Remember when you were a kid and your mother told you not to touch something? To you that was an invitation to do just that. And when you did, there were consequences for your actions. Well, online advertisements come with that ‘hands off’ caveat as well. Today, when you hire an agency to help you achieve your online business goals, for optimal results it is important to let them direct your customized Pay Per Click, Remarketing, or Social Media campaigns. Here’s why.
To begin, let’s refresh your memory with some Ad Placement 101. Paid ads appear on Search Results pages that are created when someone types a specific keyword into a browser such as Google, or Bing. If your ad appears and where your ad appears will be due to a widely varying number of factors including:
- The keyword associated with the ad- (i.e. the keywords you are targeting, keywords in your ad copy, keywords on your landing page, location, time of day, device being used to access the internet, and many more). These factors or a combination of these factors will determine ad placement either on top or below the organic results.
- On the Search Results pages Organic results and Paid ads are relegated to different parts of the page.
- There is NO guarantee for ad placement. That is because there are hundreds of different factors and variables that will impact where your ad is shown in every single auction.
Did you know? Continuously searching ”your keywords” will adversely affect their page position. Why? Google/Bing thinks the ad is not relevant to you because you are not clicking on it. And there are many reasons why you should not be. Read on.
The Downside of Searching Your Own Keywords:
- Click-throughs incur charges. Why increase your bid spend when there is no possibility for a conversion?
- If you click on an ad link and then back out it is recorded as a bounce. High bounce rates tell Google that your ad isn’t relevant or interesting. This will impact ad placement if you continue to search your keywords.
- Searching and not clicking-through is also detrimental to your ad and your ad budget. This activity also inflates impressions and can skew data. It is another way Google gauges if your ad is relevant or interesting.
- The Digital Marketers who manage your Paid campaigns use techniques to gauge the Campaign overall effectiveness. Searching for your own keywords skews their A/B testing initiative and can negatively affect the ad’s outcome if an ad is tweaked based on impressions or click-throughs that were generated by the client and not by actual prospects.
- Any search you perform will only reveal a snapshot not the big picture. Your Pay-Per-Click, Remarketing, or Social Media campaign manager can readily tell you how your initiatives are doing, provide a dashboard, and regular reporting and analysis.
- The cumulative effect of searching for your own ads is this: fewer impressions mean fewer prospects. Are you willing to give up potential conversions and unwittingly sabotage your Campaign? Here’s what to do instead:
When you partner with Active Web Group, you’ll never be in the dark and feel that you have to take matters into your own hands. We provide highly accurate metrics tracking and provide an insightful monthly or quarterly report that highlights gains, makes note of any deficiencies, outlines our next steps, and provides opportunities for increased site performance. For more information, please contact our team at (800) 978-3417.
