By Matthew Forrest | October 31, 2014

This week, Search Engine Journal (SEJ) published a blog post about the top four PPC mistakes that result in less than desirable leads. Here’s a brief summary of those four mistakes and tips on how to make sure your account doesn’t fall victim.

Mistake #1: Not Ditching Poor Performing Keywords

SEJ noted that reviewing your keywords is crucial to success. You do not want a prospect to click on an ad only to leave the page soon after because the landing page is irrelevant. Not only is this a poor experience for the prospect, but also leads to lower conversion rates, higher cost per click, and lower quality scores.

Mistake #2: Not Being Strategic About Spending Your Daily Budget

It doesn’t matter how good your landing page is if your ideal prospect won’t be directed to it. If you are maxing out your budget early on in the day, there is a clear gap between the amount of traffic you are attracting versus the amount of money you are willing to spend. If increasing budget is not an option, consider using a technique that distributes budget more evenly throughout the day.

Mistake #3: Your Ad Doesn’t Match Your Landing Page

Remember that time that you clicked on an ad and found yourself on a landing page that had nothing to do with what you were searching for? If you have you’ve experienced message mismatch. One way this can happen is if you are utilizing dynamic keyword insertion in your ads and are not fully aware of how your keywords could be inserted into your ads.

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As you can see in the screenshot above, sometimes there can be a bit of disconnect. Are you wasting money on message mismatch?

Mistake #4: Your Ads Send the Wrong Message

It’s important to be mindful of how you segment keywords. When grouping keywords, you must put yourself in searcher’s shoes and determine where they are in the buying cycle (awareness, information gathering, or ready to buy). When there is a mismatch between user intent and the keywords you are bidding on, your CTR will be low. Learn how to tailor your message based on user intent on unbounce.

Are you guilty of any of these offenses? Head over to Search Engine Journal to learn how to remedy these problems.