We’ve found that the buzz is true; turning off Google’s Search Network and running your campaign on Google search alone is the best way to go. A lot of the Search Network traffic (we’re not talking about Content Network, but Google’s affiliate search partners) doesn’t carry much value because a large majority of it comes from parked domains with a generic search box, spam directories and portals, and other low-content sites. Some accounts we’ve nearly run into the ground sharply avoid hitting the runway after we turn off Search Network, and then perform exceptionally well. It’s just one more tool in your PPC management arsenal, so don’t forget about it!

Google’s products are great, and we’re sure that they will eventually figure out a way to phase this horrible waste of marketing dollars that’s currently called Search Network out of the picture. But there’s no sense in you helping them (in an expensive and ineffective way) through the tranisition. If you can’t find enough traffic on Google search alone, then by all means set up separate campaigns with slightly less relevant keywords or on the Content Network, with a different bidding and ad strategy, but don’t use Search Network until they clean it up first.

Another common mistake amateur internet marketers can make is to use a shotgun approach when it comes to the different “streams” the search engines offer to advertise using. Remember that success using paid search not about how many people you can put your ads in front of. It is all about selectively targeting your markets in a systematic manner, only adding streams as you either require more traffic, or if the initial marketing effort doesn’t work. Sure, there may very well be useful traffic out there in the Google content network, but you’d be crazy to let the same ad campaign with the same text ads, bids, and budgets run on search and content networks simultaneously.

First start out by setting up a campaign that ONLY runs on the search engine itself. This traffic will be the highest quality you can find because you won’t get inquiries from people who found you on the cheesy search forms found on a lot of ‘parked’ domains, commercial spamming portals, etc. The way you do this in Adwords, for example, is to only opt into Google’s search. Not their search network, and certainly not their content network, which just places your ads next to often (but not guaranteed to be even half the time) relevant pages of content.

What you’ll find by using this systematic approach is that either you get:

1. Really great quality traffic (and plenty of it).
2. Great traffic but not enough to support your business model.
3. You get poor traffic.

Here’s the next step for each scenario:

1. If you get plenty of great quality traffic using only Google search, then congrats! Keep it up.. instead of thinking about traffic, focus instead on continuing to improve your clickthrough and conversion rates. And also about your response to those leads.

2. If you get great traffic, but not enough of it, then consider expanding your keyword list first. The Google keyword tool works great for that. Only after doing this should you set up a separate campaign to target the search network. And only the search network. Then try that for awhile. If you’re still not getting results, the last option is the content network. Again, you want to set up a separate campaign for that.

3. If you get poor quality traffic, then that could mean a lot of things. Either your landing page isn’t up to snuff, your ads are not serving high enough on the page, or your keywords aren’t set up right. Regardless of the problem, it’s not going to make things better by opting into search and content network.

Are you still directing all of your keywords and ad texts to either your site’s homepage or one of your site’s inner pages?

If you answered in the affirmative, then you are most likely finding yourself paying close to, if not, the premium click prices for your keywords and key phrases. If you haven’t realized by now, these pages are not the best places for your destination url’s to point to. The reason lies within the relevance and focus of these pages. Your landing page should be the most relevant and specific page associated with a certain ad group or even keyword or phrase.

For example, if you are a real estate agent and are selling properties in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Malibu, instead of having visitors directed to a page within your website that has information and/or properties about all three areas, you should rather have them led to a page that has information about just one of the communities. Even better would be to create a single marketing page (a.k.a landing page) that is just about one area. This will help to increase the quality score of your keywords and phrases, which will in turn lower your click prices, thus allowing you to spend more of your Paid Search Marketing budget or allocate it elsewhere.

Once you set up a unique and focused landing page for each Ad Group within your PPC campaign there are some simple things you can implement to optimize this page to help stretch your budget a little more. These are some very basic steps that anyone can install. For more advanced tips please check back for our follow-up post about Advanced Landing Page Optimization Tactics.

(1) Whatever the page is about (Malibu real estate, used books, iPods), make it very apparent that the visitor has come to the right place. Any and all reassurance of landing on the right page and not being led to an unrelated marketing ploy page will immediately increase your credibility. In addition, it will also help to increase the page’s quality score because when these pages are reviewed by actual people over at Google for instance (yeah, actual people review these pages) they will see that the page is completely relevant to the Ad Group and search terms utilized.

(2) Have as much relevant content on this landing page as possible, but keep it brief. This poses somewhat of a dilemma for most marketers because as they attempt to have as much unique, relevant content on their landing page as possible they are unintentionally scaring away visitors with a seemingly bottomless page of text. The search engines love to see this content, but you have to keep the visitor in mind at all times because they are ultimately the ones who these landing pages need to appeal to first and foremost. So, keep your content very concise, relevant, and unique and a happy medium will be met. Think of how you act when you come across a landing page. How much time do you spend on this page? 15-30 seconds? Does a page of text appeal to you? Are you really going to read all of the landing page text?

(3) Try to include the ad creative you used in your text ads on your landing page and make them very apparent. For example, if you advertised in your ad text:

Santa Monica Real Estate
Looking For Santa Monica Real Estate?
Register Once For Unlimited MLS Access

Make sure to include “Register Once For Unlimited MLS Access” on your landing page. This will again verify that the visitor has come to the right place and has not been led to a spamming site. In addition, it creates another call to action on the landing page, which is what is going to increase your page’s conversion rate.

(4) Keep the design of your landing page simple, and of course, aesthetically pleasing. Remember that you have to keep two people in mind; the visitors who see your landing page and the people who work for Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc that personally review your landing page. If the page is extremely busy with too many photos or cut up in numerous scattered tables, then most people are going to be immediately turned off. Once again, just ask yourself how you react to certain landing pages? Did the page catch your attention? Does the page keep your attention? Does it look professional and make you believe or want to provide your personal information?

There are many more things that can be done to optimize a landing page. In the sake of keeping our blog posts as concise as possible, we are going to follow up this post with successive additions so please check back with us in the coming weeks for more useful and free information.

The first mistake that people often make when setting up a Google Adwords or Yahoo Sponsored Search campaign for their business is that they don’t go after key phrases, instead targeting only single key words. If you sell websites for bands and then make the gaffe of bidding to show up for ‘websites’, you may quickly find out how to destroy your monthly budget in a couple of hours! The reason this can happen is that ‘websites’ applies to not only website designs of all types, including all industries that aren’t the music industry, it also applies to any use of ‘websites’ outside of website design. When you consider how many different ways ‘websites’ can be used as a search term, it’s easy to see how your campaign could receive several million impressions a day! Of course, you won’t see that many before your account is turned off from reaching it’s daily or monthly spend limit. Regardless, the quality of the traffic you receive from this term will be poor as well, since you’ll get a lot of clicks from people who aren’t looking to buy a website design for a band. So it’s clear to see how these kinds of low-quality, high-traffic terms have earned the name “bleeder terms.”

The best way to go is very conservatively at first, picking only phrases that describe your products/services in full detail. In case you’re wondering what PaidSearchPros would try out in this example, we’d go after key phrases like “band website design” or “music marketing” at first, ones that are very specific.