Pay per click is a great option for a variety of industries, and when you are running a PPC campaign, budget is going to be top of mind. To make the most of your budget, it’s vital that you do your best to lower your CPC (cost per click). Check out these great tips on surefire ways to keep you cost per click low so you can get the most out of your campaign.
Check Your Keywords
One of the easiest things you can do to lower you CPC is to ask yourself the following questions:
- Are your keywords too broad? – If so, try using long-tail keywords that are more specific to your product or company’s services
- Are you adding irrelevant keywords to your negative list? – If you are doing broad match campaigns for keywords, you are likely wasting budget on clicks from irrelevant searches. Keeping an eye on your search terms for your adgroups and adding in negative keywords can help your campaign moving forward.
Pro tip: You should also add in negative keywords of your competitors’ branded terms.
Boost Your Quality Score
Google says that a higher quality score of your campaign can lead to “lower prices and better ad positions” – who wouldn’t want that? Quality score is a ranking of a combination of the quality of your keywords, landing pages, and ads, so making adjustments to these three components can help improve your score. Here are some quick ideas on how you can increase your quality score:
- Check your landing page speed by using Google’s Page Insights speed test
- Double-check that you are using the same keywords in your ads and landing page
- Instead of sending people to your homepage, make new custom landing pages targeted around specific terms you are focused on
- Make more specific campaigns or ad groups that are focused on different keyword match types (exact match, broad match, broad match modifier, etc.)
Adjust Your Bid Strategy
Running a successful campaign with a good CPC is all about strategy. Take a look at these three areas of your campaign to see if you can make any adjustments:
Location
Is there a location that is gaining more conversions than others? Shifting budget into better-performing locations can give you even more room to bring in more leads.
Devices
Where do your ads perform the best: mobile, tablet, or desktop? Depending on the answer, you can get a better idea on which ad type is best for your business (call only, display, and so forth).
Timing
When are you getting the most impressions for your ad? You may want to consider being more specific on when your ads run, especially if you know there is a target time that your ideal customer is online searching. For example, if you are a landscaping business, residential owners likely won’t have time to search for a landscaping company until after work hours and on the weekends.
Break Up Your Ad Groups
As mentioned as a factor in quality score rankings, divvying up your ad groups can be helpful in lowering your CPC. Most experts actually suggest having one keyword per ad group. While it might sound unusual, they aren’t wrong to recommend this method. One of the most important factors in CPC is relevancy and consistency.
Learn More PPC Tips on Our Blog
As an experienced PPC company in Cleveland and Columbus, we have a lot of insights on pay-per-click marketing. Check out a few of our other blog posts on the topic:
- PPC Basics You Should Know
- 5 Reasons Why Your Google Ads Campaign Isn’t Yielding Results
- How Paid Facebook Traffic Is Really Tracked in Google Analytics
- How Does PPC Work?
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