Evaluating Your PPC Campaign

It is important to evaluate the progress of your pay per click advertising campaign because it allows you to maximize your results. You will find that some keywords have far better conversion rates than others. You will also find that some keywords have bid prices, which are unjustifiably high (or more than you can afford). If a particular keyword isn't converting or it is too expensive, than you can look to other options. You need to understand your pay per click advertising campaign so that you can evaluate it and improve your results. In order to evaluate your pay per click advertising campaign, you need to ask yourself some important questions:

Have You Chosen All The Relevant Keywords?

Targeting obscure keywords is a great way to get quality traffic for less. If your main keyword is too expensive, than maybe you should look at alternatives and extensions of that keyword. Brainstorm other similar keywords, look at the bid prices for those keywords and then decide on whether you should try bidding on them in addition (or in place of) you current keywords. Obscure searches tend to get less traffic, but generally have lower bid prices.

Are Your Bids Too High/Low?

Are you paying too much for a keyword? Are you losing money because of it? If so, than you are better off not bidding on that keyword, or at the very least, reducing the amount of money you bid on that keyword and sliding down the search results a little bit. You will get less traffic, but the traffic you do get will cost you less.

Similarly, if you are too low in the search results, and not receiving traffic, than you may need to considering bidding more on the keyword in order to move yourself up the search results and get more traffic. This doesn't mean that you should bid for first position, but higher than you currently are.

Is Your ROI (Return On Investment) Better than 100%?

If your ROI from a particular keyword is below 100% than this means that you are losing money. Return On Investment is determined by dividing Revenue (R) by Expenses (E) and multiplying it by 100 to express it as a percentage. E.g. (R / E) * 100. For example, if you spent $100 on traffic from a particular keyword and only made $50 in revenue from that traffic. Than, your ROI would be 50% ($50 / $100) * 100 = 50%. This means you are losing money. If, after a reasonable amount of testing time, a particular keyword is still not achieving you a ROI of at least 101% (just above breaking even), than you should no longer bid on that keyword. However, if your ROI is above 100%, you may as well keep continuing bidding for that keyword as it is making you more money than you are spending. Sometimes, however, it can be better to focus your spending on the highly converting keywords at the expense of the lesser converting keywords.

Which Keywords Are Converting The Best?

Whilst evaluating your campaign you fill find that some keywords are converting to sales/leads better than other keywords (which may still be converting, but not as well - or maybe not converting at all). Would you be better off focusing more of your pay per click advertising spending on the highly converting keywords? If for the same amount of money, you could get double the return by focusing more heavily on some keywords at the expense of others, than you will be better off doing so. Focusing on the high converting keywords will bring better results and improve your ROI.

It is important to evaluate your pay per click advertising campaign on a regular basis, as to ensure that your campaign is primed to get the best results for you. The better the results, the more success your website will be. Using the above tips and suggestions, your now know how to evaluate your pay per click advertising campaigns and make improvements. Your Return On Investment (ROI) will greatly benefit and so will your bank balance!