Receiving large volumes of PPC traffic at the start of a campaign is very useful, so that you can test out what areas work and what needs improving. However, unless your campaign has a very broad appeal (and an extremely large budget!) you will need to limit your campaign to receiving the most relevant traffic with the highest ROI. I’ll be looking at how reducing PPC traffic can actually have a positive effect on your campaigns performance. 1 Ditch the Content Network
In my experience of running PPC campaigns, I have yet to see a campaign benefit from running on The Content Network and feel it would be money better spent on Google Adwords. Although I’ve seen a handful of conversions, spend is high, conversions are not regular and the relevance of some of the content sites to our campaigns is doubtful.
2 The Right Keywords
It’s really important in PPC to only bid on keywords that are relevant to your product. For example, if your company sells only luxury and 5 star holidays in Majorca, sometimes it is tempting to add in keywords like “Majorca holidays” and “Majorca hotels”, just to increase traffic. However with destinations with mass appeal, such as Majorca, your adverts will be competing with those of the cheaper bucket-and-spade type holidays. Consumers are quite likely to ignore your adverts, as they are looking for a cheap deal, or will click on your advert and leave without making a purchase. Either way, this type of click will have a negative effect on your campaign metrics, increasing your spend, reducing your click through rate (CTR) and reducing your conversion rate. A better approach is only to bid on luxury and five star keywords, and to receive less traffic but more interested customers, who will be more likely to buy your product.
3 Negative Keywords
Before your turn on any PPC campaign you should always include a list of negative keywords, to reduce the chance of your advert being shown when you don’t want it. If your campaign advertises holidays in Turkey, but you do not have any offers in popular areas such as Marmaris, Bodrum or Istanbul, these would be good keywords to add as campaign negatives. Likewise if your holidays are in hotels and villas, but not apartments, this would be another term to add to block out customers who you do not have products for. It’s also a good idea to note down any odd keywords that pop up when you are carrying out your initial keyword research (e.g. weather, review and photos.) This approach is by no means foolproof, but if you are updating your list on a regular basis you can dramatically reduce your campaigns wasteful spend and improve CTR.
4 Bidding Down
Bidding your keywords down means your cost per click will be reduced but will also reduce your exposure. This can work in your favour, as often being highlighted in the top 3 in Google can mean that consumers click on your advert just because it’s highlighted, without actually reading your text. If your campaign converts regularly and cheaply at position 5, bidding up may not actually increase conversions, but will increase spend. It’s worth experimenting with your bidding strategy to find out the best position for your campaign.
5 Match Types
Including keywords with all match types will increase the opportunities for your advert to be triggered. However if you are bidding on very generic terms or keywords with high search volumes, it might be worth considering pausing broad match keywords or not using them in the first place. Broad match keywords tend to have a higher cost per click and can trigger your ad when someone types in a search that might not be relevant. For example broad match keywords like “Benidorm holiday” can trigger your ad when someone types in “flights to Benidorm”, “holidays in Spain” and even “chip shop Benidorm”. As you can see it is easy to end up receiving impressions and clicks that you don’t want, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the performance of individual keywords which might be spending without converting or receiving high numbers of impressions but few clicks (and having a negative effect on your CTR).
6 Non Converting Ad Groups
This follows on from point 5: If, after running your campaign for a couple of months, an Ad Group is receiving high volumes of traffic but is not converting, it might be worth pausing it. Even if the keywords are very targeted and the ad copy is good, there is no point running ads that just don’t make a profit.
7 Targeted Adverts
It’s essential for the consumer to be able to understand quickly and exactly what you are selling. If you are selling luxury villas in Italy, you need to make sure that your advert filters out people who want a cheap deal or a holiday at a hotel, by using luxury, 5 star, exclusive in both the title and description. Often customers only read the title to make a decision on what advert they will click on.
8 Geotargeting
Always make sure that you set your campaign to the country or region that is relevant to your product. (Google automatically sets campaigns to target the USA.) Google also offers advertisers to target as many or as few specific regions of a country as they want, so if you only offer your product in certain areas make sure you take advantage of this.
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8 Ways to Reduce your PPC Traffic for Better Results 
