A common misconception about pay-per-click (PPC)  advertising is that the goal is to get the maximum number of people to click on your ad. In other words, the higher the click-thru-rate (CTR) the better.

This strategy is not only not the goal, it’s the road to the poor house.

Since you are paying for every single click on your ad, you don’t want the most clicks, you want the most qualified clicks.  You only want those who are likely to buy. Any others, you’d like to actively discourage from clicking on your ad.

So, how do you discourage the unqualified riff-raff from clicking on your ads? Here’s some strategies:

1. Use negative keywords. Google Adwords lets you include a list of words that you definitely don’t want your ad showing up for. Common negative keywords include free,inexpensive, and cheap but should include any words that help you refine your targeted keywords. For instance, if you sell fine jewelry you might exclude terms such as costume, fashion, stainless steel.
2. Write “qualified” ad copy. Your copy can be written in a way that makes it clear that you don’t have what the riff-raff are looking for. Using our jewelry example, your ad might include a price point that eliminates all those looking for a cheap piece of jewelry.
3. Target your keywords narrowly. Broad keywords will bring broad traffic (translation: unqualified riff raff). If I’m a fine jewelry retailer and I target my ads to folks searching on the very broad term “jewelry” I should expect to get a lot of traffic from folks who’s budget is far below my price points.