Below I’ve listed 25 possible reasons why your PPC campaigns may be failing, or at least hurting. While some are light hearted, some are to be taken seriously. I’ve included links to blog posts from PPC Hero as well as other industry specific blogs to further assist you in achieving success for your PPC campaigns. There are many more reasons why your PPC campaigns may be failing other than this list, so by all means feel free to append to this list if you have any!
- You’re spending too much time adjusting keyword bids and not enough time on your ad text .
- Your competition is growing and getting smarter, you’re not.
- You’re landing page/website really needs updated.
- You don’t have enough keywords.
- You don’t have your keywords broken down into specific ad groups.
- You let the google and yahoo ad text writing tools write your ad text for you.
- You haven’t checked your account settings to make sure everything is set up correctly.
- You’re geo-targeting settings are either too narrow or too broad.
- You’re not focusing on your top 5 to 10 keywords per ad group.
- You don’t know what negative keywords are, and therefore don’t have any in your account.
- You don’t know the difference between meta keywords and long tail keywords.
- You’re not using Google Analytics (or some form of analytics).
- You’re not testing keyword match types.
- You don’t use dynamic keyword insertion in your ad text.
- You’re not using keyword suggestion tools frequently.
- You don’t have conversion tracking set up or turned on.
- You don’t read PPC industry blogs, oh wait, you’re reading this one!
- You have English ads pointing to your Spanish speaking landing page.
- You’re not doing what has worked in the past.
- You have failed the Google Adwords Professional Exam three times.
- You’re still running on the starter edition of google Adwords.
- You always take Google’s suggestions when it says, “Want to increase your traffic by 150%?”
- You don’t have daily budgets set in your accounts.
- You’re not thinking outside the box and advertising on shopping comparison search engines
- You’re spending time reading this blog when you should be working on your account!
