PPC Basics: Part 3. Account and Campaign Settings Melissa Mackey , gyro - May 3, 2011

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In this installment of Pay Per Click Basics,we'll discuss an often-overlooked yet critical step in launching a PPCcampaign: how to set up your account and fine-tune your campaign settings.

While setting up a PPC campaign is not difficult,there are some settings that can affect your results, so it's important to beaware of them.

Billing and Currency Settings

One of the first things you'll be asked to do in settingup a PPC account is to choose a billing method. Google AdWords generally uses credit card billing, so make sure you have acredit card with a credit limit that's high enough to cover your anticipatedPPC budget. A lot of advertisers have had their ads turned off when theircredit card hits its limit, so be aware of this pitfall.

AdWords advertisers can choose whether to pay for clicksin advance (prepay) or after clicks have occurred (postpay). I generallyrecommend postpay: it's easy -- and it's nice not to pay in advance for your adtraffic! Before you choose, however, read the documentation for each method foryour country.

Microsoft adCenter offers the additional option of using PayPay for PPC billing.

Both adCenter and AdWords allow advertisers to choosewhich currency they want to be billed in: US dollar, Canadian dollar, Euro,etc. While this may seem like an obvious choice, it's important, because once you choose, it'sdifficult (if not impossible) to change. I know this from experience, and itwas no fun to have to convert currency to reconcile credit card bills everymonth!

Account Time Zone

Time Zone is another setting that seems obvious, but can't bechanged once it's set, so it's important to choose carefully. Normally, you'll just pick the time zone in which you're located; but sometimes adagencies or people managing PPC for others may choose the client's time zonerather than their own.

You may be wondering why time zones even matter. Yourchosen time zone determines the cutoff from one day to the next in your accountstatistics. For example, if you're looking at "Yesterday," you'll want to makesure that Yesterday started at 12:01 a.m. It may seem like a small detail, butit can make a big difference, especially for high-traffic PPC campaigns.

Ad Distribution - Geography

Geographical location is an important campaign setting to check longbefore you actually launch a PPC campaign, because the default setting inAdWords is "All Countries and Territories."

There's a good chance that your business doesn't serveall countries. Maybe you only ship goods within the US. Or maybe you'll shipto Europe, but not Asia due to costs and other concerns. Serving ads tocountries you can't sell to, therefore, is a waste of money.

Even if your business is global and serves all countries,it's not ideal to target all countries in the same campaign. At a minimum,it's important to create campaigns along language lines: all English-speakingcountries in one campaign, French-speaking countries in another, etc. Searcherbehavior varies widely by language, and campaign performance will vary as well, so it's important to have separate campaigns that you can optimize and adjustaccordingly.

Campaign Language

You probably know that Google, Yahoo, and Bing all havesearch engines in many languages, and that you can search in a language otherthan the native tongue spoken in the country in which you're located. For instance, you could be on vacation in Italy, but can still conduct searches inEnglish. If you do this, you may notice that some ads are in Italian andsome are in English.

As with Countries, the default target language setting is"All Languages." The problem is, it's impossible to write ad copy in everypossible language (unless you're a linguistic genius). So if you don't adjustthis setting, your English (or Spanish or Italian) ads will show up forsearchers who have set their default search language to French (or Russian or Klingon).

While some searchers may understand more than onelanguage, it's best to create separate campaigns for each language and countrycombination; ideally, your PPC campaign keywords and ad copy will reflect thevarious languages as well. While it's more work in the beginning, it will payoff with superior results.

Daily Campaign Budget

Both AdWords and adCenter allow PPC advertisers to set adaily campaign budget. You may be tempted to set your budget very lowinitially, to be conservative. While you should never set your budget higherthan you're comfortable with, setting it too low will result in almost no traffic.

Say you onlywant to spend about $100 per month on PPC. This equals about $3-4 per day,right? And let's say your maximum cost per click is set at $1. It's easy tosee that a daily budget of $4 will only generate 4 clicks at $1 per click.

I recommend setting your daily budget to at least $15 to make sure you get enough clicks to determine whether your PPC campaign is working.

Ad Distribution

If you're new to PPC, you may not be aware that PPC adscan appear not only on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, but onother search partner sites like AOL and Earthlink, and also display networksites like news and blogs. Advertisers can choose to have their ads appear onjust the search engines, on search engines plus search partners, or search plussearch partners plus display. The default setting in both AdWords and adCenteris search engines plus search partners, so it's important to be aware that yourAdWords ads won't just run on Google.com, but also on other non-Google sites.

The ad distribution setting also governs what type ofdevice your ads will appear on. Ads can appear on both desktop computers andmobile devices, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones, and other devices witha mobile browser. The default is "all devices," but consider this carefullybefore accepting that setting. Do you have a mobile version of your website? If not, the people clicking on your ads may not have the best experience onyour site.

Also, mobile visitors often have very different goals inmind when performing a search. Have you ever tried to make an e-commercepurchase from your mobile phone? It's not the easiest thing to do. The bestpractice is to have separate campaigns for mobile devices that address theparticular needs of mobile users.

Ad Rotation

Ad Rotation is a frequently-overlooked setting that candramatically affect the results of PPC ad tests. It's overlooked becauseAdWords essentially hides it. To view the different ad rotation options,you'll need to click on the link indicated below:

From there, you'll see that "Optimize for clicks" is thedefault. Google will automatically start showing the ad with the best click-through rate more often and other ads less often.

This is not a best practice for testing! Often, thead with the most clicks is not the ad with the most conversions -- and you won'tknow that with any significance unless each ad gets an equal amount ofimpressions.

To change this setting, click "Edit;" and then selectRotate:

Although Google warns against this setting, use itanyway. It's important to give each ad variation an equal chance to perform,and you'll need to use the "Rotate" setting to achieve that.

By taking time to incorporate these best practices forsetting up your account and campaign, you'll be ready to get the best possibleresults from your PPC campaign.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

Melissa Mackey is Search Supervisor at gyro, the largest independent B2B agency in the world. She also blogs at Searching Beyond the Paid, where she writes on the topics of pay-per-click marketing and other aspects of search engine marketing.