Giving PPC Keywords the Donald Trump Treatment

When it comes to optimising your PPC (Pay Per Click) keywords you need to be ruthless. Donald Trump ruthless. You've got to be able to look poor performing keywords straight in the eye and say "you're fired!"

Giving up on previously good performers or keywords that you initially thought would do well is hard. In fact, it's a discipline. It's one of the skills any serious PPC campaign manager executes routinely and what often sets them apart from amateur or part-time pay per click users.

Importance of Removing Failing Keywords

While you may be tempted to leave lesser performing keywords active in your PPC campaigns there are some very good reasons why you shouldn't:

• They can cause ads to appear lower than other people's ads.
• They will cause the ad's overall CTR (Click through Rate) to drop.
• They eventually degrade your Ad Group's history (a factor in determining ad rank).
• And obviously, they drive up your costs without delivering results.

Keep in mind that PPC ads, their keywords and the landing pages your ads link to are constantly being re-assessed. Pay per click advertising is a medium in a permanent state of flux. Your campaigns are being judged against user response at any given time so just because your campaigns were a booming success at one point in time it doesn't mean you can "set 'em and forget 'em".

Keyword Exceptions to Consider

Their are some exceptions when it comes to culling keywords. For example, you need to use keywords that fit into any of the following groups with some common sense:

• Seasonal keywords (Christmas, Easter, Mid-year sales etc.).
• Topical keywords (Words the media is using heavily, usually in short bursts).
• "Buzzwords" (Some keywords come and go in popularity depending on current events).

Keyword groups like these often contain words that will do very well at certain times and then be practically useless for the rest of the year. Google provides a tool that can help you research historical data with these type of keywords called Insights for Search.