The Importance of Keyword Tracking

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a great way to obtain large amounts of traffic. However, the downside is clearly visible in the word ‘Pay’. Although you don’t have to pay for impressions, every time someone clicks on your ad it is going to cost. The actual cost depends of your maximum bidding amount. This can vary between 1 cent and many dollars.

While you may not actually have to pay the maximum, many novices have found to their dismay that the costs of advertising soon add up. This is not a problem if you are making sales, but if the offer isn’t converting you can lose a considerable amount of money.

On the other hand, you may be making sales but still operating at a loss. Your profit depends on the difference between the amount you are making in sales minus the amount you are paying for traffic. For a beginner, this can be frustrating to see that an offer converts, but seems impossible to operate at a profit.

Lowering your bidding is one option. However, this may have the effect of reducing traffic, or even turning it off completely. Fortunately, there is a technique that can turn the odds back in your favor. It is one that is used by the majority of successful PPC marketers. The method is to track your individual keywords.

In any given campaign there are differing types of keywords. Some get small amounts of traffic, some get moderate traffic and the stars which get enormous traffic. The same goes for conversions. Some get no conversions all the way through to great converting keywords. Unless you track keywords you could end up in the unenviable position of having a keyword that generates an enormous amount of traffic, but no sales. This can be very costly.

However, if you track keywords then you will learn this quickly and can pause the keyword. It is usually better to pause rather than delete keywords because then you have an on-going record. Otherwise, when you get to the stage of having thousands of keywords you may inadvertently run that losing keyword again.

Over time, by removing the non-performing keywords (in terms of conversions) you can turn a losing campaign in to one that is quite profitable. Of course, not all campaigns have the potential to be profitable. When you have done your best to optimize a campaign based on your keyword tracking then it is usually best to pause the whole campaign. By cutting your losses and running with your winners you should eventually find success using PPC.