Forrester put out a great white paper entitled “The Best and Worst of Paid Search in 2009“. It is a good read, but mostly data-driven. The bottom line is simple, are you doing the 5 things that they did the entire study off of? See below:

1. Does the keyword appear in the paid search ad title and description? – This is a no-brainer but often overlooked. They are searching a particular keyword on purpose, make sure you deliver that keyword.

2. Does the ad copy “pre-qualify” clickers? You don’t want ad copy to totally distract visitors, however, you don’t want to falsey drive people into your website as you wont convert them. Try and be both compelling, but also, try and explain what it is you are going to offer them before they click.

3. Does the ad contain a compelling call to action? This is a no-brainer and often overlooked. Put a specific promo in your ad copy like “Free Shipping”, “Free Download”, etc.

4. Is the landing page content relevant to the keyword? This is another often overlooked issue. If someone typed in ‘Purple Widget’ are you selling a purple widget on your landing page? You better be!

5. Does the landing page employ Scenario Design practices to aid user experiences? Is the page usable? Does it have the call to actions necessary to convert a customer?

If you think of all the above items before launching a paid search campaign, and execute on them, your campaign is 300% more likely to be a successful one!

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