There are a number factors involved in having a successful PPC campaign. These include everything from keyword selection, bid management, and campaign setup to your destination website. This article will discuss five of the most important areas: Keywords, Ad Copy, Destination URL's, Organization, and Analysis.

1. Keywords:

Having a successful PPC campaign starts off with keywords. While your keyword líst will likely change and evolve over time, it is important to start with something that makes sense.

Base Keywords:

First you will want to start off with your base keywords. These are any words you feel are relevant to your site. You may not end up using all of these in your PPC campaign but they will act as a stepping stone to finding other related phrases. Let's say you own a camera shop. A few relevant keywords may include "digital camera" or "digital SLR".

Modifiers:

Use your base keywords and expand them with modifiers. Using the base examples above, you may want to use the camera resolution, or certain features as modifiers. You may even want to use words such as "discount" or "waterproof". This could expand your phrases to "waterproof digital camera" or "discount digital SLR".

Product brand names and model numbers are also valuable for paid search. Don't forget to target your important brands, such as "Canon digital cameras" or "Nikon D200 digital camera". Also don't forget about your location.

If you provide sales from a traditional brick and mortar store, or if your geographic location is important for your visitors be sure to include keyword targets with variations of your location like "Seattle digital cameras", or "Canon digital camera Seattle", etc. You may also want to use other surrounding areas. As in the Seattle example, Everett, Tacoma and Bellingham may be appropriate.

Do not rule out long tailed search phrases.

These are the phrases that contain multiple words and are often seldom searched. In many industries long tailed phrases are those that will provide you a relatively low cost per clíck and a very targeted visitor.

"Canon digital rebel XTi" or "Canon digital rebel XTi Seattle" may be appropriate long tailed phrases for a camera shop. While these phrases will not likely draw a lot of traffic, if you send searchers using this phrase to a page about this camera, the likelihood of a conversion will go up considerably.

Negatives:

Don't forget about negative keywords, of which "free" is probably the most common negative keyword used. Using the camera shop example, you may also want to use brand names for cameras that you do not carry. If you don't sell Casio, or Sony, using these as negative phrases will help cut some unqualified traffic.

The same goes for pricing. If your products are more expensive than most, you may want to use "discount", "cheap", & "affordable" as negative words as well.

Eliminating:

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