PPC Optimization: Tips, strategies, and automation

Running pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can be a powerful tool to drive traffic to your website and generate leads or sales. They can also be a big investment. Increasing competition and costs in paid search makes it more important than ever to ensure you are getting the best possible return on your ad spend and connecting with the right customers at the right time. Optimising PPC campaigns to maximise impact and minimise waste is essential.

Read on to learn about the tools available and best practices for optimising PPC campaigns to reach your advertising goals. 

PPC campaign optimisation is a continual process of analysis and refinement to keep your PPC spend aligned with your business goals. From the moment you start a campaign, you’ll want to monitor, benchmark, and optimise your PPC campaigns based on observed results, competitive factors, market shifts, and new threats and opportunities. 

Beyond adjusting bids for your ad campaigns, there are a wide range of things you can do to help optimise the effectiveness and performance of your PPC ads overall.

Key levers for PPC optimisation include:

• Refining keyword targeting
• Optimising ad copy
• Improving landing pages
• Testing new ad variations

For example, you’ll want to conduct A/B testing to analyse different ad variations, colours, landing pages, and calls-to-action. By testing and analysing ad copy, you can determine which elements drive the most clicks and conversions and optimise your ads accordingly. 

Similarly, you’ll want to be sure your landing page is optimised for conversions by including relevant product images, detailed product information, and a strong call-to-action. A good landing page can significantly improve your campaign performance..

Effective PPC optimisation can not only boost performance, it can also reduce your campaign costs, expand your ad coverage, and help you navigate turbulent markets and competitor moves.

Smart keyword targeting is essential to PPC optimisation. PPC ads are triggered by the search terms (keywords) users enter, and advertisers must bid on the keywords they want to trigger their ads. Optimising the keywords you bid on requires some research, which starts with establishing your campaign goals and target audience. 

Effective PPC keyword research  involves identifying relevant search terms that your specific target audience is searching for online and then also strategically incorporating them into your PPC ads to gain visibility, drive engagement, and capture conversions. 

Done well, this process ensures that ads reach the right users at the right time by aligning ads with your audience’s immediate needs and interests. And targeting high-intent keywords can boost conversion rates for your ads, because they indicate a user’s readiness to act.

You can brainstorm core keywords, but you’ll also want to use free or paid tools to assess search volume, competition, and related terms to build out your list. At a minimum you’ll want a tool for keyword discovery, bid estimation, competitor analysis, and keyword organisation.

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that provides keyword data such as search volume, trends, competition levels, and cost estimates. It’s a good place to start generating keyword ideas and bid estimates. You can also use it to search for keyword and ad group ideas, see how a list of keywords might perform, and combine keyword lists into new groups.

Continuously monitoring your keyword performance is a vital part of PPC optimisation. You can assess individual keyword performance using metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, cost per click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS), and measurement tools include Google Ads reporting and other keyword research platforms.

The objective in most cases is to find high-volume, highly relevant keywords with low competition. You’ll need to continually refine your list to prioritise high-performing keywords, add related terms, and create ad groups aligned with search intent. 

Here are some best practices to follow:

• Ensure your keywords closely match the search intent behind user queries. Tightly aligned ad copy and landing pages will also resonate better with searchers, leading to more clicks.
• Regularly analyse your keyword performance. Refine poorly performing broad keywords and expand successful ones with relevant variations to capture a wider audience searching for your offerings.
• Use negative keywords to exclude irrelevant searches that won’t convert. This prevents wasted ad spend and improves the overall quality and efficiency of your campaigns.
• Use exact match and negative keywords to target specific search queries and avoid irrelevant traffic. Negative keywords actively block your ad from appearing on searches you know are irrelevant to your business.If you sell only auto insurance policies, for example, you might add the negative term “health insurance.”
• Be on the lookout for low-performing keywords with high costs or low conversion rates. Consider pausing or negating those keywords to exclude those poor performers.
• Explore long-tail keywords with lower competition but potentially higher conversion rates (see more below).
• Include your targeted keywords in your ad copy to improve relevance and click-through rates.

Long-tail keywords are very specific, less frequently searched phrases that target a niche audience. They can be valuable because they can have lower search volume (and thus cost) but higher conversion rates because they are highly relevant to your business.

Long-tail keywords can also indicate higher user intent because they are typically more specific; “merino wool cushioned socks” for example, vs “hiking footwear.” Users searching precisely for long-tail keywords are also typically further along the customer journey, making them more likely to convert..

Incorporating long-tail keywords into your PPC ads can also boost relevance and deliver higher engagement, higher CTR, and more conversions. 

PPC optimisation must always take into account your competitive landscape, including new market entrants. PPC keyword competitor analysis involves evaluating your competitors’ strategies and keywords to optimise and elevate your own. By understanding the keywords your competitors rank for and assessing their overall strengths and weaknesses, you can identify opportunities to improve your rankings. 

You can begin by manually searching for your competitors’ brands and analysing their ad copy for messaging, CTAs, and keyword usage. Visit their landing pages to understand their value proposition and user experience. 

From there, you’ll need automation to scale up your analysis. 

Using tools such as Adthena’s Search Term Detail report, you can view which related search terms competitors appear for that you do not, as well as their average click volume and CPC. You can then determine whether to include these search terms within your existing campaigns.

With Adthena’s Top Ads, you can see how paid desktop and mobile adverts that have been shown by you and your competitors when searched for any of your search terms. You can then use these insights to create compelling ad copy that speaks directly to your target audience.

By using automated tools for competitor keyword analysis, you can enhance your strategy, target high-value keywords, and track your rankings against competitors to improve your overall search engine performance – all at speed and scale.

PPC ad campaigns are organised into ad groups based on theme, audience, keywords and other factors. Optimising those ad groups can help boost performance and ROAS for your PPC campaigns. Here are a few rules to follow:

• Group campaigns and ad groups by theme, device, location, or other relevant factors. This reveals performance variations within your campaigns.
• Pinpoint ad groups with low CTR or high costs. Analyse their keywords, ad copy, and landing pages to identify optimisation opportunities.
• Allocate budget strategically based on performance, and focus your spending for high-performing ad groups.

The ad text you craft for your PPC campaigns has a significant impact on their performance. Ad copy is your first impression on potential customers and your one opportunity to convince them to click. 

Ad text can influence PPC performance in a number of ways, so it’s important to create compelling and relevant ad text that directly relates to your keywords and the content on your landing page. Make sure your ads address the user’s intent and offer a clear call to action. 

The landing page is where users are directed after clicking on your PPC ad, and landing pages are crucial for PPC optimisation. A poorly designed landing can squander the money you just paid for that click and your entire campaign’s potential. 

Effective landing pages tightly connect with your ad copy using relevant keywords and a clear call to action to guide users towards conversion. This focus ensures visitors understand exactly what you offer and compels them to take the desired action, maximising your return on PPC ad spend.

To create a seamless landing page experience, your landing page should provide valuable content, load quickly, be mobile-responsive, and offer intuitive navigation.

Ad extensions are bits of information you can add on to your ads to provide additional detail to users, and they can positively impact your ad performance. 

Measuring the performance of ad extensions in PPC campaigns is crucial for evaluating their effectiveness and optimising ad strategies. In Google Ads, you can access ad extensions performance metrics and analyse site link data at the campaign or ad group level.

Experiment with different ad extensions such as site link or callout extensions to see which ones resonate most with your audience. A well-structured ad with extensions can enhance the user experience and boost your results

One of the most important elements that can significantly impact the success of your Google Ads campaigns is the Google Quality Score.

Google’s Quality Score is a metric designed to assess the quality and relevance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. It’s crucial to the success of your PPC strategy because it directly influences the CPC, ad position, and success of your ads.

Quality Score is measured on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. The higher your Quality Score, the more relevant and useful Google deems your ads to be, resulting in benefits such as lower costs and better ad placements.

You can influence your ads’ quality score by optimising your keywords, crafting high-quality ad copy, enhancing the landing page experience, and using negative keywords strategically.

Additionally, testing ad extensions and consistently analysing and iterating your campaigns will keep them relevant and cost-effective. 

Analysing your Quality Score can also help you pinpoint areas for improvement, such as refining keywords to better match search intent or crafting more effective ad copy. By addressing weaknesses, you can optimise your PPC campaigns for better performance and maximise your ROAS.

The most successful PPC marketers use all of the above strategies for campaign optimisation and rely on automation to speed the work. And today, AI can provide a huge advantage, allowing you to instantly analyse competitor performance by device, quickly analyse competitors’ ad copy, and much more. 

Here are a few tips for levelling up you PPC optimisation program:

• Don’t compete with your partners. If you have multiple domains, partners, or affiliates, be sure you’re not bidding against them in paid search and paying artificially inflated CPCs as a result. Look at your campaigns holistically, and divvy up to each partner the keywords that perform best for them.
• Make it easy for search engines. Optimise your metadata, and do keyword research to identify valuable long tails and question keywords, for example.
• Adjust your page URLs for maximum SEO value (if you can.)
• Focus on UX. Fast load speed and an overall good user experience drive conversions from both paid and organic traffic. They also benefit organic rankings by reducing bounce rates.
• Eliminate lone rangers from your PPC keyword lists. Lone rangers are keywords or search terms for which you hold the top spot on the SERP for both paid and organic search, and for which there is no competition. In other words, you’re paying for clicks you would win organically anyway. They are money wasters but you can easily spot them and pause bidding in real time, with Adthena’s Brand Activator.
• Monitor brand poachers. Automation tools such as Adthena’s Infringement Tracker can help you monitor competitors to keep them from using your legally protected trademarks in a way that’s likely to confuse customers about the source of a product or service.
• Test and optimise. Don’t settle for assumptions! Continuously test different ad variations, headlines, descriptions, CTAs, and landing page elements to see what resonates best with your target audience.
• Balance impression share with other goals like click-through rate and conversions for optimal campaign performance.

From keyword research to optimising ad copy to protecting your brand from trademark infringements, for every optimisation task there is a technology tool available to streamline and accelerate the work. 

Adthena leverages AI and automation to support these tasks by providing real-time search intelligence on a scale you can’t accomplish with manual analysis. In turn, boosting your team productivity and your campaign results.  

Learn more about Adthena Campaign Optimisation solutions and explore your specific challenges, request a personalized demo with one of our search consultant