PPC Optimization: Keyword Phrases: "The trick I'm going to show you here works with Google AdWords, but it may not work with every PPC search engine. And it works best when you're bidding on keyword phrases that contain more than one word.
With Google AdWords, there are at least three different ways you can bid on a single keyword phrase. The simplest way is to just enter the phrase you want to bid on. For example, let's imagine that I have a web site about healthy eating. I might bid on the following keyword phrase:
health food
This means that I'm bidding on any search that includes both of those words. So my ad would show up if someone searched for any of the following phrases:
health food
food that's good for your health
food that's bad for your health
You can see that I may not want my ad to appear for all of those searches. Some of them won't be relevant.
According to Google's estimate, my ad would be (on average) 8.8 in the list of all AdWord ads for that phrase. And I would receive approximately 9.1 clicks on my ad each day (on average).
But there are a couple of options I can use when I place my bid on those keywords. And these might get me a lot more or a lot less clicks. And it might make my ad more relevant to the search terms. Instead of just entering the keyword phrase as I did above, I could bid on this:
'health food'
Putting the quotes around the words changes what I'm bidding on. Now I'm only bidding on search terms that include the exact phrase 'health food'. Those two words have to be together and in that order in the search term. So my ad would appear for phrases such as:
health food
health food recipes
But it wouldn't appear for phrases such as:
food that's bad for my health
how food affects my health
According to Google's estimate, my ad would be (on average) 8 in the list of all AdWord ads for that phrase. And I would receive approximately 2.1 clicks on my ad each day (on average).
You can see that there are some significant differences in the amount of traffic I would get from each of these different bids. In this case, I may do best by bidding on "health food". It would get me about 300 clicks a month more than [health food]. And it would get me about 90 clicks a month more than the words without quotes.
And that's just for a single keyword phrase.
You may have noticed that the term [health food] was still positioned about the same as the other two terms (a little better even). But it would have received *much* fewer clicks. This is probably because far fewer people search for health food without any other words.
So when you set up your next AdWords campaign (or when you check your current campaigns), you should check which of these methods will get you the most clicks for some of your more popular keyword phrases.
In fact, you might even want to use *all* of these methods for *every* keyword. What have you got to lose? Just the time it takes to set it up.
PPC Management
PPC Management: "you need to know when to decide that you have a loser on your hands. At what point should you bury it and move on?
There are a number of different factors to consider. There's no simple answer. I can't tell you to simply abandon your PPC campaign after 200 clicks without a sale. Or to quit after you've lost $50.
First of all, you need to know how much your profit will be on each sale (before advertising costs). For example, if you're selling your own product for $47 through Clickbank, then you'll make $42.48 on each sale after Clickbank takes their fees.
But if you sell someone else's product for $47 through Clickbank, and you get a 50% commission on each sale, then you'd only get $21.24.
But you need to know even more than that. You also need to decide how much of that $42.48 (or $21.24) you're willing to spend on advertising. In other words, what's the least you're willing to earn on each sale? This will determine how much you can afford to spend on advertising.
Let's assume you make $42.48 per sale. If you decide that you'd be happy with a $20 profit, then you can spend as much as $22.48 to make each sale.
So now you know what your advertising budget is. Next, estimate what your conversion rate will be. If this is a brand new product you're promoting, then you may have no idea. In those cases, I tend to use 1% as a rule of thumb. That means that 1 out of every 100 people that visit the site will buy. Let's use 1% for our example here.
So if you're willing to spend $22.48 to make each sale, and you expect to make one sale out of every 100 visitors, then you can afford to spend 22 cents to get each visitor to the site. This means that you can afford to bid 22 cents on each keyword on the PPC search engines (max).
At this point, you can go ahead and set up your PPC campaigns. Find your keywords. Place bids. I won't cover these issues right now because they're off the topic. The purpose here is to know when to drop your campaign because it's a loser.
Now, just because you *can* bid 22 cents on each keyword, it doesn't mean you should. You should bid as low as you can to get good traffic (whatever you consider *good* to be).
In our example, let's fast forward. Imagine you've already gotten 150 clicks, and your average bid has been 22 cents a click. So you've spent $33, and you haven't made a sale yet. Should you ditch this campaign?No. *On average* you can spend $22 per sale. But that's an average. Which means that sometimes you'll spend more, and sometimes less. And if your conversion rate is 1%, then that's also an *average*. So don't freak out if you haven't made a sale after 150 clicks.
When you decide to drop a campaign though, make the decision based on how much you're spending on it. Not the conversion rate.
When I first start a campaign, I'll often wait until I spend at least double my advertising budget with no sales before I consider dropping it. Maybe even triple my budget if I'm emotionally attached to it. ;-) But if I haven't made any sales by then, I'll usually stop the campaign. However, you may want to wait longer if you're willing to spend more money to see if it works. I think I'm probably more of a conservative.At any rate, I *rarely* end a campaign before I get 300 clicks. 300 is typically the minimum number of clicks before I feel I can judge whether a campaign will pay off. And I will generally only end it then if I've had *zero* sales.
Sometimes, though, you'll make a quick sale and get excited. But then you see few or no sales after that. If you find that you're consistently spending more than your budget for the first few sales, then get ready to end it if you don't figure out how to make it better.
I want you to realize, too, that when you bid less on your keywords, you can afford to live with a lower conversion rate. But when you bid more, your conversion rate has to be higher to provide you with the profit you want.
I've only talked about *starting* a PPC campaign so far. But sometimes, you may have a PPC campaign that's paying off, and then it starts choking and gasping for air after a while.
In that case, you need to decide when to pull the plug and retire it. Otherwise, it may eat up all the profits you've already made.
I'll usually be more lenient in this case. Since the campaign has made me money in the past, I'm more likely to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep it running. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. But sometimes, it's just hard to say goodbye to an old friend. After all, maybe it's just a temporary downturn.
But you still have to cut it off at some point. If I find myself breaking even (or even losing money) on each sale for any length of time, then I'll start thinking about ending the campaign.
In our example here, if you notice that you've been spending $45 per sale lately, then start thinking about the future of this campaign. Try to figure out what's changed and see if you can fix it.
How long should you wait before you abandon it? Two weeks? A month? Ten sales? A hundred sales?
It's completely dependent on your situation. If you make 20 sales a day, then obviously worrying after only 20 sales is unwarranted. On the other hand, if it takes you 4 months to make 20 sales, then maybe you shouldn't wait quite that long. Listen to your gut.
In the end, be aware that PPC management is not a rigid science. You have to use a certain amount of judgment. But try not to be emotionally attached. If a little voice in the back of your head is telling you that you're spending too much for too little, then listen to it.
