The first step to getting your PPC campaigns setup is to actually setup a budget.  It is important to setup a good size budget with each of the big 3 search engines.  It is also important to note that your budget is a maximum so when the budget is reached all advertising will be halted so it is far better to have as big budget.  In the ideal situation your budget would never be reached because if it is reached that means your ads are offline, possible quality clicks are unavailable and people searching for your website will be unable to find it.

Next you have the opportunity to set bidding options meaning automatic or manual.  Most of the time you will want to select manual because you will be changing your bids later.  Automatic will run with the goal of getting the most clicks possible where as manual you will be able to control with the goal of getting the most sales possible.  Automatic is generally for someone that is interested in setting it up and never optimizing their campaign again.  Note – most automatic PPC bidders don’t make money.

After setting up your campaign it is time to add all keywords into your campaigns start with the first ad group and add the keywords for that ad group and keep doing so until you have added all ad groups.  Having more ad groups is better than having less because each ad group will have its own set of advertisements.  Match type is extremely important and there is a lot of information to know about it so we have dedicated the next series completely to match types.

Match type is extremely important and this next series is defiantly worth your time reading if correctly understood you will prevent future money loss and PPC failure..

Related Articles:

• Dominating PPC 101 – ad tracking (part 7 of 8 series)
• Dominating PPC 101 – increase conversions (part 6 of 8 series)