When executed properly, a pay-per-click, or PPC ad campaign can do wonders to put your business front and center with a targeted online audience. Unfortunately, those who don’t fully understand the ins and outs of PPC can end up spending a lot more money than they intended and seeing very little in the way of returns.
Whether you’re just learning about PPC and what Google Ads can do for your business, or you’re a seasoned pro that’s honed consistently successful strategies through years of research and experience, you should know that some big changes are in the works that could impact how you move forward with PPC advertising.
As you know, Google is always trying to improve their service for customers, and they expect businesses to fall in line. It’s not always easy to understand why they change their algorithms and options in certain ways, but the fact is, they’re Google. You might as well try to fight a tsunami with an umbrella.
The best thing you can do is find ways to seamlessly adapt and take advantage of fixes when possible to make your life easier. Along those lines, here are a few major changes to PPC that you’ll need to get on board with if you want to succeed in upcoming campaigns.
- Upgrades to exact match and close variant keywords for searches. Long-time PPC users will recall a time long ago when keyword matches had to be exact in order for “relevant” content to materialize for users. Google eventually realized the limitations due to issues like spelling errors and similar terms that weren’t exact matches and they began including close variants of searches in an attempt to create more positive search experiences for users.
Recently, Google expanded on this principle yet again to include words with the same meaning as keywords. If, for example, a user searched for “local baked goods”, they might get results for “local pastries” or “nearby baked goods”. This is just conjecture, but you get the idea. Will this improve your PPC results or simply muddy the waters? You’ll just have to keep a close eye on relevant terms and how they perform before tweaking your keyword strategy.
- Say goodbye to easy exclusions of mobile apps. Many businesses don’t want their ads to display in mobile apps, where users can all too easily click on them accidentally, with no intention of follow-through (costing you money for clicks in the process). The easy solution to date has been to simply exclude the following domain: googleadsenseformobileapps.com.
Unfortunately, Google has seen fit to remove this catch-all solution for bulk excluding app categories in favor of making you exclude every gosh darn app individually. Ouch. Never fear – there is a clever solution, which is detailed here.
- Manual versus automated bidding. You might have noticed Google is keen to get businesses on board with automated bidding, but the truth is it’s just not feasible for many businesses, especially those running small campaigns. While this feature should continue to improve, you can still use manual bidding in the meantime.
If you’re looking for help with your PPC campaigns or overall SEO strategy, the experts at Net Profit Marketing are ready to guide and support you. Contact Net Profit Marketing at 605-610-3139 or via online form.
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