PPC Bid Management-Step One
Effective Bid Management - Step 1: Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions
Filtering Keywords with Clicks & No Conversions identifies irrelevant Keywords in an account. Also identifies Keywords that have lost traffic and or conversion based on previous PPC bid optimization. Doing this based on 1-2 days or weeks of data would not be recommended unless you are dealing with a product that generates extremely high volume of traffic, clicks, and conversions within that time frame. Recommended time frame would be at least a month or more. After identifying these keywords, ask yourself:
- Is the Max. CPC too high?
- As a result is the Avg. Position too high and therefore generating a lot of junk traffic?
- Is the ad copy not relevant to the search query?
- Is the landing page appropriate for the keyword and ad copy?
Fact of the matter is, if the keyword has not converted in over a month and has only contributed to negative spend then it will not convert anytime in the future and you should consider pausing it or deleing it from the account. Another important fact to note is, you might have only a dozen keywords with high spend or you might have 1000s of keywords with only $1-$2 in spend each but those 1s and 2s add up.
Lastly, those 1s and 2s that are mentioned above, you could use a statistical benchmark to determine if the keyword has actually had enough exposure to convert or not. You could do this by taking your overall account’s conversion rate, you can determine what is the minimum number of clicks needed for a keyword to convert. If the keyword has not incurred that many clicks, you might want to consider leaving the keyword active for a while.
- It is advised that you base this decision on a large chunk of data - hence the first logic to check if there is at least 2 months worth of data available.
- Depending on your product/service, only a weeks worth of data might be enough for you to conduct this analysis due to the high volume of Impressions, Clicks, & Cost.
- Always keep track of your Ad Copy and Landing Page changes as that can effect conversions too.
- This analysis has helped me in eliminating Keywords with high cost and identifying Keywords that have contributed negatively to the account and were not suitable for their respective campaigns.
Lost Impressions, Clicks, & Conversions:
- Could be due to Seasonality?
- Could be due to Increased Competition?
- Could be due to previous PPC Bid optimization (maybe a keyword was not converting as effectively, or bid was decreased aggressively)?
