How to optimize your pay per click campaigns using Usability & Ad Quality score and more?
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Posted On :
Nov-14-2010
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Article Word Count :
1152
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Pay per click campaigns are becoming the main source of paid advertising. When it comes to operating a pay per click account whether it is Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center, or Yahoo Search Marketing, we all wonder about the best way to get more clicks and hopefully turn those clicks into conversions such as phone calls/inquires or actual sales. After years of experience with pay per click account management, I discovered that pay per click is not only about clicks, in other words getting clicks is n
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Pay per click campaigns are becoming the main source of paid advertising. When it comes to operating a pay per click account whether it is Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center, or Yahoo Search Marketing, we all wonder about the best way to get more clicks and hopefully turn those clicks into conversions such as phone calls/inquires or actual sales. After years of experience with pay per click account management, I discovered that pay per click is not only about clicks, in other words getting clicks is not a difficult goal, but getting clicks with conversions is the question. However, before applying the strategies, I have to make sure that I have the following:
Conversion phone number.
Does your business have a phone number or a toll free number? If not, then it is hard to measure the success of your pay per click campaigns. The reason is that when your customers reach your website or landing page they will call a phone number that is shared with other campaigns or marketing sources. At this point, it will be very hard to tell what marketing source is really bringing you the business. The strategy that I use is one landing page for every campaign, and each landing page has a unique phone number. If this becomes a hard task for you or your graphic designer then at least change the phone number in every landing page.
Is your phone number clickable?
More and more people are using smaller devices to access the internet including iPhones, Android, and Windows Ce compatible phones, all of which have smaller screens. In order to gain traffic and clicks from customers with mobile phones, you must have a clickable phone number which will allow you to push on the phone number and then the phone begins dialing. Ultimately your website needs to be mobile friendly or at least have a mobile version of your website. The mobile version is short and to the point with the focus for customers on the run that want fast and quick facts about your website. The mobile versions have high conversion rates as most of these customers are in an advanced stage in the selling cycle.
Usability and ease of use, your website has less than 3 seconds.
Your website has less than 3 seconds for your web visitors to continue viewing or to bounce off and go to another website. The big question that you need to ask yourself- Is your website easy to use? Can your customers find what they are looking for without guessing? It all depends on how easy is it to navigate your website, can your web visitor find what they are looking for or do they get stuck in one area and start thinking and guessing? Lots of web visitors don't even bother to pick up the phone and call the website phone number, it simply turns them off completely. A successful website has good architecture and easy accesbility ( very small poor formated text, easy navigation, less graphics, not the "you must look at me type of graphics") as well as an easy call to action. Lastly, non creative expressions just simple language that is easy to understand (no hip or cool words to be used). Finally, is your page loaded quickly as well as non use of frames as it causes lots of errors, please refer to web usability testing and best practices.
Here is how you know if your website is hard to use.
Bring a non internet savvy user, sit them down and show them your website, watch how they navigate your website, if you see their eyeballs start to wander not knowing where to start, that's when you know that your website has low usability.
Pay per click ad quality score, everyone will be happy.
After few months of using pay per click, I understood why some sponserd ads are higher than others (on top results) paying less money for their ads while others ads' are lower or rarely show. One of the main reasons besides bidding less is ' quality score'. Here is how it works : Google is a quality oriented search engine, they are looking for quality ads that will serve internet visitors in a very ethical manner. Also, web visitors expect to see a good quality landing page, I mentioned in the beginning of this article the importance of usability to your customers, now we are talking about how critical a good landing page is to your search marketing efforts, simply put your pay per click may not show at all or will rarely show if you are very lucky unless you want to pay your way to the top, and efficiency does not matter to you.
Besides using the right keywords that are relevant to your ad or that match your ad you must take a closer look at your landing page' (home/index/main). It must be relevant to the ad, and the more relevant it is the more you save money on ppc, the more you start to hear the phone ringing.
Best Kept Secret adwords pay per click strategy.
Here is the best kept secret about Google adwords
align the following together: 5 bread and butter keywords - with a matching ad and a matching landing page (meta title must be relevant as well).
Use negative keywords
Target states who can buy the most and when?
When will your ad run? If it is running, are sales closers present ?
What caused that sales spike ? Tracking conversions is the answer (you want to insure that all your website forms including email/contact us/get a quote forms have conversion tracking, please check with your web admin on how to apply conversion tracking.
Now that you are starting to get real results and you will be saving money, all is dandy. You may still want to ask yourself or your managers what caused that sales spike? Was it the newspaper ad, social media, or website?
In Conclusion
If you don't have tracking on your website through a web analytics software service you will not be be able to find out what contributed to more visitors or more sales. The answer is you must have toll free numbers tied to your pay per click ad, not only this but also a database tracking service through your phone or internet provider. If you find this costly then delegate more than one phone number for your campaigns. In conclusion, I recommend taking a closer look at what happens after your customers click on your sponserd ad, are they finding what they are looking for? With ease? Remember then, after all online marketing success is all about fine tuning.
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_How to optimize your pay per click campaigns using Usability & Ad Quality score and more?_41660.aspx
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Author Resource :
Hubac Media is an internet marketing consulting services SEO Services to Internet Marketers
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Keywords :
SEO Services,
Category :
Internet Business
:
SEO
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