So now you are all set up. You seem to have your campaign set up for the next 6 months with all the keyword research done and the best keywords in place. However do not relax yet, now it is time to maintain your campaign. This is a critical part of PPC advertising that many people forget about.

Of course it would be good if your campaign could just take care of itself without your help for the next 6 months, but this is not going to happen. Maintenance of your campaign is very important. There are several ways for you to do this.

AdWords offers tools that’ll help you calculate what percentage of traffic an ad brings in. You can use tools provided by your web host to find out which ads brought in traffic that actually led to sales. Remember – no web spider ever bought a product.

So why go through this extra hassle? This is because, if your ad is not performing well, it is costing you money, and will not bring in profits. In other words you are paying for useless traffic. Even if no sales are made you will still be paying for each click.

Luckily you can rectify the matter and take steps to reverse a poor performing ad. If you have done your work right your ad will have a position within the first 5-10 pages of search results. If positioning is good then you should address the keywords for the ad.

Initially most people think of popular keywords before they consider anything else. They feel that they will drive lots of traffic to their website. This is true but unfortunately this will not result in sales, because it is untargeted. Searchers use these popular keywords when they first start searching but these keywords do not usually take them to where they want to go.

That means that people using these keywords are often not sure what they’re looking for. They’ll look at a lot of sites before they buy. Good keywords are general enough to be searched for by someone who’s not sure what they’re looking for, but specific enough to reach the audience that will buy your product or service.

You should think about searching with your own keywords. The results may surprise you, as you view other sites that are using the same keyword. Be sure to check out the top 10 competitors in the search results. Look at their sites carefully and see if these are the right sites for your market. If they do not match your site you may have to adjust your keywords. Bear in mind if your keyword is wrong you can be losing money.

Careful monitoring of your results will tell you which keywords to keep and which ones to replace. Choose the right words, and you’ll end up with productive ads that bring in real, useful traffic. Paying close attention to your pay per click campaign is an important part of being successful and making a profit.