Running your own pay-per-click campaign is hard enough, especially if there is a lot of competition in your industry. With all the stress of setting up and managing your own campaign, there are some basic errors that many website owners make.

One of the most common (and funniest), mistakes a search marketer can make is bidding on the term ‘Keyword’. This is all too common across both Google and Yahoo! advertising platforms, so let’s look at an example of what I mean:

Google Sponsored Links for the term ‘Keyword (click on image to expand):

As you can see, 3 out of the 8 sponsored links on the right hand side of the page have absolutely nothing to do with the term ‘Keyword’. Granted there are many legitimate Ads from keyword research companies etc, but what do hotels and alarm clocks have to do with the term ‘Keyword’?

Let me explain how this mistake occurs. When setting up their campaigns, many companies use a spreadsheet program to draft a list of keywords they would like to bid on. The spreadsheet has a heading for each column and the heading for the column of keywords is… you guessed it: ‘Keyword’. When uploading these keyword lists into Google, it’s easy to just copy the whole column, forgetting to remove the ‘Keyword’ heading from the list.

This simple mistake could end up costing you hundreds of dollars every month, so make sure to check your keyword lists thoroughly before uploading!