During the last ten years, the number of factors that need to be taken into consideration when looking to improve the performance of your pay-per-click campaigns has increased dramatically. This has made it increasingly more difficult for PPC experts to decide which actions they should be taking as to achieve the best results. In this article, we will aim to discuss the PPC optimisation strategies proven to improve your return on investment, saving you both time and money in the process.

So many things have changed in the world of paid search in just the last couple of years alone, encompassing a multitude of channels, such as Google and YouTube, devices, like mobile phones, as well as a drastic increase in competition across all generic, branded, and shopping activity. Combined with the often-complex bidding modifiers set in place to automate bid management and the vast amount of data made available for planning and strategy, knowing what you need to be considering for your campaign can become a confusing, and sometimes daunting, task. However, determining what actions you should be taking to manage your PPC account can be essential to the success of your campaigns.

Generic Keyword Efficiency

The use of generic keywords within your PPC campaigns can become highly expensive very quickly due to their competitive nature, making it vital that they are used currently to avoid unnecessary budget use.

Using generic keywords as part of your retargeting strategy can provide businesses with a great way to target users already found within their audience list, appearing in the search results for more generic terms once they have visited your site but not completed a conversion. Due to the fact that these users will have engaged with your business previously, they will already be familiar with you and your brand. This means that, when they widen their search, your aim should be to keep your company at the front of their minds, increasing the chances that they come back to convert. This can be done by using different messaging on the ads appearing for the generic keywords, perhaps including an offer in your copy to give them incentive to return to your website.

A strategy such as this will allow you to specify your generic keyword budget toward an audience with a higher possibility of engagement, helping to drive higher click-through rates, and potentially conversion rates, to your ads while reducing impression waste; this will allow you to utilise your budgets to effect.  You could also couple this with clever remarketing campaigns to target specific users or users who have similar behaviours when they land on your site, i.e. view a certain page.


Proper Account Structure

Simple changes to the structure of your account can work to massively impact the success of your PPC campaigns, forming the foundation of your entire PPC account and how it is going to perform. A broad structure can easily lead to budget and impression waste. While a more specified account may take a longer time to set up, it can work to greatly benefit your business, providing both bid and data management capabilities of a much higher accuracy in comparison to a generic account structure.

It should be ensured that your campaigns are separated by either category or product, and grouping together a random or broadened range of keywords is avoided. This allows for the creation on much more relevant copy to your ads that is based upon the keywords used within each ad group or campaign.

Campaign & Account Settings 

No business has an unlimited budget for their PPC campaigns, making it important to find ways for your account to run as efficiently as possible. Using location targeting for your ads provides one of the best ways for business to reduce budget waste, allowing them to market toward the geographic areas relevant to their business. This is a tool particularly useful to smaller businesses which may only operate within a certain radius of their location. Location settings also allow for the identification of the areas in which your business’ ads perform the best, helping you to concentrate your budgets to these locations and improve the success of your campaigns as a result.

To discover more about what you can be doing to improve the return on investment seen from your PPC ads, get in touch with our PPC management team at In Front Digital and learn what we can do for you.