Your Google pay per click ad is only as good as how you manage it. Simply showing your ads is not enough – you need to show it to a keenly-targeted audience, and compel this audience to click it.

All this can be done by effective pay per click management. Pay per click management is actually a three-pronged activity – you need to develop your keywords, increase the frequency of your ads, and improve your landing page. Let us discuss each step.

Developing keywords for your pay per click

The keywords you choose determine when and where your pay per click ads will appear, so be very prudent in putting this list together. Be sure that your pay per click keywords are specific and relevant, so that your pay per click ads only appear to users who are actually looking for your products or services. Let’s say you are selling boating equipment. Good keywords would include ‘boating equipment,’ ‘boat supplies,’ ‘boat supply,’ etc. Do not use just the word ‘boat,’ because your pay per click ad will also appear to audiences who may be searching for a completely different product or data (such as an actual ‘boat’ or ‘boat lessons’).

You should likewise take advantage of the many keyword matching options available for pay per click users. You can manipulate these options to either broaden or restrict your focus on potential customers.

Choose a ‘broad match,’ if you want to reach a wider audience. The broad match allows your pay per click add to appear on sites that may not be directly related to your ad. If you use the keyword ‘boat supplies,’ for example, you ad will appear when users search the terms ‘boat’ and ‘supplies’ in whatever order.

If you want to attract a more specific audience, though, then choose the ‘phrase match’ or the ‘exact match’ option. In a phrase match, your pay per click ad will appear whenever a user searches ‘boat supplies’ in this arrangement, and also when other terms are added before or after the phrase (such as in ‘cheap boat supplies’). In an ‘exact match,’ on the other hand, your pay per click ad will only appear when the user searches the exact phrase ‘boat supplies.’

Increasing the frequency of your ads

Don’t scrimp on your pay per click budget because it determines how many times your ad appears for your chosen keywords.

Although only you have the full authority to change your daily budget for your pay per click, it is a good idea to follow the daily budget that Google recommends. This budget is based on critical indicators such as the past performance for keywords similar to yours, language variations, geographical factors, and even Google network activity, so you can be sure that it is designed to be most favorable for your pay per click ad.

Improving your landing page

It is not enough that your ad is catchy and that it appears frequently enough on relevant searches – more importantly, it should actually work when it is clicked. Improve your landing page so that the user who clicks your par per click ad is taken immediately to what he or she is looking for.