Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google Ads and other platforms can help drive targeted traffic to your site. But there are certain PPC strategies search engines may not approve of, even if they are effective. Here are some of the PPC “secrets” search engines like Google hope you don’t discover.
Aggressive Branded Bidding
You can set up PPC campaigns specifically targeting your branded keywords, then aggressively outbid competitors. This causes your own ads to appear above organic results for searches on your brand name. Since branded terms convert at high rates, you profit while keeping competitors’ ads away.
Negative Match Keywords
Adding negative match keywords blocks your PPC ads from showing for irrelevant queries that waste budget. For example, “tennis shoes -Nike” will display your tennis shoe ads for all searches without Nike. This level of control improves PPC precision, but reduces paid search volumes for engines.
Location Targeting
Precise location targeting like zip code or city radius bidding improves conversion rates due to relevance. But search engines earn less from narrowly targeted local ads compared to broad national campaigns.
Dayparting Campaigns
Setting different bids and budgets for days of week and times of day when conversions are highest optimizes PPC. You can spend less during times with poor conversion rates. Searchers see more relevant ads but engines lose margin outside peak periods.
IP Address Targeting
Targeting specific IP address ranges where your best customers originate from improves PPC performance. But this reduces the reach and eligible inventory available to search engines. They’d rather not have you isolate only the highest value traffic sources.
In the end, search engines are primarily concerned with optimizing paid search to deliver the highest revenues. Savvy advertisers find ways to maximize ROI from PPC campaigns using strategic targeting and bidding tactics. This sometimes conflicts with the broad exposure and spend search engines aim for. But smart PPC ultimately benefits users, advertisers and search engines alike.