Managing Keywords in a PPC Campaign

Once you have a PPC advertising campaign established, the work doesn’t end. In order to keep a campaign running smoothly, and make sure you are making the most profit possible, you will need to constantly make adjustments in a number of areas. A common area of focus will be keywords.

You will be using two different types of keywords. These are general, broad ranged keywords and the more targeted keywords.

General keywords are those that attract a large crowd of searchers for a certain topic but not necessarily a niche within that topic. For example a broad based keyword could be “home business.” This will attract a lot of searchers. However they may not be interested in your particular niche and you will get few sales or leads.

The targeted keywords however will draw much less traffic, but the traffic it does draw will have more interest in your specific product or service. This will lead to a higher sales conversion.

Now that you understand the basic types of keywords you will know how to manage this important area of your PPC advertising campaign. One of the main reasons a campaign is not doing well is often due to keywords. Bear in mind if a keyword is not performing well and just getting clicks with no sales or leads you are throwing a lot of money down the drain.

Make sure to keep a close watch on your keywords. By using software provided by the PPC engine, such as Google Adwords, you can track how much traffic each of you keywords is bringing to your site.

Another factor you need to look at is the conversion rate, or the number of clicks required to generate a sale. This ratio will be much lower for the broad keywords and much higher for the niche. Since you pay for each click you will need to evaluate the value of your keywords.

Next you will want to compare the price of your clicks against the number of sales generated per click. This will give you a good idea of your profits. If you feel a keyword is not performing well enough, you will want to make some adjustments to maximize your potential.

Keyword trends change. Searchers may look for one set of keywords at one point in time than change to another set later. This factor must be considered and you will need to monitor your keywords and check if they are pulling as well as they used to.

Any keyword that is not pulling a profit needs to be analyzed carefully. Poor performing keywords need to be evaluated, using the criteria mentioned above. If necessary you will need to adjust the keywords. Do not delete them as search trends may vary and make the keywords useful again. Instead try to pause them and if necessary replace the keywords for better ROI.