Following on from last week’s advanced PPC tips, we asked some experts for their top tips on how to drive high quality traffic to your site through PPC. Here’s some of their advice…
Adjust your bid strategy
A common PPC strategy is to start by bidding low and then raise your bids. However this often means that the ad is served below the fold and therefore doesn’t receive many clicks. This means the ad sees a low click through rate, meaning you will have to pay more in the long run.
You’re better off starting with the highest bid to gain the top ad spot and then lowering your bids by 15% to see if you remain in the top spot. If you do, then you can lower the bid again. If you don’t, then you can raise your bid by 10% and see what happens.
This strategy of constantly tweaking your bid strategy until you earn the top spot, while paying the least that you can, will help you generate a much higher ROI over time.
(Ed, Goozleology)
Make full use of ad extensions
Ad extensions can help to increase the visibility of your ads, giving users more reasons to click on them. As a result, this can increase your click through rates. Ad extensions will also help you to direct users to specific pages on your site, helping users find what they are looking for faster, therefore reducing your bounce rate.
The character limits for sitelink extensions is 25 characters, however, we’d recommend that you limit yourself to 20 for desktop and 15 for mobile to avoid clutter. Sitelinks can also be set to a schedule or rotate as needed. Make sure your link text is unique and directly relates to the content on your ad’s landing page.
Optimise your ad copy
Don’t allow ad fatigue to set in. In order to stand out, your ad copy needs to be frequently refreshed and updated to reflect current trends and seasonal holidays. We’d recommend that you A/B test any new copy and analyse the data to find out which terms and phrases enhance your click through rate.
Make sure that your ad copy is always relevant and includes one or two keywords to help improve your Ad Rank.
It’s not all about Google
If you’re looking to increase the volume of traffic to your site, consider expanding into Paid traffic channels beyond Google AdWords and Bing.
Twitter, Yahoo and native ad providers all offer alternative pay per click advertising models, meaning that you’ll only pay for the traffic that comes to your site via these advertising platforms.
Pick the channels that have targeting options that best suit your sites. These alternative traffic channels could help significantly grow your traffic levels.
(Sam, Appleyard London)
Optimise for mobile
People are increasingly using their phones for all their online browsing and research, therefore it’s highly likely that a large proportion of your traffic will be coming from mobile. Analyse your traffic sources to understand where your traffic is coming from and optimise your ads and landing pages accordingly.
Make sure that you do not simply direct ad traffic to a separate mobile landing page with limited content. To ensure a good user experience on mobile, your landing page should be responsive. The key for mobile advertising success is to make the whole experience as seamless as possible. It’s important that you either have a website that is responsive and looks and functions with just as much ease as it does on a desktop. This will aid in tackling your bounce rate, which will in-turn lower your acquisition costs.
(Gael, PPC specialist at Designer Websites)
Follow these tips to enhance your PPC campaigns and drive high quality traffic to your sites. If you have any questions or would like help with your campaigns, get in touch with the Partner team.