When it comes to PPC, it seems as though you can never get it perfect enough. You can always try something new, tweak something a little bit, to improve the campaign’s performance. Set a goal for yourself so that you are spending enough time optimizing your campaign, but not spending the bulk of your time analyzing. Maybe every Monday morning you look at your analytics and spend an hour making changes, or you set a goal of twice a month. Here are two ways you can optimize your PPC campaign in that hour.

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Before you start optimizing, you need to change your way of thinking about click through rates. CTR measure the number of clicks you get on an ad for every 100 times it shows up. People setting up PPC campaigns often solely focus on their CTR, which would be fine if the ads weren’t costing them money every time someone clicked! What you need to focus on is the conversion rate, or the number of times a visitor completed the goal you wanted them to (that may be filling out a form, purchasing an item, downloading an ebook). This is why it’s so critical that you set up goals for every ad campaign when you’re first getting started, so you know the conversion rate of each ad. Remind yourself over and over that your CTR is irrelevant if you’re spending more than you’re making on those clicks.

1. Split Test Your Ads: No matter how well you feel you know your customer, the only way you can really know what they are thinking is by testing different elements and tracking what is working. Look at your best performing ad and try to improve it. (Don’t change the actual ad, set up a second one that is identical and try changing a few key elements) Try changing one of your adjectives, and see if it increases your conversion rate. Use one ad to market your low prices, and another that focuses on your great customer service. See which one works better. Unless you are trying and testing everything, you don’t actually know what works. You will get to know the customers in your market better, and can utilize this information on your website as well as in your future ads.

2. Gain the Optimum Ad Position: When you are searching for a product or information online, do you usually click to the sixth page of ads? Those ads are very rarely seen. Though it doesn’t seem intuitive, the first position on the results page is not ideal either. That ad often get mistakenly clicked,or clicked by individuals simply doing research. They get a higher click through rate, but not a higher conversion rate. The best positions in sponsored listings are positions two through six. These may not get the highest click through rates, but they will get higher conversion rates.

You can control your position in two ways. You can make the landing page more relevant (or the ad more relevant to the landing page) and gain a higher quality score. Your clicks will cost less,so what you’ve bid will get you higher on the screen. Or, you can bid more (but not so much you end up on the first position.)

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