentage of how many people went deeper than the page they landed on and went back to the search engine.  A percentage of 100% means that all the people that clicked on the ad didn’t go further than the landing page.  Typically speaking, you should look at analyzing keywords that exhibit bounce rates over 30%.  However, two other numbers are also as equally important to factor into your analysis.  They are “pages view per visit” and “average time on-site.” Page views per visit, generally refers to how sticky your content is.  A number over three (for sites that aren’t image heavy) generally means that people are finding the content to be relevant.  Another statistic that also relates to relevancy is how long the visitor stays, AKA- the average time on site per visit.  Unfortunately, there is no secret formula for using these three statistics, so you will have to rely upon your own expertise to find which keywords don’t best represent your products or services.  Always remember, that paying for search engine traffic is not as much about quantity as it is about relevancy.  The longer searchers remain, continue to view pages, and don’t bounce back to where they came from, means that they are engaged and that they are likely finding the information, services, or products for which they were searching.

Your job as the PPC ad manager is not an easy one.  As you can see, to determine which keywords are not worth spending your advertising budget on goes farther and deeper than your pockets or just using your intuition.  However, if you can find the bulk of these non-desirable keywords and put them on your negative keyword list, you will be able to reduce your waste coverage while increasing your ROI.  Best of all, your website visitor experience will increase as more of these searchers find the target at which they are aiming.

I typically get asked about once a week what pay per click management entails as more businesses are getting weary of where their management fee’s are going towards. This isn’t too surprising given the shear amount of companies entering the online PPC arena and want a piece of the action. However, sometimes I’m just dumbfounded by some of the crazy offers i hear such as “We’ll manage your PPC for only $200 a month…no minimum spend required!” If i was was a business owner working with an online marketing company, I guess I would wonder if these claims are true too as well as have some doubt as to how difficult PPC management actually was.

But the straw that broke the camels back for me, just happened a couple of weeks ago when i spoke to a rather large “phone company” that was offering to do PPC management for a guaranteed fixed price per click…which was of course was lower than what one of my clients was paying. What made it extremely difficult to stomach was the fact that the offer wasn’t based on performance, but rather clicks with no gauge to measure the quality of legitimacy of the traffic. But even worse, they proceeded to tell me that they were able to buy it cheaper because of their company’s size and that they had “special arrangements” with the search engines to get better rates.

In case you are new to pay per click advertising, let me start by saying that the above statement is completely false. If you don’t believe me, call major search engines and them yourself. Additionally, pay per click bid rates are not just a function of how much you bid, which also shouldn’t be the cornerstone of your management strategy in the first place.

To put it simply, PPC Management encompasses one goal and that is achieving the highest ROI output given a fixed input. Unfortunately for those that guarantee clicks or just manage bids, this is a difficult goal to achieve. Namely, PPC management entails the following additional important variables:

1. Campaign and account structure- a significant element in how relevancy scores are determined for ad groups and keywords (these are core drivers that reduce your cost per click under a fixed bid)
2. Website content- the next part of the equation and even more important in my opinion is your websites landing pages. Not only do they directly influence your PPC cost per click, but they have direct impact to how well your website converts. If your proposing PPC company is unable to create effective content for your PPC traffic to land to, that should be an immediate sign to steer clear and go with a company that really understands web marketing.
3. Web Analytics- web analytics are absolutely crucial in determining your PPC advertising strategy is effective. Not only will it allow you to precisely measure your action rates, but it will also allow you to identify poor performing traffic that the engines cannot provide.

I’ll argue with any search engine marketer that managing PPC is still one of the most difficult mediums online. Be very weary of firms that offer the inexpensive rates just to get your business without making any claims to fame in regards to results. Lastly, when it comes to PPC management, there is a significant amount of knowledge and skill at work. If you are planning to do it yourself or hire a firm, be sure to familiarize yourself with the above key components and gauge capability accordingly.