Bryan Eisenberg wrote a blog post for small business owners titled 7 Signs Your pay per click advertising Campaigns Need Optimization. It’s an excellent blog post and I agree with his points. Here they are in a nutshell:
- You use the set it and forget it strategy to PPC.
- You don’t have proper tracking in place.
- You have not tested at least 3 variations of your PPC ad.
- You have not tested matching options.
- You have a long list of keywords in your ad groups.
- You have poor scent from the ad to the landing page.
- You aren’t testing your landing pages to maximize conversion.
This is a good list. I’d add one more to it. The No. 8 sign that your PPC campaigns need better optimization is you are paying too much for your keywords. Your quality score determines your minimum bid per keyword. If your minimum bid is too high then you are likely paying too much for your clicks and you may not be realizing as high an ROI as you can.
Pay per click campaign optimization is the most important aspect of running an effective PPC campaign. Don’t shortcut yourself.
