Learn the rules of Paid Search and how to optimize Paid Search Campaigns with better tools
Paid search marketing is a low-cost, scalable method of online advertising that matches your adverts with people who are actively looking for what you have to offer.
Pay-per-click, or PPC, campaigns are the most brilliant paid search marketing campaigns, and their theory is simple: you bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links for terms relevant to your brand, and then you pay the search engine a modest price for each click.
Paying for each click may seem expensive, but this is not the case in a well-designed campaign. Because your prospective consumers will only see your adverts if they’re specifically looking for the items or services you provide, they’re considerably more likely to purchase a casual visitor. As a result, with a bit of study and tweaking, the sponsored search advertisements you put in will wind up paying you significantly more than the cost of placing them.
How Paid Search Marketing Works
As you may be aware, Google and other search engines provide consumers with two types of results: organic and sponsored results.
To appear in the sponsored links, you must participate in an auction and compete for advertising space with other buyers.
So, here’s the million-dollar question: why pay for search advertising or employ a consultant when you can rank for free in Google’s organic results? To begin with, organic search marketing, often known as SEO, is not free. Getting high organic search engine rankings requires a lot of time, work, and expertise.
For your firm, such resources are far from free. Developing enough domain authority to rank on the top few pages for your most essential keywords might take longer, especially for younger, less established sites. And the majority of folks never get beyond the first page.
Meanwhile, you’re simply waiting for qualified leads to come in. And, contrary to popular belief, joining the Google AdWords auction isn’t as difficult as it seems. It’s just basic arithmetic.
The Rules of Paid Search Ad Ranking
Google AdWords is Google’s PPC platform, and although it may seem complicated at first, it’s intended to maximize ROI for everyone involved: Google, your organization, and searchers. It does this by charging less for ad clicks for the most relevant, intelligently targeted pay-per-click campaigns.
As a result, the more precise and informative your adverts are, the better. You are paid for generating interest on your website.
When a user searches, Google looks through its pool of AdWords advertisers and selects a few winners to show in the ad space on its search results page. The “winners” are determined by several criteria, including the quality and relevancy of their keywords and ad campaigns, as well as the magnitude of their keyword bids.
More precisely, an advertiser’s Ad Rank, a statistic computed by multiplying two main elements – CPC Bid (the maximum amount an advertiser is prepared to pay) and Quality Score – determines who appears on the page (a value that takes into account your click-through rate, relevance, and landing page quality).
So, how do you go about putting up the best-sponsored search marketing strategy possible? Keywords are the first step.
In Paid Search Marketing, Keywords Are Crucial
Keyword research is the initial stage in every search marketing effort, including paid search. Bidding on the incorrect keywords in sponsored search is the equivalent of tossing your advertising cash out the window.
This is why using specialist keyword tools may be quite beneficial. When creating your supported search term list, keep the following in mind.
Make the most of negative keywords: negative keywords allow you to filter out search phrases unrelated to your goods or services, ensuring that your adverts aren’t shown for such searches. This will save you a lot of money in wasted clicks in the long run.
Don’t go too broad: The long tail of search—that is, the lengthier, less common keyword phrases that add up to a higher amount of visits than the few most general keywords—deserves particular attention.
Long-tail keywords have a high level of intent, making them good candidates for your sponsored search campaigns. For example, someone who looks for “organic dog food free shipping” is likely to be farther along in the purchasing process than someone who searches for “dog food” alone.
Always be relevant. Another good idea is to ensure your keywords are the same as the language on the landing pages you’re linking to. Google (as they should) maintains a tight check on such accuracy and prevents dishonest marketers from gaining connections to their carpet-cleaning business with advertisements like “Lower Your Mortgage Today” or “Pictures of Brad & Angelina’s Wedding Here”
The Path to Paid Search Return on Investment
The fight against sponsored search marketing isn’t just about bidding on the appropriate terms. You’ll also need to build text advertising that is relevant and interesting. This not only ensures that your ad appears first —which is critical!— but also that search engine visitors are lured in to click.
Paid search ads with a high click-through rate (CTR) are more cost-effective. You’ll save money on clicks while raising your Quality Score and landing higher ad placements.
For sponsored search, the most clickable and Quality Score friendly advertisements are:
The user’s search query is relevant. Make sure your ad answers the user’s question and directs them to a relevant landing page on your website. If the term is “natural dog food,” for example, use those precise phrases in the ad rather than redirect the searcher to a broad pet food website.
It’s attention-getting without being spammy. Include a call to action (for example, urge them to purchase your product or sign up for a free trial), but avoid all capitals, several exclamation points, or words like “Click here.” Such nonsense belongs in the comments sections of political blogs.
Of course, while creating a successful paid search strategy, you’ll want to ask yourself additional questions, such as which pages are underperforming in “natural” (i.e., unpaid) Google searches and what content is most important to attract attention to.
As time passes, you’ll want to revisit your campaign to ensure that your initial objectives are being reached and determine which words generate the most positive feedback from clients.
If the keywords you initially chose aren’t doing as well as you’d planned, it’s time to try some new ones up the flagpole and see who salutes.
Paid search marketing is one of the most cost-effective and revenue-generating components of your marketing plan if done correctly and with little experience. So why don’t you get started right away?
To see how your paid search stacks up, you could use the AdWords Grader. You may use WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader to track your success once you’ve set up your sponsored search campaign. The Performance Grader is a free tool that allows you to assess how well your AdWords paid search ads are performing in key categories like:
- Quality Rating
- Optimization of Text Ads
- Share Your Impression
- Rate of Click-Through
- Keywords with a negative connotation are used
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