Helen M. Overland

3 Key Strategies for Increasing Your PPC Conversion Rates

By: Helen M. Overland, June 6th, 2006


Do you wonder if you are really getting all you want out of your Pay-Per-Click campaigns? Are you throwing money at the search engines, perhaps seeing a good CTR (click through rate), but would like to see higher revenue?

Surprising as it may seem, there are very easy revenue-building strategies that you can use to improve your PPC conversion rates in a matter of hours. Even more surprising is just how many businesses are missing out on these simple yet important steps in their search engine campaigns.

1. Know, Don't Guess

If you haven't already, install an analytics package. More importantly, USE your analytics package. It is absolutely vital to your online growth that you know:

• what keywords are bringing people to your site
• what your bounce rate is on each page
• which landing pages result in conversions

Why do you need to know this information? First, you need to know which keywords are bringing people to your site - and that includes organic search, as well. This is also a great place to discover new key phrases and tail terms. Second, if you have a bounce rate over 50% - that is, half of the people who visit your site never click on a second page - you have a great opportunity for improvement. Finally, landing pages are key - there are great rewards to be gained by knowing what is happening on your landing pages. If you don't know for sure what your visitors are doing, you're flying blind.

Some of the better known analytics packages are www.webtrends.com, www.omniture.com, www.clicktracks.com, and www.conversionanalyst.com

2. Relevance is Everything

Once you have a customer click on your carefully targeted ad on, say, "quality widgets", the absolute worst thing you can do to yourself is to show them your home page. This visitor almost certainly isn't interested in who you are or any other products you offer. They just don't care about your company, your staff or your press releases. This customer is interested in quality widgets. Don't expect the visitor to click through your site to find your products! Most of them simply don't have the time or the patience. And if you haven't shown them any widgets yet, why should they?

Having a good landing page strategy is key to improving your conversion rates. Not only should your ad for "quality widgets" take the visitor DIRECTLY to a page on your site that talks about "quality widgets", but you should even try to include the ad text in the page. This will help reassure the visitor that they have arrived at the right place. Remember - there's a lot of spam pages out there, and visitors get frustrated and annoyed at being taken around and around the same link farm all the time. They want to know that you are not going to waste their valuable time. Let them know that your page is the right place to be - that you can take care of their needs here and now.

3. You Don't Know What You Know

Direct marketers have known for years that constant testing is the key to success. The same is even more true for internet marketing, which is still quite a young art. Did you know that sometimes something as simple as changing the colour of the checkout button can significantly increase your conversion rate? Try it, watch your conversions for a week, then change it up again. Keep a spreadsheet so you can KNOW what effect your changes are having. Does that button say "Buy Now" or "Add to Cart"? How do you know which one is better until you TEST them? This is truly how the secrets of converting your visitors will reveal themselves to you.

Using these powerful yet simple strategies, you too could be well on the way to successfully increasing your PPC conversion rates, and reaping your well-earned rewards. Good luck!


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