Welcome to PPC Myths vs. Reality, a series with the goal of equipping our readers and our YouTube subscribers with tested advice for running successful PPC campaigns.
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Today we’re going to learn how to answer the question we get all the time: How long will it take to see results from PPC?
Knowing how to answer this question reduces your frustration, decreases wasted spend, and ultimately increases your revenue. To answer this question, we’re going to explain the concept of Keyword Testing.
Table of Contents
What is Keyword Testing in PPC and Why Should You Care?
Keyword testing in PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is essential for ensuring that your ads are seen by the right audience.
Essentially, it’s the process of experimenting with different keywords to identify which ones lead to the best results for your business. This means testing keyword variations—broad match, phrase match, or exact match—to find out which delivers the most relevant clicks, conversions, or traffic at the best cost-per-click (CPC).
By performing keyword testing, you get a clear understanding of what works for your campaigns, and more importantly, what doesn’t.
Through strategies like A/B testing, bid adjustments, and adding negative keywords (to filter out unwanted traffic), you can reduce wasted spend and focus on keywords that truly drive results. This way, your campaigns will run more efficiently, saving you money while increasing your return on investment (ROI).
If you haven’t explored keyword testing yet, it’s definitely worth starting to take control of your ad performance and drive meaningful growth.
Video Transcription
One popular myth about paid traffic is that it has an immediate ROI. This just isn’t true. The only immediate thing about paid traffic is that you get immediate data – you’ll get information on clicks, CTR, and impressions right away, but that doesn’t mean you will have a positive ROI your first week. Here’s why.
Say you sell a blender.
Let’s See What The Keyword Testing Process Will Look Like.
Here are 6 keywords:
Which will do best?
We don’t know yet, and need to launch to get the data.
And here comes the question: How long will this take?
There are 2 big factors that influence this. The first is how big your budget is. Obviously a larger budget means more data faster – it’s easier to optimize an account spending $20k/mo. than $200/mo. The second is how popular these terms are.
You can see that some keywords relating to blenders are more popular than others. Will your terms get 20 or 200 searches per day?
So we’ve launched these keywords, and now we have our first round of cost, revenue, and ROAS data.
Some generated no revenue, some have a negative ROAS and some generated some really high ROAS. At the end of this first phase, we come out slightly positive, but nothing too exciting. Now what do we do? We optimize!
Based on the data we got back, we can recommend actions.
We’ll want to:
- reduce the bids on keywords with a negative ROAS
- block keywords that were irrelevant
- maintain mid level earners
- increase the bids on keywords that performed exceptionally well
After making these changes, we wait again for our second round of data.
This is the PPC keyword testing process. Realize that you don’t have a crystal ball to predict if a keyword will be profitable or not. You need to test, and you need to optimize.
The longer the account history, the more data available, and the more effective optimization is. This is one of the reasons it’s easier to optimize an account spending $20k/mo. than $200/mo.
To summarize, PPC data on clicks and impressions is immediate, but the testing to find your best keywords and ads does take time.
This is influenced by budget and popularity of terms. That’s why we have a minimum ad spend requirement of at least $3k/mo, and prefer accounts over $10k/mo – the more data we have available to optimize, the better and faster optimization can be. This is also why we have a money back guarantee after 60 days to increase ROAS or Net Revenue – because it allows some time for this testing feedback loop.
What’s your process with keyword testing? Are you working in multiple phases?
Let us know in the comments below. We hope you guys join us soon for the next PPC Myths vs. Reality video. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Search Scientists YouTube channel.
The Benefits of Keyword Testing in PPC
Keyword testing in PPC brings several key benefits that can significantly enhance your campaign performance. First and foremost, it allows you to optimize your ad spend by focusing on the most effective keywords. By identifying which keywords lead to the highest conversions and lowest cost-per-click (CPC), you can eliminate those that waste budget and don’t bring results.
Another major benefit is better targeting. Through testing, you can discover which keywords attract the most relevant audience, improving the quality of traffic to your website. This leads to more meaningful interactions and higher conversion rates.
Keyword testing also provides insights into customer behavior. You can learn how users search for your products or services, and adjust your strategy accordingly. This can help refine not only your PPC campaigns but also your overall marketing efforts.
Finally, testing keywords allows you to stay competitive. The digital landscape is constantly changing, and regularly testing keywords ensures that your campaigns remain relevant and continue to perform well over time.
In short, keyword testing helps you save money, target the right audience, gain valuable insights, and stay ahead of the competition.
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What Happens to Your Company If You Don’t Test Keywords in PPC?
If you skip keyword testing in your PPC campaigns, your company could face several challenges. First, you’ll likely waste a significant portion of your budget on ineffective keywords that don’t bring in conversions. Without testing, you won’t know which keywords are performing well, so you may end up paying for clicks that don’t turn into sales.
You’ll also miss out on reaching the right audience. Without testing, it’s harder to fine-tune your targeting, meaning your ads could be shown to people who aren’t interested in your product. This leads to lower quality traffic and fewer sales opportunities.
Additionally, without keyword testing, you’ll fall behind competitors who are actively optimizing their campaigns. They’ll be spending smarter and attracting more of your potential customers, leaving your ads less visible and less effective.
Finally, a lack of keyword testing means missing valuable insights into how customers search for your offerings. This could limit your ability to adapt to market changes, leaving your campaigns stagnant and underperforming over time.
In short, not testing could cost your company money, opportunities, and competitive advantage.
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