Tips For Optimizing Your Campaigns

• When writing your ads, include call-to-action terms. These are action words such as "Buy", "Save", "Send", and "Order". A strong call-to-action is much more effective than passive, indirect comments.

• Try to include special offers or promotions whenever possible. Some examples would be "Free Shipping", "25% off", "Get Rebate".

• Highlight seasonal events such as Valentine's Day, Back-to-School, etc. These events add instant relevancy to your ads and increase the likelihood of clicks.

• Bid into the top 3 positions to maximize exposure
• Group ads into categories/groupings in order of importance.
• Bid high on keywords with high performance or with main business drivers.
• Adjust bids regularly depending on bid landscape to retain top position and desired ROI metrics.
• Set and adjust your maximum bids and your daily budget according to desired ROI metrics. Adjust these to increase/decrease click volume to maintain ROI performance.

• Make sure the keywords are relevant to your site. Selecting the right keywords is key to attracting customers as they are more likely to spend more time and money on your site if they find what they are looking for right away.

• Know your market and the keywords/phrases associated to your products and services. Make sure you have a good balance between general and specific keywords and phrases that relate the content of your pages.

• General keywords will drive volume to your site as well as customers that don't have a specific product in mind or that are open to various product offerings. Specific keywords drive highly qualified customers that have a specific product, service or offering in mind.

• Avoid selecting keywords that are too general. These may drive users that are looking for entirely different products or markets that are not part of your website.

• Use the following strategy to select keywords:

  • General & specific terms related to your website
  • General & specific terms used by competitor websites
  • General & specific terms related to your market
  • For product keywords, be sure to also include model numbers/letters if applicable

• Example Campaign: Online Job Site

  • Select general terms:
    jobs, career, employment, resume
  • Avoid too general terms:
    education, health, sales, engineering, nursing
  • Select targeted terms:
    job listings, job search, online jobs, online job search, job opportunities, employment opportunities, job postings, online job search
  • Select highly targeted terms:
    nursing careers, careers in healthcare, sales jobs new york, nursing jobs new york, advertising jobs seattle, engineering jobs, accounting careers, jobs in education, teaching positions, job listings los angeles, job listings Chicago
  • Include negative terms to avoid irrelevant terms associated with a particular keyword:
    For “job”, include negative terms such as “blow”, “hand”, “nose”, “discrimination”

Customers are more likely to spend more time and money on your site if they find what they are looking for within seconds of clicking through your ad. Make sure that your landing page is relevant to the keywords that will lead to it. You might want to avoid sending users to general pages, or your site's homepage.

According to Jupiter Research, "the best practice is to have each keyword lead to a unique landing page, which is tied conceptually to the keyword itself." Grouping similar keywords and tying these groups to their own landing page is a good alternative strategy.