Paid Search – It’s Time to Start Growing

By Justin Tamburro, Senior Paid Search Strategist

With spring clean up completed, it’s time to jump into action with a growth plan. Now having several weeks of tracking and optimization behind us, seasonal opportunities for the summer should begin to stand out. There are several important KPIs that should be monitored that will indicate an opportunity, or a potential threat to your campaign.

Impressions – Monitoring the week over week change in impressions provides a great insight into how search behavior is changing. With summer around the corner, there are hundreds of keywords that will see a large spike in impressions. Identifying these keywords early in the game will keep you one step ahead of the competition, and leave more time available to test positions, ad copy, and landing pages. Reviewing data and trends from last year is also extremely valuable at helping predict these keywords.

Click through rate – An increase or decrease in click through rate will give insight into what your competition is doing. A large drop in click through rate could be an indication of either poor ad copy, or a competitor which is running a promotion. In both cases, there is opportunity to test messaging, as well as potential offers to entice more clicks. Position is also important to monitor as it will also help determine if new competition has entered the landscape.

Conversion rate – As with click through rates, an increase or decrease in conversion rate provides some clues as to what the competition is doing, and how your client is positioned. At this point, making sure that a strong message is carried through from the ad to landing page is critical. A drop in conversion rate can be explained by poor landing page design, or product selection. In the retail space, the amount and selection of inventory is critical to success. In other cases, users may be willing to click your ad, but are just as willing to click the back button and purchase from a competitor that is offering free shipping, or another type of promotional offer. As always, performing a competitive analysis on core keywords can go a long way.

With these three metrics, it’s possible to grow campaigns across thousands of keywords, and to provide indications as to where the opportunity lies in your paid search campaign. Keyword performance can change dramatically from one day to the next, and knowing where to look and what to look at is the most effective way to keep expanding your program. In accounts where it’s not possible to monitor every keyword, monitoring changes in these key metrics will help determine which segments need to be investigated further, and drive strategy towards which part of your campaign holds the most opportunity.