We’ve already mentioned in a previous post how Paid Search can help your business attract more site visitors – and therefore, more customers.
But one of the key things when it comes to Paid Search is knowing what search terms to use for your advertisements. There are plenty of things which can affect this, like your bid, relevance to the term, and your website itself. There should be a good landing page for people who click on the ad as well, otherwise they’ll just leave the website straightaway – after you’ve been charged – or search engines won’t even show the ad in the first place.
Either way, there are a few things you can do to improve paid search placements – and once your website is a good place for audiences to land on and place orders, you need to consider what keywords you’re going to advertise for. Because all of the optimisation stuff should be done before you even start on Paid Search.
There are a lot of keywords – all with different statistics, which might help your business in a variety of ways. However, it’s not wrong to say that some keywords are better for your business than others. Some might help you get great results, for not too much money, whereas others could cost a lot and not help you increase revenue by much. But there are some things to look out for when thinking about keyword research. Here’s a few things to consider.
Relevance.
As we’ve already mentioned in this post, there’s a lot to be said for being relevant on search engines. Not only will search engines (possibly) show your ad a little more, any clicks will be from people more interested in what you have to offer. Use a keyword that isn’t relevant however, and many of the clicks your ad might get could be people who leave the website quite quickly. The landing page – that is, the page where clickers of your ad end up – needs to be relevant to the ad itself.
If a lot of people end up clicking on your website, then leaving, you still get charged. Alternatively, the campaign might be quite cheap because no-one clicks on your advert as it’s not relevant. Who can say? But neither of these options are what you want, so it doesn’t really matter which outcome it would be.
Choosing relevant keywords just means that your ad will be seen by people searching for what you offer. Then these potential customers could end up clicking on your ad, and ordering.
Competition.
More competitive ads might cost more money, and there could be a lower chance of your ad appearing in a good position – or being shown at all. If someone else has got all of the good spaces, and you can’t compete with them, then it’s worth using a different keyword.
Let’s face it. If you’re a small company who wants to rank for a search term currently showing advertisements from large companies, chances are you might not compete as well with them as you would for a lower competition term. Likewise, there’s no point bidding on a term with no traffic – as then you can’t get any clicks at all. If you’re using Pay-Per-Click, it won’t cost anything if there’s no clicks – but what’s the point?
Price.
This one’s kind of relevant to the previous term – but it’s still important to consider. The price of a search term is related to it’s competition, yes, but the cost needs to be thought of. The amount you’re willing to spend can depend on many things, like those already mentioned and the cost of your products themselves.
For example, if your average sale is £20, with a £10 profit, there isn’t much point bidding on a term that costs £5 per click – it really dents the amount of profit you can make. However, if your average sale was £100 with £50 profit, a £5 bid isn’t so bad.
Position.
So you’ve found a really relevant and cheap search term, perfect for your business. You’re about to finish your advertisement when – wait! It’s only going to appear in position 7 of the ads? Maybe it’s time to reconsider. An ad that low down won’t get as many clicks as one in the top spot – and ads on page two won’t even appear to a lot of people. So there probably won’t be many clicks – or as many orders as a result. Maybe it’s worth reconsidering the term and changing it for one where you can appear in a higher ad position. Even if it’s got lower traffic, a position one ranking might end up being better.
There’s usually only 3 or 4 ads at the top of a search result page – so anything lower than this and you’re underneath a page of organic search results too. As a result, the 5th advert is more like the 15th result – so no matter how good your ad is, people still have to scroll past 14 other results to even reach yours.
The search engine.
Alright, so it’s a little different to the others, but the search engine you want to advertise on can affect keywords. For example, Google might be more or less expensive than Bing. Maybe that means you can go for a keyword with more traffic for the same price? Or maybe you have to use a different way of wording something to get the right cost per click?
Search engines can differ – what’s cheap on one might not be on another. Yes, Google is a massive search engine, but there are options as well. Traffic might be less somewhere else, so clicks are less too – but so is the cost. There are a lot of factors, which is why it might be worthwhile trying to look into keywords on other search engines
There are plenty of things to consider when starting to look at Paid Search campaigns. Here’s just a few of the things to look into when choosing keywords – there are lots of others to think about as well.
Paid Search campaigns have their advantages – especially when done right. Which is why looking at the keywords you advertise on is a crucial step. Some of these tips can also help when looking for SEO keywords too – but as we’ve previously mentioned, that can take more time to get the rankings high enough to reach a lot of traffic.
Paid Search is growing, and there’s more opportunities than ever to advertise across the web. It’s just worth considering what you want to advertise for – as this can affect your campaign overall.
Are you interested in a Paid Search Campaign?
Teknet Marketing offers a Paid Search service, which can help you advertise on Google, Bing and Facebook. For more information about this, see our Paid Search Marketing page! Alternatively, to make an enquiry, fill out the form on our Contact page, email hello@teknetmarketing.co.uk or phone 0800 488 0400!