Four Aspects to Research When Conducting Competitor Analysis for PPC

Competitor analysis can provide in-depth information on any company’s PPC campaign on Google Adwords. In fact competitor analysis is recommended as the first step before you start your own pay per click advertisements to ensure you have the best optimized campaign right from the beginning.

While competitor analysis does provide a variety of information, there are four aspects that you need to research and pay close attention to when analysing data.

1) Keywords: The main aspect of any competitor analysis tool is keyword research. You need to know the exact keywords and key phrases being used by your competitors. If you are smart about choosing your competitors to research, the keyword list itself is completely worth the investment and effort. With the keyword list, you will know exactly which keywords are being searched and which keywords get the highest clicks. If you are researching multiple competitors, you can compare the keyword list to check which ones are common and use those for your own campaign.

2) Cost Per Click: Once you have the keyword list, the next aspect to check is the cost per click. Note this is not just the overall bid but the cost for each individual keyword. You will notice each of your competitors will have a slightly different bid for keywords. Analyse the CPC so that you can add keywords and set bids as per your own budget.

Not everyone can add all keywords they find. You need to pick the keywords that you feel will give the best return on investment as per your limited budget.

3) Ad Text: The third most important aspect to check during competitor analysis is the ad text being used for each campaign. Note that advertisers will have multiple ads running. Using your competitor research tool, you can get the text for all ads running along with the number of clicks and total cost.

Check which ads are getting more clicks and use similar text without actually copying the ad completely. Going through ad text is a great way to write your own content as then you have a fair idea on what is appealing to your target audience.

4) Landing Page URL: This is often ignored during competitor analysis but plays an important role in the overall success of your PPC campaign. You need to check where each keyword or ad takes the visitor. Go through the landing page URL of your competitors and check how they are selling to their customers. Remember ultimately it is your landing page that will lead to a conversion or sale. Your landing page must be such that it grabs attention of the user and forces them to take an action as quickly as possible.

Going through multiple landing pages of each of your customers will give you an idea of how to develop your own sales page.

Overall getting your competitor’s keywords, cost per click, ad text and landing page will give you an edge as you can outbid them on the best performing keywords and ignore the ones that are not likely to get a good return on investment.