When starting a PPC campaign, it’s essential to consider the main components beforehand, and the foundation of this process is the keywords. Keyword research involves listing all the potential search words and phrases that your potential customers may use to find your business on the internet. This brainstorming process entails identifying the most valuable and relevant keywords related to your products and services. You can start with a list of general keywords and then use tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner to generate more ideas. However, it’s crucial to remember that these general keywords alone may not be effective targets since your competitors are likely using them as well.

One smart ‘do’ is to put yourself in your target customer’s shoes and try to enrich your keywords with relevant adjectives – this will help you to be more specific and less competitive. To determine which keywords are the most valuable, plug them into a keyword research tool to obtain the latest statistics.

Equally important is creating a list of negative keywords. Negative keywords are those that you don’t want to target in your campaign, or that are not entirely relevant to what you have to offer right now. By excluding these keywords, you ensure that your ads only appear for relevant search queries and that potential customers are not disappointed when they visit your website.

For instance, if you’re a fashion boutique that only sells women’s clothes, you might want to exclude keywords like “spring shoe collection” or “men’s fashion.” This prevents people searching for these terms from clicking on your ads and resulting in wasted ad spend and decreased conversion rates.

To summarise, performing keyword research and creating a list of negative keywords are the first steps in optimising your PPC campaign. By identifying the most valuable and relevant keywords and excluding irrelevant ones, you can ensure that your ads are shown to the right audience and drive the most traffic to your website.