Doing Paid Search (PPC) The Right Way

Sorry in not continuing this thread as planned.

(1) Keywords

Obviously the keywords start it ALL as these are what brings the RIGHT people and also what eats your budget up if you select the WRONG keywords.

I feel that what you are bidding on is a mission critical part of your overall PPC campaign. When it comes to contractors, the more specific the keyword/pharase, the higher your chance to attract the people you are looking for. Long tailed keywords obviously have less search traffic but should be the key part of your toolbox along with geomodifiers.

At the end of the day, most people who do Google AdWords do the same mistake over and over. What is that mistake? They grab a lot of high traffic vague keywords and then optimize around lowering their average CPC (cost per click). This DOES NOT ALWAYS increase your lead count. All it does is bring more worthless clicks to your site that will never result in paying clients let along a phone call or contact us submission. Thats why Google loses 50% of its clients who use their Google Adwords on their own. The terrible thing is that a lot of those same contractors swear off PPC marketing after doing it on their own because they think that is what kind of results they will get no matter who they chose to manage their online marketing. It simple isnt true and my mission is to educate folks on doing PPC the right way. And the right way is spending more of your money on keywords and phrases that are generating phone calls, emails and form submissions.

Hope this helps! Part 2 - Text Ads is up next week.

alanmoore said:

So many people have tried PPC on their own or hired firms that truly did not know what they were doing.

In the end, it all comes down to 3 key components. Mess up one and it costs you a little. Two of them and you have little chance at success. Screw up all 3 and you might as well just hand over your wallet to Google today because your marketing will always be an expense and never an investment.

So, what are the 3 key compenents you might ask???

(1) The keyword
(2) The text ad
(3) The landing page/website

How well those 3 factors "get along" result in placement, quality score and overall effectiveness of that ONE keyword. How many different ways can someone look for a plumber? For an electrician? For a painter? What you would type in as THAT plumber, electrician or painter will definitely be different than someone who doesn't know the proper terminology.

In the next few days, I will go into more detail on each component. If you have any questions, please ask them in here, via email or by calling.

Good luck in 2010!

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What about limiting your geographic area? I am in Birmingham Michigan and when I did a search for roofers paid ads from roofers in Birmingham Alabama came up. Can you imagine how money they are wasting having their ads show up nation wide?

Exactly what they said, you do 2 AdGroups for the Geomodified keywords:

(1) Nationwide campaign where you catenate the city state with the keyword/phrase
(2) Local campaign where you catenate JUST the city name with the keyword/phrase

What were the names of the roofers you saw who were serving ads in Michigan when they are in Alabama? I would love to call them up and save them money. They are a PRIME example of how you can blow your budget on clicks that will NEVER get you business. Google AdWords loses 50% of their clients and I would hazard to guess that having "owners" who dont truly know what they are doing is the main reason why. Dont right and you will reap 5-7 times your investment. Done wrong and you may not ever see one paying job.

This video produced by google will give you a very nice summary of the 3 components that makes the greatest impact on your PPC quality score and cost per click:

1) Click through rate (the biggest chunk; this is how google makes their money). Read up here to learn how to get the best CTRs by organizing your campaign.

2) Ad relevance. (for the user; ie does your add reflect the intent of the search?) If a user searches for "roofing contractors in X," you don't want your add to be about "contractors in X." This is where grouping your keywords around tight ad themes becomes critical.

3) Landing page. (smallest component). Make sure you are sending the user to a relevant landing page. Don't just send them to your homepage. If they clicked on an add for "interior painting," don't send them to the homepage of a handyman site. Send them directly to the page that talks about interior painting and has a call to action. This will help both your conversions and your quality score.

Watch the video. It will help you out!

I agree, its a good video that really dumbs down the reality of it all. Google has hundreds of factors that affect where you are placed and how much that click costs you. At the end of the day it all comes down to netting the highest Average CPC to Google.

If your keyword, text ad and landing page is ALL relevant to one another you are rewarded by Google with higher ad placement/cost per click.

If 1 of the 3 components is off, you get slapped with lower placement/higher CPC.

2 components off and you are now way down the page, paying more than people above you.

All 3 out of whack and you are now spending a small fortune for your clicks. This is why some contractors are paying an average cost per click of $10 when their area/industry is showing an average CPC of $2-3.

Do it right and you win. Do it wrong and your bank account dries up quick.

There are not "hundreds of factors" for PPC although there are more than three. The three things I outlined above are the only ones you can directly control. If you have these three things under control (which most people don't), you are 95% of the way there.

Below is another "dumbed down" graphic representing the things that matter:

Three of the six components are controllable (keyword relevance, ad relevance, and landing page content); two of the components are byproducts (clickthrough rate (CTR) and historical performance); and the last (other relevancy factors) is simply AdWords reserving the right to make subjective decisions and dash a little bit of their secret sauce on the formula.

Neither I, nor Yodle, nor ReachLocal, nor OrangeSoda know what these "other" things are. That's why all of the SEM firms optimize for exactly the 3 things I outlined above and get the other 2 byproducts (CTR and Historical Performance) out of that.

We have been doing PPC for two years and trust me, it can be the biggest expense by far in your account and still produce NOTHING.


If you do PPC through an advertising company, make sure of two things:

1. The person in charge of your account knows what he/she is doing. Sometimes I need to contact them three times for a simple change such a keyword to be done.

2. Make sure that your business is set up the way you want to be promoted, and nothing more!!! Advertising companies will through in 2,000 extra keywords that will not be specific to your company.

These keywords can different work (asphalt driveways, when you only do concrete work) or different locations (Concrete work Baltimore, when you only work on DC).

etc...


In a few words, PPC can help you get some good jobs, but make sure the account with google is set up right!! Or you will run through your budget in two days.

festerized said:

I have yet see any postings in regards to optimizing your ad to an optimized page of your web site
You Adwards campain is as only good as the page your trying to promote

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Read my post above -->

3) Landing page. Make sure you are sending the user to a relevant landing page. Don't just send them to your homepage. If they clicked on an add for "interior painting," don't send them to the homepage of a handyman site. Send them directly to the page that talks about interior painting and has a call to action. This will help both your conversions and your quality score.

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y.painting said:

Not sure how you were able to extract that I was promoting pure click volume out of what I said:blink:. % conversion and ROI is where it's at (as it's always been).

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I wasnt speaking directly to you about what YOU do. I was referring to the majority of contractors who "do it theirselves". Most focus on lowering their average CPC down and thats it. So they look at the keywords with the most traffic and optimize around that.

As for % conversion and ROI, that is nearly impossible for you to do that on your own. The only TRUE way is to send each keyword to a dynamic landing page with its own unique tracking # and form page. Can you do this on your own? Sure you can but then you wont have any time to do the work that comes in from the campaign because you are too busy working on your AdWords account.