This is Part 2 of 3 of our series about common paid search mistakes we see committed by business owners. Part 1 focused on how many business owners strive for traffic instead of leads. Our hope is that this series, as well as our other Free SEO Resources, prove helpful for anyone trying to manage their own paid search campaign.

Another very common mistake that we frequently see are campaigns operating without anyone at the helm, also known as campaign neglect. This means that campaigns are literally running without anyone maintaining them. No one is monitoring budgets, bids, keywords, or the effectivess of ad copy or landing pages. Meanwhile the meter keeps running and Google is charging the company's credit card every couple of weeks.

It seems really hard to believe that in today's economic climate that a business would let this happen, but it occurs all the time. And, incidentally, time is exactly the blame. For most business owners, there just isn't enough time to run a business and manage something as time-consuming as an Adwords account.

Most often the story goes something like this, business owners commit to learning Adwords with all of the best intentions. But after a couple of months of mixed results, their business takes over. Next thing they know, Google has rung the cash register 5 times since the last time they even logged in to Adwords.

Besides the wasted money, there's another costly result - a loss of faith in the paid search process. All business owners see are the invoices from Google and no increase in sales. As a result, they conclude that paid search advertising is a big waste of time and are very hard ton convince to get back into the game.

The moral of the story is that if you insist on managing your own paid search campaign and inevitably get caught up in everyday business life, at the very least pause your campaign until you can get help or can dedicate more of your own time to it. Above all, don't let one bad experience deter you from future forays into search engine marketing. When managed by someone with time and experience, it works and returns a significant return on your investment.