PPC advertising is among the top marketing strategies due to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency to get qualified leads. As you pay for the adverts when someone clicks them, it allows you to control your budget better. Unfortunately, however, that’s exactly what makes click fraud a big problem. While clicks on your ads mean people are interested in your business, fraudulent clicks only skyrocket your marketing costs without generating any revenue. Therefore, it is important that you take the necessary steps for preventing click fraud.

Here are the top 5 tips for click fraud prevention that will help you make the most of your marketing dollar.

1. Vary Bid Prices For Content-Oriented Websites

As a precautionary measure, you should reduce the risk of depleting your ad budget by limiting how much you want to pay per click. It is also important to limit the exposure by choosing to place ads on sites relevant to your targeted keywords instead of any website out there.

2. Keep Your Competitors In Check

Your competitors are often involved in click fraud, and you must use click trackers to see from where your ads are getting the clicks. These tools give you reports detailing how many ad clicks came from your competitors and other fraudulent sources. You can then block their IPs and take other precautionary measures to prevent them from clicking your ads on purpose.

3. Place Your Ads On High-Value Websites

Many low-quality websites are click fraud hotbeds. When you place your ads on these websites, a bot or a person may click your ads regularly just to boost the PPC revenues of the website owner. Fortunately, Google allows you to set up PPC campaigns that run your ads only on the specified websites that you think are legit and won’t be involved in such fraudulent activities

4. Take Advantage Of Ad Targeting

When you target your ads properly, they become less susceptible to fraudulent clicks. Many click farms are operated from specific locations and low-income countries, and you can reduce the risk by excluding those countries from your ad targeting. Focus on a smaller geographic region where your potential leads might exist, and it will help avoid fraudulent clicks while increasing your revenues at the same time.

5. Don’t Run The Ads 24/7

When you run ads around the clock, you are attracting fraudulent clicks. When you run ads outside the waking hours of your time zone, you are more at risk of getting hit by click farms and bots from other geographic regions. The technique is called dayparting, and it involves stop/starting ads at times when it is the most likely to reach genuine users. Make sure you have enough data to figure out the best time when you get the most of the conversions. Run your ads during that time to avoid bots and frauds for the rest of the day.

PPC advertising can be a crucial element of your marketing campaigns. It is important to use your marketing dollar wisely and avoid click fraud by following the tips above.