PPC Campaign Performance & Domain Names

PPC Campaign Performance & Domain Names

Patrick Wong | 7/05/2009

Relevancy is regarded as a component of quality which in then improves the user browsing experience, an objective that all the major search engines strive to uphold. I mean let’s face it, if you order a bigmac at maccas and receive a cheeseburger instead you wouldn’t be impressed and it reflects badly on the service provider.

A well known fact among search engine marketers is that the keywords that you bid on must relate to the content found within the landing page in order to perform well. But how do different domain names influence performance in pay per click search campaigns (PPC).

A study was conducted by Memorable Domains to shed some light on domain importance when running PPC campaigns on Google Adwords

The testing was conducted with three domain names pointing a landing page about Electric Bicycles

• Electricbicycles.co.uk (exact keyword within domain)
• Yourbikes.co.uk (related keyword within domain)
• Inahurry.co.uk (no related keyword within domain)

Two ad groups where then created, one where target keywords were geared towards “electric bicycle” terms and the other geared towards “electric bike” related terms

Within each ad group three variations of the same add were set to run on even rotation with only the display URL and landing pages listed above being the difference.

Essentially the test was set up so that the three domains were running under the same conditions.

The results that came from the 13 day campaign lifespan yielded better results for electricbicycles.co.uk targeted ads from the two ad groups.

The ad in group 1 featuring the electricbicycles.co.uk domain made more impressions and received more clicks as well as producing higher click through rate (CTR)

The electricbicycles.co.uk ad in group 2 again made more impressions, received more clicks and had a higher CTR but the CTR for the yourbikes.co.uk ad was only slightly lower.

In summary it shows that

1. Target keywords found within the landing page domain name performed the best (electric bicycle keywords and electricbicycles.co.uk ad in group 1)
2. Related keywords found within the landing page domain name also performs well (electric bike keywords with electricbicycles.co.uk and yourbikes.co.uk ads in group 2)
3. Having an out tray labeled bigmacs will sell more bigmacs

For more details in how Memorable Domains conducted its testing and conclusions visit www.memorabledomains.co.uk/ppc-generic-domains.html

tags: SEM ,  Online Marketing ,  Web Strategy