Being visible on the major search engines in both the organic and paid search results is a key strategy for good quality web traffic. Most businesses today rely on search based traffic to provide a large share of their leads, growth and revenue. For newer websites or those not ranking well organically, paid campaigns are more critical than ever to bring in consistent visits to your site. Before launching a paid program, here are some tips to go over to help your campaign be more effective.
Organize Your Campaign Properly
Too many times, businesses new to paid search will set up a campaign that lumps all the keywords they are going after under one generic ad group with only one ad served up. Make sure you separate your keyword targets into relevant ad groups with at least two ads rotating in each ad group. This will not only allow you to serve up ad copy related to specific search queries, but also let you to test the ads to see what type of messaging users respond to better.
Use Relevant Landing Pages
A lot of paid campaigns are set up to lead a visit to the homepage for every click. It's crucial that you target the page on your site that specifically addresses the search query used that led to a visit. Having a landing page with relevant content that immediately addresses what a visitor is looking for after a single click will improve the user experience and your quality score.
Set Up Negative Keywords
When starting out a new campaign, it's easy to get caught up in trying to capture as much traffic as possible. However, if your keyword set up is too broad, you will likely get unqualified visits that are not looking for your services or products that just eat up your budget. If you're an online store that specializes in athletic shoes, you don't want a bunch of costly visits from users looking for formal shoes, so setting up negative keywords will prevent unwanted traffic.
Geographical Settings
Make sure your ads are shown in the geographical market you service.
Conversion Tracking
One of the most important items in monitoring the success of your campaign is installing conversion tracking on your website. Whether it's a contact form, information request form or a purchase, placing a conversion code on the thank you page that appears after an online submission will allow you to track what terms and ads convert the best for you. This will also show you how to apply your media spending towards what brings you leads, not what wastes your budget.
Making Sure Your Site Converts Well
Outside of just setting up an efficient paid search campaign, you should make sure that your website is optimized for converting well. Having and updated website with strong branding, fresh content, trust factors and clear calls to actions throughout the site will help generate conversions. Getting quality traffic to your site isn't enough to make your paid program a success. To get good ROI from your investment you'll need to make sure your website is channelling that traffic into leads.
Remarketing
Let's face it. Most users coming to a site do not convert when visiting for the first time, so it's important to keep your brand visible to these visitors after they leave your site. With remarketing, this allows you to display image ads with specific messaging across various high traffic website networks and recapture some of your lost audience by bringing them back to your website. Alternatively you can also remarket to customers who have converted previously and bring them back for repeat business.
Conclusion
Having a well performing site and attracting the right web traffic is essential in regards to running an effective paid search campaign with good ROI. Taking the time to make sure your program is set up cleanly to bring the visits you need will help you see quick results, apply your budget appropriately, and increase your leads.
