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Picking the Low Hanging Fruit

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When discussing PPC performance, people love to refer to the low hanging fruit.  You know, that’s the stuff that’s easy to accomplish with little effort that yields great results.  This typically refers to getting more conversions for cheap, but how do you do it?  Here are a couple ways to pick that low hanging fruit and have cheaper conversions within a week or two:

Turn off the Content Network: Don’t get me wrong, the content network can produce great results–if managed correctly.  To manage it correctly it needs to be seperated from search, so turn it off on your search accounts and isolate content ads in their own content campaigns.

Add negatives: Run a search query report and look at all the search terms that have generated clicks.  Sort by impressions largest to smallest, and look for terms that are not converting and don’t resonate with your target customer.  Add them as negatives so future searchers of that term won’t see your ad.  If they’re weird terms but are converting, leave them alone.

Add misspells of converting terms: If your keyword “shoes” is converting like crazy, then I’m betting you that “sheos” or “shoeses” will too.  Add common misspellings and keyboard errors as exact matches as keywords, but make sure that the ad group doesn’t have keyword insert enabled, because then it might be taken down for editorial reasons.

Check landing pages: If terms that used to convert no longer do, maybe it’s the page you’re sending them to.  Make sure your page is what you want it to be.  If it is, test a different page or even create a whole new landing page for that keyword or ad group.

Pause poor performing ads: If one ad accounts for 80% of your conversions and the other only 20%, get rid of that 20% ad!  Let all those impressions and clicks flow to the better converting ad, and you should see an immediate lift in results.

Following these basic steps should yield immediate results (often times within hours or days).  If you have already done all of these, go back and run another search query report for a different time period than your original one.  After all, Google announced a while back that 20-25% of queries are ones they’ve never seen before.  Repeat this step every 30-60 days.  Now, go get some conversions!

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4 Comments

  1. SEOSnack (SEOSnack)

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    via @nowsourcing: Picking the Low Hanging Fruit [link to post]

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  2. Alan Mitchell

    Some nice points.

    Budgets are often another quick win. If daily budgets are being hit, either ads are not showing later in the day or or ads are only showing sporadically. Ceteris paribus, when daily budgets are being hit, reducing CPCs would often generate more clicks for no extra cost.

    Totally agree that content network needs to be separated – that’s the first thing I check. Also agree with your point about search queries and negatives. I find that just looking at what’s been matched to my broad-match keywords and adding a few simple negatives can provide great results.
    .-= Alan Mitchell´s last blog ..The 10% Clicks Rule Part 3: Does It Work? =-.

  3. alanmitchell (Alan Mitchell)

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    RT @nowsourcing AdWords Tips – Picking the Low Hanging Fruit [link to post]

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  4. Colleen

    Nice! Also, we have begun creating single page blogs using the url we want to target for PPC. The single page blog url equals the phrase we are targeting. And yes, turning of ‘content network’ is huge.
    .-= Colleen´s last blog ..Kennewick Real Estate Listings =-.