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The Dangers of DIY Search Engine Marketing

Anyone can do their own taxes.  But that doesn’t mean anyone should. Any person can sell their own house.  Rarely does this lead to better outcomes than if a realtor listed it for you, though.  In a similar fashion, Google has made the AdWords interface easy to understand and work with – even if you have no digital experience.  However, just because you can create your own AdWords campaign, doesn’t mean that you should.

The Numbers: (courtesy of our friends at SearchEngineLand.com)

Google turned off more than 524 million ads in 2014 for using “trick to click” tactics and promoting counterfeit goods, malware and spyware, in addition to other violations of advertising policies.  More than 33,000 merchants were banned from advertising on Google Shopping for ad policy violations.  214,000 advertisers were banned from the system completely.

So what does that mean? Quite simply, it’s easy to make mistakes when you run your own AdWords campaign – about 500 million reasons not to, in fact.  When you use a talented, high quality, and well-trained agency you save significant resources, including:

Time.

Typically, managing an in-house PPC campaign isn’t your principal job, so it takes time away from your primary roles and responsibilities.  Save your work time and stress by having a qualified agency manage your PPC.

Money.

I’ve seen both extremes on the spectrum – significantly overspending, above and beyond the budgeted allotment, and failing to run for weeks at a time. In both cases, the culprit is primarily inattention.  If you have someone else paying attention to the money – the pacing, the spend, the budget, the resource allocation, there is a much smaller window for mistakes to be made.

The Learning Curve.

While the Google AdWords interface is pretty easy to navigate, without training, it can be confusing to go between ad groups, keywords, negative keywords, and advanced bid settings, not to mention conversion tracking, search query reports, and automated bidding.  These settings and even more advanced variations are highly effective and are meant to be used on your campaigns.  If you don’t know how to use them, or if it isn’t prudent for you to spend the time learning how to use them, it might be time to call in an expert.

Punishment.

As mentioned above, Google is not above punishing offenders.  You will get caught if you try to game the system or break the rules. You may not even know you’re breaking rules (especially in the tricky Google Shopping categories), but it is possible and it is best to let the experts do what they do best to keep you in the Big G’s good graces.  When you get banned, you can be banned forever.

There are many other reasons it makes sense to look to an experienced PPC agency for your search engine marketing needs.  Frankly, it can be really costly if you fall into the category of one of Google’s offenders and more difficult to escape.  If you have questions about your PPC management, have our team conduct an audit of your account to see what we can do to improve your results.