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3 Common PPC Mistakes Beginners Make

At EM Search Consulting, we work with a number of small businesses who are either just getting started with PPC or who have little experience managing PPC accounts. It is not uncommon for us to take over an existing PPC account when beginning work with a new client. That being said, we have seen a lot of the same mistakes being made over and over. We have created a list of three mistakes we often see beginners make in their PPC campaigns.

Broad Match Terms

Bidding on all or majority broad match terms is a very common mistake. Sometimes it can be laziness when building a campaign to just throw a whole bunch of terms in and call it a day. Usually, however, it is lack of understanding the different keyword match options. Broad match keywords will include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variants. For example, consider you are a Chevrolet car dealership who is advertising for the Chevrolet Malibu. If you have a broad match keyword Malibu, your ads could show for people searching for restaurants in Malibu California or people looking to buy Malibu Rum. In reality, broad match keywords will inevitably lead to a low click-through-rate and wasted money.

Need To Have A #1 Average Position

Don’t be fooled into thinking that having an average position of 1.0 should be your main goal. Getting yourself into a bidding war for the #1 spot in the SERP can easily cause you to overspend for clicks. Four ads can fit at the top of the SERP on Google. Ranking in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th position will allow your ads to show above the fold and save you money, which could mean more clicks.

Letting It Run

You can’t have an “out of sight out of mind” attitude when it comes to PPC. Just because your account is all setup the way you think is perfect, doesn’t mean things are always going to go as planned. At the bare minimum you should be checking your budget and adjusting bids to make sure that you are not under or overspending. Additionally, there is a wealth of information available to you in your PPC account that is valuable to your business. For example, you may have a lot of conversions on Saturdays and none on Monday’s. Based on this information you could set up an ad schedule with no ads showing on Monday’s and a bid adjustment for Saturday’s since you know that is when you are likely to get more conversions. It’s important that you take time every week to act on opportunities, lower poor performing keywords, add negative keywords, and test new ad copy. This is not an all-inclusive list. There are several things that can hurt PPC performance that are not easy to control without proper experience.

Do you need help managing your PPC? Contact the professionals at EM Search Consulting today for a free consultation.

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