5 Search Advertising Mistakes to Avoid in 2017

Guest Contributor
Mon, 19 Dec 2016 15:12:48 +0000
Web, ad campaign, content marketing, mobile traffic, search, search advertising

Search has always been at the heart of internet marketing activities for online advertisers. The increasing popularity of search advertisement is due to one simple reason – it works.

It is now regarded as one of the best ways to get consistent traffic from relevant search results. If you haven’t been using search advertisements to drive targeted traffic to your website, you are simply not doing enough to promote your business in the world of internet.

When it comes to search advertisement, little things can make a lot of difference. While a well-planned search advertisement can provide you the desired exposure on search engine results, a poorly managed one can easily derail your marketing campaign. It requires lots of effort to run a search advertising campaign successfully. The content of your advertisement, the targeted keywords, the landing page design – everything has to be optimized to perfection in order to maximize the ROI from your search advertising campaigns.

To help you master the art of search advertising, we are listing down 5 deadly mistakes that you should try to avoid at all costs.

1. Targeting Too Many Keywords

Your top priority should be to ensure that your advertisements are relevant to the landing page and its associated keywords. Too many keywords grouped together into a single advertisement can lower your quality score. As a result, you’ll end up paying more for each click you receive. It will not only result in irrelevant display of advertisements, but also make your CTR go down drastically. For better targeting, it’s important that your chosen keywords are tightly grouped together and are limited in quantity. For best results, it is recommended to stick to a set of just 5-10 keywords to start with.

2. Not Optimizing Your Landing Page

You should ideally create a unique landing page for each search advertisement. Every visitor you get through the advertisement should be directed to an elegantly designed landing page that is optimized for conversion. If you are not optimizing your landing pages, you are likely to experience higher bounce rates, missed conversion opportunities and unnecessary ad expenses.

SEO-friendly URL is another aspect you should try out. If you include the primary keyword in the URL of your landing page, your ads are likely to get better exposure. It’s a proven practice to highlight your advertisement among the group of ads from your competitors.

3. Missing Call to Action

What’s the purpose behind investing in search advertising? To drive user engagement, isn’t it?

That’s why it’s crucial to have a clear call to action link in your ad copy. You want the users to click on your ads; and nothing can pursue the users better than a fitting call to action button. Try to be creative and catchy with your CTA text. It will certainly help in improving your click-through rate.

4. Ignoring Mobile Users

According to Google, the number of mobile searches have now overtaken desktop searches. With the steady increase in the number of people browsing internet via smartphones and tablets, you can no more ignore the mobile users.

To tap in the huge potential of mobile traffic, businesses are increasingly making their websites mobile-friendly. If your website is not responsive, it won’t display correctly on mobile devices. This is likely to increase the bounce rate and weaken your conversion rate. Responsive design is now an important factor for both SEO and search advertising, where several businesses compete with one another for particular keywords. So it is essential for you to design responsive and mobile-friendly landing pages if you don’t want to lose ground to your business rivals

5. Ineffective Conversion Tracking

If you are running search advertising campaigns without any mechanism to track clicks and conversions, you are actually wasting your hard-earned money.

In the absence of a proper conversion tracking setup, you won’t be able to accurately monitor your campaign’s performance. Don’t be content with the number of clicks and impressions alone. You should also figure out what the users are doing once they land on your website. Analyze the conversions data carefully to identify the aspects that are performing well, and those which are not bringing you any positive results. It’s important to determine which clicks are converting into customers and optimize your marketing strategy accordingly. Taking the necessary steps to track the performance of your campaign is the only way to know if your campaigns are bringing any positive ROI for your business or not.

Conclusion:

Mistakes are a part of life. We all make mistakes, but the real winners are those who embrace failures and learn from them. It’s often an important step towards success. Avoiding these five disastrous mistakes that people usually make with search advertisements will help you optimize your campaign and drive your business towards the success route.

Leon Pagan is a blogger, geek and lover of all things related to business, technology and innovation. Leon is currently working as consultant writer for Broadband Search, a site that is super simple to use and great for finding the best internet and TV plans in your area.