What do you do when your SEM campaign is not delivering the results you intended? You were hoping for more leads or conversions, yet it seems the campaign is spending its budget but not delivering a return on all that investment.

It's time for campaign optimization—when you determine what needs to be done to help your ailing campaign.

You can begin by reviewing the various elements of your campaign, and then take steps that combat the downward spiral and give your campaign the lift it needs to perform.

Nine Elements to Review or Modify

1. Keywords

Keywords are the heart and lifeblood of a campaign. If your campaign is not driving the intended traffic, one of the first places to look is your keywords.

Don't waste money on nonconverting keywords. Pause underperforming keywords or keywords with a low click-through rate (CTR). Doing so will allow you to allocate your budget to better-performing keywords.

The right keywords can make a campaign run efficiently and reduce cost per click (CPC).

2. Match Type

If your keywords have a low CTR and they are delivering irrelevant traffic, you may want to use a more restrictive match type.

Although broad match and broad match modifier match types have their place and can deliver additional traffic, a more restrictive match type, such as phrase or exact, can help to reduce irrelevant traffic and deliver more qualified leads.

3. Search Query Report

You should regularly review the search query report, which shows what keywords or phrases searchers are actually using to find your ads. Both Bing and Google provide this report.

The search query report can help you determine which negative keywords to add to your campaign. You can also mine the report to determine what new keywords you may want to add.

Once you have those new keywords, you may also want to create ad groups targeting those keywords.

4. Targeting

Whatever your business, you have to make sure you are targeting the correct audience. The beauty of SEM is that you can determine precisely what geographic areas you want to target. If you are not getting the leads you want, review your targeting.

When you initially created your campaign, you may have set the targeting too wide or you may have created a radius too small, and so you are not getting the traffic you intended.


  Example of radius targeting

5. Campaign Structure

When structuring your campaign, follow the advice both Bing and Google give on their help sites:

  • Bing instructs you to create tightly themed ad groups.
  • Google suggests you use your website as a guide when planning your campaign, which of course assumes the website has a good structure.

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How to Kick Your SEM Campaign Into High Gear

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce Gibbs is a manager of SEM for YP, a multibillion-dollar business operating the largest US local ad platform.

LinkedIn: Bruce Gibbs