Following on from the recent post about SEO myths I thought I would expand the idea in to my personal favourite marketing channel, Search Engine Pay Per Click advertising (SEPPC or just PPC to its friends). Below are some of the most common misconceptions I come across when explaining PPC to others or reading articles online.
If you are just getting started with PPC I would recommend you read Google’s beginner’s guides inside and out.
You need to be number 1
Research has shown that the top position does receive more clicks than any other, the 2nd ad slot the 2nd highest and so on (Source: Enquiro research), however being top is not always the most cost effective place to be. If your PPC strategy is based around direct sales (the alternative may be a branding strategy where direct CPA is less of a concern) the CPA in position 1 is unprofitable then you are running at a loss no matter how many you sell. Lower positions may drive less traffic but at a price you can afford.
PPC is a short-term quick fix until organic traffic turns up
This is a common stick thrown at PPC by SEO professionals with a bit of a chip on their shoulder that PPC takes the lion’s share of search budgets. The reality is the two should be viewed as part of a joint strategy and combining the two together increases both of their respective click through rates than if they were run separately.
PPC is fire and forget
I would argue that PPC requires more attention than your SEO. Any changes you make have an immediate impact and this goes the same for your competitors. The PPC market place is constantly shifting and optimising and reviewing your campaigns is a daily effort.
Broad match will bleed you dry
If you advertise through search engine pay per click and use nothing but exact matches you will be running a very tight ship but you will also be missing out on a lot of potential (and relevant) traffic from keywords you haven’t thought of. With 25% of all searches thought to be completely unique (i.e. they have never been used by anyone ever before) you can’t possibly cover every single search term as an exact match.
On the other side, if you use broad match and phrase match keywords you run the risk of seeing your advert triggered alongside a keyword that isn’t actually related to your site. For example, if you bid on ‘web banner design’ as a phrase match you would also be shown for ‘FREE web banner design’. Common sense may suggest you change it to an exact match but you would then miss out on ‘GOOD QUALITY web banner design’ etc. Negative keywords act to prevent this from happening and don’t be surprised to find your negative keyword list is much larger than your keyword list (for one of our campaigns we have just under 600 negative keywords).
Read more about negative keywords http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=6100
Your website is independent of your campaign
This certainly used to be true but since Google introduced on-site factors as part of the quality score algorithm PPC advertisers must consider the landing pages with regards to its relevance to the keywords and advert. Is the keyword in your page title, the page URL, the H tags, the main body etc?
Click here for more information about improving your quality score through your landing page: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&lev=index&cbid=-guigqu8731em&answer=6141&src=cb
PPC has an influence on natural rankings
No. Spend as much money as you want, it’s not going to happen.
PPC is all about directly measurable ROI
There is an increasing step change in advertiser’s attitudes to measuring PPC. The previously held belief that PPC is 100% about directly attributable ROI is shifting as we start to appreciate that a customer’s journey is varied and takes in multiple marketing touch points and online marketing uses a “last click wins” model.
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