Keywords are, arguably, the most important piece of your pay per click (PPC) advertising strategy.
Choose the right keywords and you’ll reach the right people. You’ll get more impressions and clicks. You’ll get more purchases from the clicks you generate. And you’ll even spend less money in the long run, since you won’t be wasting money on bad matches or weak opportunities.
The problem is, choosing and controlling keywords in PPC advertising is challenging.
Yes, even for the pros.
There are so many keywords to choose from and so many different controls you can use to tinker with your campaign that it’s almost inevitable to make conversion mistakes – and if not outright mistakes, then inefficiencies that reduce your potential.
Fortunately, once you understand some of the most common and impactful keyword mistakes in PPC advertising, you can take caution to avoid them and optimize your campaign for the better.
These are some of the most common keyword mistakes in PPC advertising we see from clients, competitors, and other advertisers online.
Optimizing a PPC ad campaign is all about improving efficiency. It’s almost impossible to be efficient if you’re using too many keywords at once. On one hand, we understand the temptation to keep adding keywords; each new keyword is a new potential demographic segment and a new opportunity for your brand. But it’s usually better to keep your selection of keywords relatively narrow and focused.
There are a few main problems with using too many keywords. For starters, your attention is going to be split across too many different areas; instead of becoming a true expert on a small handful of keywords, you’ll end up knowing very little about the dozens you’re following. Additionally, you’ll be wasting money on keywords that are strictly underperforming your best options.
If you want to fix this problem, simply focus on a narrower range of keywords. Generally, you should only keep the keywords that are generating around 200 clicks or more – and filter out any keywords that seem to perform worse than your best ones (as well as ones that seem irrelevant).
At first glance, using broad match keywords seems like a no-brainer. With broad match turned on, your keywords are going to appear for a wide variety of different searches, including those that are synonymous with your main keyword and some types of related searches. That means your ad is going to appear to a wider range of people and earn more impressions.
However, using broad match keywords recklessly and without strategic focus is usually bad for your campaign. More isn’t always better in the world of PPC advertising; in fact, it’s usually worse. You’re better off targeting a small handful of people who are positioned to buy your product than targeting thousands of people who are practically irrelevant. This is one of the common keyword research mistakes that can drain your budget without delivering real results.
You can fix this in a few different ways. For example, you could stop leaning too heavily on broad match keywords and start focusing on phrase match and exact match keywords, which give you much more precise targeting options. This aligns better with search intent, ensuring your ads are shown to users who are genuinely interested in what you offer.
You can also use broad match more effectively with the use of modifiers, which allow you to control how your keywords are considered with respect to search engines and user searches. As examples, adding a + to a word will ensure it appears in every search – and including phrases in [brackets] will make sure the entire phrase is present in every search. Implementing these refinements is a crucial part of a strong SEO strategy and effective keyword research.
Ad groups exist to give you more insight and control over your PPC ad campaigns, so try to avoid misusing them by compiling keywords into bulky and unnecessarily large groups. If you put all your conceivable targeting options into one gigantic mass, you’ll have difficulty delineating the different elements of your strategy.
Instead, make sure each of your ad groups is laser-focused on a specific theme (such as a product or service you offer, a geographic location, etc.). The exact theme doesn’t matter much, as long as you’re using ad groups strategically.
Most newcomers to the PPC game are so focused on finding the perfect keywords to add to their campaign that they don’t realize how powerful negative keywords can be. In case you aren’t familiar with them, negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want to appear for a given search. You can use these to filter out specific types of people who may not be interested in what you’re selling – and save money in the process.
If you don’t use negative keywords at all, you’re probably missing out on your true potential in this field. For example, imagine you’re advertising a bakery and you’re placing ads for people who are searching for “chocolate chip cookies.” You want to appeal to people who might buy your chocolate chip cookies, but people who search for this phrase might be looking for recipes or instructions for how to make their own; you can filter out this traffic simply by adding negative keywords like “-recipe.”
There’s a certain point in most PPC ad campaigns when managers begin to feel confident in what they’re doing. Your ads are working period you’re getting clicks. You can claim the campaign is profitable. What do you do at this point?
Novices are typically tempted to keep things running exactly as they are, potentially indefinitely. After all, if it ain’t broke, you don’t fix it, right?
The logic here makes sense, to a degree, but if you go this route, you’ll be crippling your potential. You’ll miss out on all the experiments that could push your campaign further and all the little refinements that could make your campaign even more efficient. Instead of remaining complacent with decent results, you should always strive for better results. That doesn’t mean you have to change your entire campaign, but you should be allocating at least a portion of your budget to pushing for more.
What’s your ad conversion rate like? If this metric is disappointingly low, it could be an indication that your ads aren’t relevant for the keywords you’re choosing. This may sound like a simple and obvious problem, but it’s something that many advertisers run into.
Remember, the people searching for this keyword phrase are looking for something specific. If your ad isn’t carefully crafted to appeal to those people, it’s not going to get much interaction. Always make sure that your keywords and advertisements are very closely aligned.
When it comes to audience targeting, you have to think beyond mere demographics. You also have to think beyond simple product or service searches. If you want to add more power to your campaign, you need to think about your specific sales funnel and how searchers might fall into that sales funnel.
Different businesses and different industries model their sales funnels in unique ways, but usually, sales funnels follow a process similar to awareness > consideration > purchase. Targeting the right people at the right stage of the sales funnel could dramatically increase your results. Choosing specific phrases and including keyword modifiers targeted to people at the end of the sales funnel could greatly increase the number of people making purchases after clicking your ads. At the same time, targeting people earlier in the sales funnel could help you avoid some of the most prominent competition in your industry, saving you money while earning you customer loyalty.
The only wrong approach is to ignore the sales funnel in your strategy entirely.
Landing pages play a massive role in determining the success of your PPC campaign. No matter how well your ads perform or how much traffic do you generate, your campaign is going to fall flat if you aren’t able to convert your new visitors.
The critical flaw here for most PPC advertisers is a landing page that doesn’t match the ad or doesn’t match the keyword phrase. If you promise a special discount in your ad, that discount better be present on your landing page. If you’re advertising running shoes, don’t take your visitors to a landing page that features boots.
Obviously, you’ll also need to spend time optimizing this landing page so it’s as persuasive and perceptibly trustworthy as possible.
The bulk of your campaign is going to focus on product and service keywords, but if you totally neglect brand keywords, you’ll be sabotaging your own potential.
Many people ignore brand keywords entirely because they feel like these targeting options are practically irrelevant. After all, if a customer already knows about your brand, there’s no use trying to raise their brand awareness further. And there’s a good chance your brand website is already ranking at position one for brand keyword searches.
However, there are some good reasons to bid on your own brand keywords. Branded keywords have the potential to increase your account’s quality score. They almost guarantee your brand will be featured at the top of the search results page. You’ll generate more traffic to your website. And perhaps best of all, this serves as a competitive defense – so your worst competitors can’t try and dethrone you by targeting your branded keywords.
Targeting competitor brand keywords, eh? If you’ve never considered the option before, you’re certainly considering it now. Bidding on the branded keywords of a competitor can be a powerful, if cutthroat move. You can siphon traffic from a major competitor, increasing your traffic while dealing a blow to your peers simultaneously.
However, it’s reckless to approach this without an effective strategy. If your ads aren’t relevant to the people conducting these searches, you’re not going to generate clicks, and your quality score could go down. If you don’t have a plan to convert these prospects, you’ll end up wasting money trying to sabotage competitors rather than building your own business. And the worst part is, if you’re actively trying to sabotage your competitors, you could end up harming your brand reputation.
None of this means that you have to avoid targeting competitor brand keywords. It just means you need to have a carefully considered strategy in place for them.
We’ve covered 10 of the most common mistakes that people make with keywords in the PPC world, but this list is by no means comprehensive. There are many other strategic flaws and examples of poor decision-making that can negatively impact your campaign.
On top of that, the PPC ad world is always changing with new controls and features for advertisers, new competitors, and changing consumer attitudes. Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, which means what worked yesterday might not work today.
If you want to avoid all PPC ad mistakes (or at least as many as possible), you should follow these important golden rules:
Are you tired of PPC advertising mistakes bogging down your otherwise profitable campaign?
Do you need some extra guidance in targeting the best possible PPC keywords?
PPC.co is here for you. We’ve got the experts. We’ve got the experience. All you need to do is reach out and we’ll send you a free proposal. Contact us today!
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Launching an online course is easy once you’ve created your content. Filling your virtual classroom with motivated, paying learners is a little more challenging. Advertising strategies aren’t intuitive no matter how user-friendly a platform might be, and trying to guess at how to market your courses online can feel like you’re shouting into the void. But with a little knowledge and some expert PPC ad strategies, you can get your courses in front of people who are hungry to learn what you teach.
With precise targeting, a professional strategy, budget control, and regular tracking, a PPC ad campaign can transform your course into a thriving program. The key is knowing how to structure your ad campaigns for both clicks and hot leads that convert.
Unlike search engine optimization (SEO), which can take months to gain even a little traction, PPC provides you with immediate visibility right where your target users are hanging out. SEO is important but it’s a long-term game that should be executed alongside PPC ads for the best results. While you’re waiting, PPC generates immediate clicks and drives traffic to your website on the spot.
The best part is that when done right, PPC ads offer a high ROI compared to many other advertising methods. According to the data, businesses earn an average of $2 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads, making PPC a powerful resource for course providers. Here’s everything you need to know about mastering PPC to generate hot leads for your online courses.
1. Understand the learner’s journey
If you want your PPC ads to generate leads ready to buy and not just curious clicks, you need to align your ad strategy with how learners make decisions. Signing up for an online course is not an impulse purchase. It’s a journey that usually starts with curiosity and then moves to research and comparison. When successful, that journey ends with enrollment.
A one-size-fits-all ad won’t work because a student who is just browsing isn’t ready for the same pitch as someone about to hand over their credit card. Understanding the different parts of the funnel, and tailoring your ad campaigns to match each stage, is what will make your course successful. A typical buyer’s journey for learners involves the following stages:
At this stage, your potential students are still exploring broad ideas related to the courses you’re offering. They may not know exactly which course or platform is right for them, but they’re actively looking for options. You’ll need to use a certain type of keyword phrase to capture their attention.
Searches like “learn coding online,” “how to get TEFL certified,” and “language courses for beginners” will work well at this stage. PPC ads in this phase shouldn’t hard-sell enrollment, but rather, focus on positioning your course as credible and informative.
Think free guides, introductory webinars, and blog posts that answer frequently asked questions about your topic. By nurturing your leads’ interests and providing value right off the bat, you’ll have an easier time becoming a trusted brand that people keep in mind as they move deeper into the journey.
During the consideration state prospects know what they want but they’re comparing their options. They’ve narrowed down their choices and are considering factors like price, flexibility, depth, instructor quality, platform, and accreditation. Ideal search terms in this phase are related to specific things that your prospects value or want to achieve like “affordable Python bootcamp,” “online MBA with scholarships,” or “best UX design course with certification.”
Your PPC ads should also highlight unique selling points for your course like “self-paced learning,” “industry-recognized certificate,” or “job placement success.” It’s at this stage where comparison charts, testimonials, and detailed course previews are highly effective. The goal is to show your prospects why your program beats the competition.
At this point, hesitation is minimal. Prospects are ready to sign up but might need one last push. This is where urgency, social proof, and simplicity make all the difference. Ads should feature strong calls to action like “Enroll Today,” limited-time incentives like “Save 20% - Ends Sunday.” This is the perfect time to showcase real student success stories. Landing pages for ads in the decision stage should remove all friction. Avoid long forms and distracting links. Just provide a clear and simple path to enrollment.
Keep in mind that most of your ideal market will encounter your brand multiple times along their journey across different devices and platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Mapping your PPC ad campaigns to these three stages ensures you’re showing up with the right message at the right time. When done correctly, focusing on all three stages with separate messages will turn casual searchers into qualified leads ready to buy your course.
The backbone of every PPC campaign is your keyword selection. You can write the most convincing ad copy in the world, but if you’re bidding on the wrong phrases you’ll either waste your budget or attract people who have no intention of enrolling.
Your goal isn’t just to drive traffic to your site. You need to drive qualified traffic – people who are serious about learning what you teach and are ready to invest in themselves. This requires targeting a mix of high-intent keywords, longtail phrases, and negative keywords.
Broad keywords like “data science” and “coding” cast a net that’s too wide. You’ll get clicks but most will be from people who are just curious or looking for free resources. To reach people who are committed, you need to target high-intent keywords that show purchase intent. Phrases like “enroll in our data science course” and “online JavaScript certification with ongoing support” will attract users who are actively seeking instruction.
You’ll pay more for high-intent keywords but they deliver more value and higher conversion rates, and that will increase your ROI when you choose the right ones.
Longtail keywords are used to target a smaller pool of people and that’s a good thing. Since these keywords are more focused, the traffic they generate is more valuable. Instead of competing for saturated, general terms like “learn graphic design online,” you target specific phrases like “best graphic design program for working professionals with evening classes.” The people searching with this level of specificity already know what they want, which means they’re more likely to convert.
If you skip targeting longtail keywords you’re leaving money on the table. Data shows that 70% of all online searches involve longtail phrases – it’s just how people naturally search when they know what they want.
Your negative keyword list is how you’ll preserve your budget and prevent wasting money on irrelevant clicks. Without a list of words you don’t want your ads to show up for, you’ll end up paying for clicks that never convert.
Build a negative keyword list of words that indicate someone is looking for something free or irrelevant to your course. For example, words like “free,” “PDF,” “torrent,” and “Reddit” are usually used in searches when someone is looking for shortcuts and freebies. Adding these and similar words to your negative keyword list will filter out tire-kickers and boost ROI by preserving your ad budget for relevant prospects.
Once you have the right keywords that generate impressions, your ad copy has to do the work to get clicks. Your ads need to grab people right away to prevent them from scrolling and possibly clicking on another course provider’s ad. For e-learning, your ads need to inspire people. Instead of talking about your course you want to highlight what your course will do for the learner. This is accomplished with benefit-driven messaging, emotional triggers, and strong calls-to-action (CTAs).
· Benefit-driven messaging. Most course providers list features like “40 hours of video content” and “downloadable PDFs,” but these details aren’t going to capture attention at first glance. In fact, telling learners they’re going to need to sit through 40 hours of content right off the bat might be a deterrent.
Instead, your ads should highlight tangible outcomes like “land high-paying clients with our program,” or “start a new career as a web developer in just 12 weeks.” Benefits speak directly to a person’s goals and aspirations, which is far more compelling than a list of specs.
· Emotional triggers. Emotional triggers are the heart of every marketing strategy, including PPC ads. People make emotional buying decisions and buy courses because they’re chasing a dream, avoiding a fear, or seeking transformation.
Great ad copy taps into these emotions and creates a sense of urgency. For instance, “Don’t miss the enrollment deadline” plays into the fear of missing out, while “Join 10,000 successful graduates” leverages social proof. The right emotional triggers will give people a good reason to act now rather than bookmarking your page and forgetting about it.
· Clear CTAs. Irresistible ad copy includes a direct, compelling call-to-action that tells the prospect what to do next. Generic instructions don’t cut it. “Learn more,” “Click here,” and similar phrases don’t communicate urgency or value. Choose CTAs that direct prospects to sign up for your course. For example, “Start your free trial” and “Reserve your seat today” work well.
In a crowded marketplace where hundreds of course creators are competing for the same attention, clarity and emotion will generate better results. Lead with benefits and tap into people’s emotions and your ad copy will generate serious leads.
Generating clicks from your ads is only the first half of the equation. Once a prospect clicks your landing page needs to convert them to a paying customer or your ad spend goes to waste. Your landing page is like the final pitch where prospective students choose whether to enroll in your course or move on. If your landing pages create any confusion, friction, or distrust, your prospects will lean toward other course creators. On the other hand, an optimized landing page can become a conversion generating machine.
Your landing pages should be simple and clean without too much information. The page content should be specifically designed to direct people to sign up for your course. You want to eliminate navigation menus and sidebars to prevent people from clicking away from the page and getting distracted. Each landing page should have one end goal, either to get sign-ups/purchases or apply for acceptance if required. Too many options will create cognitive overload and reduce the chance of any action.
It’s crucial to include trust elements on your landing pages. When people are thinking about investing their time and money in an online course, they’re naturally going to be skeptical. This is where trust signals can help. Testimonials, instructor bios, refund guarantees, and case studies will help build your course credibility. The goal here is to reassure people that your program is legitimate and worth their investment.
Clicks are important but they’re somewhat of a vanity metric when measured on their own. The only time clicks matter is when you’re looking at your conversion rate. If you generate 100 clicks and get 40 people to enroll that’s much better than generating 1,000 clicks and only getting one person to enroll in your course.
The metrics that matter most are your conversion rate, your cost per lead (CPL), and lifetime customer value (LTV). For instance, you’ll want to track completed signups, demo requests, and enrollments rather than overall clicks.
Cost per lead is a simple measurement that can tell you how efficient your campaign is. For instance, if you’re paying $50 per lead but your average enrollment fee is $500, your margins are good. If your CPL is too close to your revenue then your course might be priced too low or you need to adjust your targeted keywords.
For e-learning, many students invest in more than one course or renew their subscription, which increases their lifetime value to your business. Tracking LTV will help you determine how much you can afford to spend acquiring each new student. For example, if your LTV average is $1,500, it makes sense to spend $200 to acquire each lead. This long-term view helps you maintain profitability and allows you to outbid your competitors who aren’t willing to spend much.
PPC ads require fine-tuning and you can’t just “set it and forget it.” What works today might underperform tomorrow or not perform at all on other platforms. Even small changes can make a huge difference in conversions and that’s why it’s important to test variations. For example, Dell is just one example of a company that saw a 300% increase in conversions from A/B testing.
By running experiments to test different elements you can identify what resonates most with your target audience and optimize your ads based on those results. The most important elements to test are your headlines, CTAs, and images.
· Testing headlines. Your ad headline is usually the first thing a prospect sees. Testing different headlines can help identify which promises resonate most. For example, “Land your dream job” might appeal to people looking for a new career, while “Get certified in 12 weeks” might hook people in a hurry. If you get more conversions from the former, your main audience is likely people looking for a new career, and you can tailor your ads to that group.
· Testing CTAs. A strong CTA can generate more clicks, but what works will depend on your audience. For example, “Get started today” might work for some courses while “Reserve your spot” works better for others. Avoid vague CTAs like “Learn more” that don’t instruct people to take action.
· Testing visuals. Images can put people off or draw them closer. Visuals are processed faster than text and are perceived in a split-second. A single image can make or break an ad. For instance, sometimes a photo of an instructor works well, but other times it’s better to use abstract graphics.
Split testing isn’t optional when you’re running PPC ads. It’s the only way to know which elements make your ads more effective.
At the end of the day, PPC is a great way to build a pipeline of motivated students who want to enroll in your courses. By aligning your campaign with the learner’s journey and optimizing your ads and landing pages for conversions, you can turn your PPC campaign into a reliable growth engine. As the e-learning market becomes more competitive, ads that hit hard are a must.
If you’re ready to stop wasting ad spend and start filling your online classrooms with qualified leads, it’s time to bring in PPC experts. At PPC.co, we specialize in turning clicks into enrollments through high-converting campaigns that deliver qualified leads for online course creators . Contact our team today and let’s build campaigns that fill your classroom.
Pay-per-click (PPC) remains one of the fastest paths to pipeline, but the economics vary widely by industry and are shifting as AI reshapes the SERP. CPCs are up versus prior years, conversion rates have improved in many categories, and lead quality is increasingly a function of how well advertisers feed first-party data into bidding models.
The table below summarizes 2025 search-PPC benchmarks by sector—CPC, conversion rate (CVR), and cost per lead (CPL)—so you can compare what “good” looks like in your niche and calibrate ROI assumptions.
Use these numbers as directional guardrails, then layer in your own close rates and LTV to get to the only metric that matters: profitable growth.
In short, AI is changing the way PPC campaign management is occurring, and it's happening FAST.
ROI ≈ (Close-Rate × Avg Customer LTV ÷ CPL) − 1
Example (legal): if close-rate 12% and LTV $6,000 on CPL $132 → ROI ≈ (0.12×6000 / 132) −1 ≈ 4.45x (345% net). Improve any one input (faster intake bumps close-rate; better routing lowers CPL) and ROI jumps. Benchmarks for CPL/CVR above provide solid starting points. LocaliQ
PPC will keep paying when two things are true:
(1) you can convert and qualify leads quickly, and
(2) your bidding models are trained on the outcomes that actually make you money.
As AI compresses differences in targeting, the edge shifts to first-party data, creative velocity, and value-based bidding.
Treat the benchmarks above as starting points, then rebuild your ROI math from the ground up: ROI ≈ (Close Rate × LTV ÷ CPL).
Contact us today for your customized PPC audit to see how we can improve your search engine marketing ad spend.
