I spoke with a prospect recently who was disappointed with the results they were receiving from the Google advertising they had set up and paying as much as $5 per click with little or no response. Search advertisers make it very easy for business owners to set up a pay per click account but the costs of setting it incorrectly are not as apparent as they should be.

In today’s blog we look at the top 5 mistakes made when setting up pay per click advertising:

1. Not doing the right keyword research – Search advertisers provide research tools to find keywords to run your advertisements on, but often they suggest the highest searched keywords which have the highest competition. Selecting these keywords also requires you to bid significantly higher for them in order to have your advertisement show up. In most cases, it is better to select keywords which have a reasonably high search volume, but lower competition, which will help to keep your bids down in the long run.
2. Not defining a daily budget – You can define a daily budget for your advertising where your advertisements stop showing after the budget is reached. Not doing this may result in your monthly budget being reached within a week or two and your advertisements not showing for the remainder of the month.
3. Not targeting the right audience – You need to define the cities, states or countries that you want your advertising to be shown in. It doesn’t make sense for a local service provider to show advertising across the nation. It is also important to set the time of day you want your advertisements to show (ex. Not in the middle of the night).
4. Not improving your website or landing page – If you do not get any business from your website currently, then driving more traffic using pay per click advertising does not always mean that will improve. Your company website needs to be credible and look professional before someone will contact you from it. Improve your landing page and add the right offers or calls to action to entice your visitor to make contact.
5. Not maintaining the advertisements regularly – There are a lot of moving parts in pay per click advertising that often get overlooked; It’s not easy enough to simply set something up and let it run. You need to pay attention to things like bids, keywords, ad copy, click through rate, bounce rate, quality score, etc. It is worth the effort to run experiments and try different variations on ad copy and landing pages to see what produces the best result.

Search advertising is a very powerful medium to use when it is done right. It can produce a good amount of business and easily pay for itself. If you do not have the expertise or time to manage it, we recommend consulting with an expert who can help you to manage and achieve better results.

It is important to note that paid search advertisements are only clicked on by ~30% of search engine users; the large majority of search results are delivered through organic listings, so ensure you have a search engine optimization strategy as well.