As the most popular PPC engine available, Adwords is a must when using PPC to pull traffic to your sites. However, as the most popular PPC engine, keywords are often expensive, and a short-run ad campaign can cost an arm and a leg. There are ways to grab more traffic while spending less using Adwords. Let’s look at three tips for doing so.
Tip One: Use Hyper-Targeted Keywords.
Hyper-Targeted keywords are the actual keywords that sell – the ones that indicate your surfer is sitting there, credit card in hand, ready to make the purchase. In general, I use the following three phrases when selling “product”:
Buy Product
Purchase Product
Order Product
And of course, use each of them with all of Google’s features – in quotations and in brackets, for each type of matching. So for instance, instead of just Buy Product, you would use: Buy Product, “Buy Product”, and [Buy Product]. Depending on how hot an item you have chosen, these three primary power words – Buy, Purchase, and Order – can bring you more targeted traffic than you know what to do with, and these are people who are ready to purchase right now!
Tip Two: Use Site-Targeting.
Another feature of Adwords that most users completely ignore is the site-targeting option. Campaigns can be keyword-targeted or site-targeted. The beauty of site targeting is that you can target sites at the top of the organic Google searches. This works better in some cases than others, obviously, but when it works, you end up paying a fraction of the cost for clicks that you would for keyword-targeted campaigns.
For best results, choose a few top keyword phrases and enter them into Google. Look at the first 5 results for each one (or more if you like) and notice whether or not those sites use Adsense. Also notice the Adsense placement – is it near the top of the screen? The top left position is best, but as long as the ads are visible without scrolling the page, that site is a great candidate. When you paste that site’s root into Adwords, it may or may not be approved. If it is an approved site-targeted ads site, you’re in business. Now edit the campaign and change the site’s root out with the direct link you got from your Google search – now only that page will show your ad! Your CPM will be much lower than if the entire site was showing your ads, and you know your traffic is coming from people who searched for the term you entered.
Tip Three: Show the item’s price in your ad.
This one may sound simple, but it can really go a long way towards weeding out expensive clicks that had no intention of converting. In my experience, showing the item’s price in the ad has weeded out approximately 80% of non-buyer clicks. It reduces the total number of clicks, of course, but those clicks are higher quality traffic. This is especially effective if your price is lower than most other prices on the same product elsewhere.
These three little tips will give you an advantage in the Adwords game. Best of luck!
