Running paid search campaigns can sometimes be overwhelming. It can seem like you can never get the performance you’re looking for. You may be asking yourself, “why should I even bother running paid search campaigns?”

Paid search advertising is a powerful digital marketing tool when executed properly. It drives more website visits, calls, and conversions from search engines and has a compelling ROI over time. Your business page also gets more visibility and the interest is much higher because the user was already searching for businesses like yours.

Our team of paid search gurus have pulled together a list of their top strategies for running your best PPC campaigns to help you rank for your paid search ads.

1. Research Your Keywords

Use tools to research your keywords like SEMRush or tools within Google Ads and other search engines. When doing your research, you want to stick with keywords and phrases that rank high for search volume. Also consider KPIs important to your business like clicks to the website or a low cost per click.

These tools can also be useful to help you find keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business. For instance, if your business sells men’s workwear, you will want to search those keywords and use other suggestions like “dress clothes for men” and “work clothes for men.”

2. Build Out Negative Keywords

Keywords are important in any paid search campaign, but negative keywords are just as important. A negative keyword is a word or phrase you can exclude from your campaign to avoid appearing in irrelevant searches. Appearing in the results for anything other than your target market is a waste of time and potentially a waste of money.

For the same men’s workwear business, you would want to exclude terms and phrases like “men’s casual clothes” or “workout clothes for men.” These phrases are similar and could land your website in the results without intention. If you have negative keywords, your website will not appear in search results for terms you don’t want to rank for.

Google Ads has a feature within the platform that even allows you to see what users are typing into the search bar to find your ads. This gives you the advantage to add these terms and phrases to your keyword list or your negative keyword list.

3. Monitor Your Campaigns Regularly

If you don’t keep an eye on your PPC campaigns, you may see really poor performance. Checking in on them frequently (we recommend weekly) helps you catch errors, optimize lagging campaigns, and keep your money funneled to the right places.

Some things you’ll want to check in on are:

Keywords With Poor Performance

• If you notice there are keywords you have active that are high in spend, but low in conversions, pause them – this allows more budget to be available for keywords with higher CTR and conversion rates.
• Consider reworking keywords with low search volume. It might be too long-tailed or people just aren’t searching for it. Using a broader match type or shortening the keyword may help you reach more potential customers.
• The match type might be too broad or too restrictive. Something that is too broad can be paused and added to phrase or exact match to try to boost relevancy.

Revisiting Ad Copy

• This can help boost engagement if you notice it’s lagging. You can use the top-performing headlines and descriptions from all your ads to create new, relevant, high-performing ads.
• Always make sure your ad text is relevant to the keywords you’re using and the landing page you’re driving to. Relevancy will improve your quality score and help lower your average cost-per-click.
• Make sure your ad copy is engaging and makes a user want to take action with your ad.

Keep an Eye on Budget and Bid Strategies

• This prevents over spending, helps support the best-performing keywords, etc.
• Use data to make strategic decisions! Setting bid strategies and adding bid modifiers to time of day, age, gender, household income, locations, and devices can help ensure you are utilizing dollars wisely to reach the audience most likely to click through to your website and convert.

4. Maximize Screen Space

Fully utilize character limits and various ad extensions to take up as much real estate as possible on the search engine results page. In a mobile-first world, it is more important than ever to capture a person’s attention and present them with relevant information that will help solve their problem. By maximizing available screen space and showing in the first position, your ad could be the only thing a searcher sees without scrolling, giving you a huge advantage over competitors.

Make sure to add in a call to action to pull the user in. This lets the user know what action you want them to take when viewing your ad. Using ad extensions also gives the user options to find your location, phone number, and specific pages within your site you want them to visit.

Final Thoughts

We know PPC campaigns can be tricky. We’ve spent the better part of a decade honing our skills with top paid search talent to run our clients’ PPC ads. Utilize these tips to help your business run stronger ad campaigns and start ranking in the top search results.