Are Your Keywords Made of Rubber?

There are people who click on your search engine ads who will never be your customers. They will never buy your products or services, never subscribe to your publications, and never provide their contact information. Never. Ever.These people never were your prospects but you’re paying for each click just the same. Why? Probably because you’re not measuring your keyword bounce rate.

The whole point of advertising is to generate qualified leads. People who click your ads—and cost you money—but never leave the landing page may never have been a qualified lead. They may have no interest in whatever it is you’re offering. They’re not your customer, they’re a wasted expense. They’re a bounce.

If you’re not attending to your bounce rate and continually working to drive it down, you’re paying more for your PPC traffic than you should.

A bounce is defined in web analytics as a session with a single page view. They may bounce hard within a few seconds of their arrival like a bad check or an India rubber ball. They may bounce more slowly. You’ll never know how long they lingered on the landing page because web analytics measure session duration as the time between the browser’s request for the first page and the last. With a bounce, the first page is the last.

To be honest, some of those bounces might be because your content wasn’t very compelling, your web page lacked authority, or your offer was irrelevant. Whatever the reason, a bounce costs you money, and a lot of bounces can cost you a lot of money. Of course, you might get a second chance, they might return sometime in the future and do whatever it is you hoped they’d do the first time, but if you’re not paying attention to PPC bounce rate, you’re probably not segmenting your return traffic by search engine and keyword referrer, either. The lesson learned? Reduce your bounce rate.

Then there’s those people who will never be your customers. Never. Ever. Those are the people you want to prevent clicking on your ads in the first place.

There’s a continuum of actions you can take to reduce your PPC bounce rate. At one end of the continuum, test changes to your landing page, changes in copy and layout, changes in imagery and color. At the other end, target your PPC ads to a more qualified audience.

Eventually you’ll want to run A/B split testing on your landing page-changing a single item on the page and splitting traffic between the original and modified page to measure changes in bounce rate-but initially all you want to do is move people off the landing page. Make a change, see if your bounce rate declines. If it declines, retain the change and make another; if it increases, revert to the previous version and make a different change. It’s more time consuming and less exact than A/B split testing but it requires less expertise to execute.

And then there’s those people who will never be your customers. Never. Ever. Those are the people you want to prevent clicking on your ads in the first place. Qualify your PPC traffic by

1. Clearly stating your value proposition in your ad copy,
2. Use negative keywords to further qualify your traffic,
3. Boost your bid for those searchers with demographic characteristics that convert well for you.

For PPC advertising, bounce rate is a key performance indicator—a metric that’s clear and actionable. If you’re not attending to your bounce rate and continually working to drive it down, you’re paying more for your PPC traffic than you should.

Technorati Tags: Search engine advertising, bounce rates, PPC, analytics, KPI, key performance indicator, negative keywords, demographic targeting, Charles Thrasher