SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

As you’re tracking your PPC campaign, you should also have a set of key performance indicators (KPIs)

that you compare your results to. KPIs are performance indicators that you develop based on the

long- and short-term goals you have in place for your PPC campaigns. These indicators are of value

for deciding when it’s time to change some element of your PPC campaign.

Reducing Pay-per-Click Costs

The one phrase associated with PPC campaigns that you’re likely to hear more often than “conver-

sion rate” is “reducing costs.” In today’s world, every penny invested in advertising and marketing

needs to be well spent, and PPC campaigns are no exception. Budgets must be monitored and main-

tained, and that means finding a way to reduce the costs associated with your PPC campaigns.

During the early years of PPC advertising, you could pretty much figure a bid for a keyword or phrase

and then assume that you didn’t need to monitor it too closely. But that was before PPC advertising

became one of the most effective advertising methods used on the Internet. Today, the competition

for PPC keywords and phrases is very high, which means you’re likely to spend way more money to

achieve the same rank than you needed to in the past.

If you’re not careful about your budgeting habits in the context of a PPC campaign, you could spend

tons of money without getting better results. Management strategies, however, will help you reduce

the cost of your PPC campaigns while maintaining or even improving your click-through and con-

version rates.

Managing PPC campaigns

When you consider management of your PPC campaign in the context of reducing the budget, there’s

a lot you can do to reduce your costs without decreasing the effectiveness of your campaign. Your first

step should be to replace any poorly performing ads. Monitoring your ads should already be a key

part of your PPC campaign, so determining those that aren’t performing well should be easy.

Another way to reduce your PPC costs is to reduce the amount of your bid per keyword. As noted

earlier, it’s not necessary to strive for the top advertising slot. And reducing your keyword bid by a

few cents per click can make a huge difference in the cost of the campaign.

Just remember that reducing your bid shouldn’t necessarily mean reducing your budget. Instead,

use your existing budget more effectively. If you cut your budget too much, you’ll lower the num-

ber of times that your keyword ad is shown each day, which in turn lowers your conversion rate.

In addition to reducing the amount you’re bidding on keywords, you should also examine the

keywords you’ve selected to see if you can remove any that are general in nature or high demand.

“General” and “high demand” can be the same, but there can be a subtle difference. General key-

words are good for branding purposes (and branding purposes only), so they are automatically

high demand and high cost. Competition for them is keen. But less general keywords can also

be high demand. As an example, if you’re in the tissue business, “tissue” is a coveted branding

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