Paid Search Best Practices

Behold the “10 Commandments” of pay-per-click.

Below are 10 of the most vital concepts to be mindful of when conducting paid search campaigns:

1. Organize a website by themes (typically product categories or services) and create a campaign for each theme.
2. Break down each product or service into specific ad groups.
3. Write relevant ad copy with calls-to-action and conduct a/b tests of the ads to see which have the best conversion and click-thru rates.
4. Measure and analyze which keywords convert the best with conversion tracking.
5. Geo-target specific countries, states, metros, and DMAs: run performance reports to determine the location of the majority of clicks and conversions.
6. Set up ad scheduling to reflect hours of operations and analyze reports to determine when the majority of clicks and conversions are coming in.
7. Create targeted landing pages and microsites that allow the user to easily proceed to desired actions and conduct a/b tests of landing-page variations to determine which lead to the most conversions.
8. Run search query reports to determine which keywords are actually converting and determine if there are additional negative keywords that should be eliminated to prevent irrelevant traffic and wasted costs.
9. Divide campaigns by network and device to determine their respective effectiveness.
10. Conduct remarketing/retargeting campaigns to bring back users that do not initially convert.