Note to all PPC advertisers: Don’t forget to delete keywords!

I was encouraged to see the Google Inside Adwords Blog putting up a post that included strategy information for deleting keywords. Check it out if you get a minute. I’m a firm believer in deleting keywords that are priced too high or don’t convert with click-throughs well. In the article Stephanie Lim from the Optimization team says:

“If you are CTR focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords with high impression counts but low numbers of clickthroughs. These keywords may be too general or not relevant enough and are garnering many impressions but very few clicks. If you are conversion focused, you may want to identify and delete keywords that garner high costs but very few conversions. These keywords may be too specific and accrue very few impressions over a long period of time because very few people are searching on them.”

This is also a way for small business marketers not to toss away money at poorly performing keywords. My recommendation is to give all your keywords a try and make sure your ads are helping them, but don’t marry yourself to keywords. I’ve also fallen into the trap of wanting a keyword to work so I keep trying to make it work. I’ve stopped that bad trend and you should too!

Good article. There are additional tips apart from deleting keywords that make the article a good read.

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