Let’s continue our optimization process to improve PPC campaigns’ performance:

Go Vertical

Going vertical is an effective method to lower your cost per click (CPC) and to improve the overall traffic quality. The quality also tends to be better because of the increased propensity for the buyers to use vertical search engines in their purchase decision process. This gives a greater opportunity for those who are with limited budgets to more effectively spend their money online and to get higher ROI.

Keyword Research

While doing the keyword research we debate constantly on what to use with regards to long tail keywords or the head phrases and which would perform better and get more results. Head phrases are generic and broad keywords. The search volumes for these keywords are very high but cost is also quite high. Torso keywords are with 2 to 4 words keywords. The search volume for these keywords are low as compared to the head phrases, but the cost is also low. Long tail keywords are the keyword phrases which are more than 4 words. The cost and the search volume is very low.

While developing keywords for your search campaign make sure you are in the shoes of searcher. The keywords should be related to the target market and useful to the searcher while searching for your product or service.

Quality Score

Google and Yahoo use quality score to increase the quality of ads to improve the user experience. If the advertiser provides the consumer with the best experience possible, then the quality score for the advertiser should be good.  If the quality score is poor, you should check the keywords, ads and landing page and re-cluster the ad groups to improve your quality score.

CPL than CPC / Suggestion: CPL over CPC

The ultimate objective of your search campaign is to lower the cost per conversion. So bid high or bid aggressively on converting keywords and bid low for the other keywords in the campaign. Even when you bid high, you get conversions within your target cost per conversion.

Happy Optimization!

Contributed by Rajasekar Ragavan

Ever wondered why you do not get enough leads even when your website generates a lot of traffic. You would have noticed that your website maybe ranking well for the most competitive terms but it still fails to generate quality traffic. If you happen to notice that your website is still failing to get the leads, then you may have to consider conversion optimization and also analyze what kind of keywords are driving traffic to your website. This may also be a good time to look at your SEO landing pages, to identify if the page convinces the web visitor to take an action on the page.

Improving conversions on your website can involve following steps

• Identify pages having highest bounce rates to make improvements
• Ensure that your call to action content is  clear and  prominent
• Ensure that the sign-up or registration process is  streamlined
• Display fewer ads
• Identify and optimize top converting keywords
• Keep your purchase funnels short
• Have a clean design layout for your page

Ensure that you audit your website against these parameters to improve the stickiness of your SEO landing pages and to improve the overall conversion rates for your website.

Contributed by Zuheb SM