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Using pay-per-click - especially Google - is becoming harder and optimisation of your adverts is central to keeping this manageable for a small business.

Costs for keywords are rising exponentially and although it is easy to blame Google, Webmasters need to be looking at themselves and what they can do. The title of this post came from an article on Search Engine Land about Adwords Quality Score, a pain in many people’s side at the moment, although I see it as a massive opportunity.

Simply, my view is this. Any company can throw money at advertising if they have spare cash (and many do). But, Google (and maybe I am being näive here) want to offer their searchers quality results, whether in their natural listings or with their advertising, so naturally they have started taking the landing page of the advert into consideration - the page people get to when they click on the advert.

Why should they care? What’s it got to do with them?

Well if their paid search results simply went to the highest bidder, it’s not necessarily in the interest of the person doing the search. If that person feels they aren’t getting good results they may go somewhere else to search and Google can’t let that happen. Searchers make Google successful not necessarily the advertisers.

The best way to remedy (or try to control) your Adword costs therefore is:

1. Create specific adverts for specific landing pages - if you are selling products or services break it down and send the advert off to the right page. This also requires specific keywords for each advert as well. Your Quality Score Index will mean your advert costs should come down per click. If you Adwords account has only one advert in - you are doing something wrong.
2. The first word of Quality Score Index is “Quality” - add some to your landing page. You’d be amazed how many people don’t see why they should.
3. Refine your “keywords”. Don’t go after the obvious “loose” keywords. Get specific and use phrase, exact and negative keywords in your campaigns. You may get less click-throughs but they should be more likely to take action when they get there.

Go on - take control today.