Pay-Per-Click Services

When it comes to setting up and developing a PPC campaign, there are 3 basic steps:

1. Campaign Planning and Activation

1. Keyword Research - Keyword research is the most critical element of any search marketing campaign. If this is not done correctly in the first place, you may spend a lot of money bringing unqualified visitors to your website.

2. Account Setup - whilst it is relatively straight forward to setup up a Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing account, if you are not familiar with these systems, it can take you many hours to set them up yourself. You will also need to have some comprehension as to the terminology used such as the difference between 'content networks' and 'search networks'. What is 'geotargeting', what is 'maximum cpc' and how these elements will influence your results.

3. Campaign Creation - is where you enter your keywords and set them up into 'ad groups'. Each ad group should contain its own unique ad content relevant to the keyword or phrase being entered by a user. We recommend at at least 2 variation of on ad be created for each ad group to start testing which ads will perform the best. In addition, you will need to know the difference between 'broad match', 'exact match', 'phrase match' and 'negative match' when setting up your keywords.

4. Set Up Analytics - you will only ever know how well your campaign is performing by knowing what visitors are doing once they have entered your website. Google Analytics enables you to see exactly how visitors are navigating your website, which pages are not satisfying their needs, how many visitors are ultimately turning into leads or e-commerce transactions. If you are not familiar with html code, setting up Google Analytics to accurately test all of the important 'success indicators' can be a daunting task.

The planning and activation stage of a PPC campaign can be quite complex for someone who has not had any exposure to these systems or to search engine marketing. If done incorrectly, a business can spend thousands of dollars trying to work out why they are getting lots of visitors who are not converting to new business.

At SEMA, we can set up a new campaign on your behalf, generally within 2 business days.

We have developed proven methodologies to ensure your campaign performs well right from the outset.

Don't leave this phase of a PPC campaign to chance, use an expert to get it right the first time.

2. Campaign Management

1. Bid management - is relatively straight forward however if you don't have your Analytics set up properly in the first place, and you don't know how to read your Analytics reports, you wont know which keywords to bid on more aggressively. Being at the top of the listings for all keywords relevant to your business is not necessarily the aim of a well managed PPC campaign.

2. Keyword performance reviews - the performance of each of your keywords should be reviewed regularly, particularly in the early stages of a new campaign. We would recommend that they be checked daily for the first week, a couple of times each week for the next 3 weeks and then at least weekly on an on-going basis.

3. Ad group and ad copy reviews - constant attention should be given to your ad groups and ad copy. Continuously break down your existing ad groups into smaller groups to increase the relevance of your ads. Constantly test new ads using Google's ad variation testing capabilities to determine which ads perform the best.

Managing a campaign on a daily basis is relatively straight-forward once you know what you are doing.

It can however be resource intensive and requires several hours each week by a dedicated person to ensure you address the fundamental elements of a PPC campaign.

At SEMA, we have expertise in campaign management and also use specialist 'bid management software' to automate some of this process and to make sure your bids are always optimal with respect to the best performing keywords getting the highest visibility in the search engine results pages.

3. Campaign Optimisation

1. Keyword Performance Reports - should be created for the first 4 weeks of a new campaign at least weekly to check the performance of your campaign and keywords to enable you to make informed decisions about how to alter the campaign outcomes.

2. Analytics Reporting - should be conducted at least once a month and provided your analytics was set up properly in the first instance, you will be able to accurately determine what is and what isn't working. As a minimum you should be analysing which keywords and phrases are bringing visitors to your website that see your website content as being relevant to their query. Measure 'average time spent on site', 'page visits' and 'bounce rates'. This will provide some insight as to how effective your website is however tracking conversions such as 'downloads of content' 'entry to your contacts page', 'emails and forms submitted' and if your website is e-commerce based, 'transaction details' is the ultimate in determining how successfully keywords are converting to business.

3. Optimisation - not to be confused with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), assuming you know how to interpret the information you are receiving from Google Analytics, you will then be in a position to make changes to your campaign that will increase your ROI for your PPC campaign(s).

At SEMA, we go to extraordinary lengths to understand what the Google Analytics reports are revealing. For every client, success can be determined by many different things.

We work with a broad number of clients operating in different vertical markets and have a huge amount of knowledge on how to create a successful optimisation strategy for each of our client's businesses.

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