Ever wonder how Google made $110B last year? Well, about $70B of it came from ad revenue. That’s right, those ads that get listed above your organic search results, and the ads you see on every website make them $70 billion dollars a year. How is this possible? Well, if you take a look at the most expensive keywords out there, it’s pretty easy to see how. When the top 20 most expensive keywords are all well above $40 a click, and the millions of searches that are done each day around the world, the math makes sense.
So with skyrocketing costs per click how do you keep from bloating a budget? We’ve got four techniques we use internally and for our clients to lower AdWords cost and income growing.
Fix Your Copy
One of the biggest ways you can affect your CPC is to have a good ad. Ads that are relevant to the keyword and go to an appropriate landing page tend to have lower cost-per-click rates. Fixing your ad copy or the copy on your website can help your ad in a number of ways. Both in your CPC, and also in your ad’s rank.
Check Search Terms
If you haven’t clicked over to the tab in AdWords marked, “search terms” lately, you probably should. You’ll often find that there are keywords in there that have little to do with the products or services that you offer. Or, they’re looking for a free version of whatever it is you do.
These clicks cost money and eat at your daily budget. This means that you’re making less money off your AdWords because those clicks that could have been going to paying customers were eaten up by people who were just looking for a free version of your service or product.
Be Better at Geo-targeting
Unless you’re an e-commerce store, where you can and will sell everywhere in the world, limiting your geo-targeting can help you compete for keywords in the area you serve. If you’re a lawyer and you know that most people don’t travel more than 20 miles to see a lawyer, why target more than 20 miles for those keywords?
The larger your geographical area, the more opportunities for clicks, the more it will cost. Additionally, using geo-targeted keyphrases can be more cost efficient. Because the searches that are done are more often local search centric, they’re also effective.
Know Your Customers
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve analyzed an AdWords setup for a client and they were spending money on ads when they weren’t open, and had never seen a lead. This is particularly important for professional services. If you’re running ads 24/7 you’re paying for clicks at hours you can’t talk to an opportunity. So know your customers.
There’s also the fact that if you’re getting clicks at 2 AM about a professional service that isn’t pest control or bail bond, you’re probably not getting good clicks. There aren’t too may folks looking for architects at that hour.
Limit your AdWords schedule to the hours that you’re open. Additionally, look at your traffic and the devices people use. If the people who contact you mostly do it on desktop, cut your mobile bids down. You won’t be getting as many bad clicks from people who don’t close.
Conclusion
There’s one other way that you can cut your AdWords costs down. That’s by cutting out underperforming ads. By underperforming, I mean ones that aren’t resulting in conversions. Even if a keyword is performing well in impressions and clicks, it doesn’t mean its a good keyword.
Some of the highest searched/clicked keywords can be the most expensive. They’re more often bid on, and that drives up the CPC. However, if those aren’t resulting in conversions, why buy them at all? Well this has the potential to lower your AdWords traffic, it’s also going to cut down on bad AdWords traffic. Now your money can be spent on keywords that do perform. That will truly be the best way to get AdWords to make you money.