PPC Tune-ups

Don't abandon your pay-per-click advertising just yet!

Now you can hire a PPC mechanic to tune up your Google AdWords ad campaigns, and it won't cost you as much. Most PPC practitioners charge a percentage of your ad spend, but I like to keep it simple and charge just for my time.

I'll start by analyzing your keywords. Think of it as an oil change.

Professional keyword research is not only the foundation of SEO, but of pay-per-click advertising as well. Too many PPC advertisers are simply guessing which keywords to use and which negatives to exclude. Or, heaven forbid, not even using negative keywords to keep their ad from being shown for inappropriate searches. Sure, there's always trial and error involved, but clicks cost too much these days to be flying by the seat of your pants!

Also, many PPC advertisers do their own set-up because it seems so simple on the face of it. While it's not that difficult to use Google AdWords, it takes years to master the intricacies of a PPC program. And you'll lose money while you learn. We all do. I'll even lose money while I learn what works for your particular business — but I won't lose as much as you would.

The first thing I will need to do is check your keywords: Are they professionally researched, and if so, was that done fairly recently? By whom?

Next I'll verify that your keyword match forms are set up correctly. Think of this as checking the various belts. :-)

You should be bidding on more than one form of your keywords (broad-match, exact-match, and phrase-match), because each of those bids will cost you different amounts. It will take some trial and error to see what those bids should be set at.

Have your ads stopped running because of Google's incomprehensible "quality score"? Your engine has seized up.

To diagnose the problem, I'll check whether your keywords are neatly separated into their own little ad groups rather than trying to make one ad suffice for a whole bunch of keywords not tightly themed.  Are your landing pages compelling enough to make a sale or get a signup or whatever you want visitors to do? Are these pages properly supporting the theme of your keywords? You probably need to switch to premium unleaded and clean your fuel injectors. :-)

If you've got your pay-per-click advertising campaign set up properly and it still isn't meeting your goals, it could be that your ads are not resonating with viewers. Just because everyone else is using dynamic keyword insertion doesn't mean you should. Let's see if we can give your target customer a good reason to choose your ad to click. A thorough detailing with a wash-and-wax should put some shine on that baby.

Maybe your ads are appearing too far down the page. While the #1 position may be too expensive to bid on, you might be able to get your ad ranked higher than it is by writing a better ad. Google rewards its advertisers who write high-quality, creative ads — those who don't have to pay higher prices. Think of it as the toll on the bridge. You don't have to pay full price if you get one of those transponder cards and you can zip past all the other drivers.

One of the first things I recommend to people before they hire me as their PPC mechanic is to look under the hood themselves. Check your competition's ads. Maybe you'll be able to see what the problem is all by yourself. Be honest — would YOU click on your ad? If not, maybe it IS time to get help.

As you know after experimenting with this whole PPC advertising thing, there are a zillion things that could be improved to bring you more clicks at lower bids and increase your conversions at the other end. keeping track of each test is pretty exhausting without some expert help.

Hire me as your PPC mechanic, and together we will find every weak spark plug that needs changing in your ad campaign's "engine"!