PPC Internet Marketing Articles

PPC Internet Advertising - Search Engine Marketing - Articles

Pay-Per-Click Internet Advertising

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is
both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There
are several ways to go about attracting more visitors to your
website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose
from, along with introducing an SEO, or search engine
optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are
targeted to get your web site placed as close to the top of
search engine results as possible. One of the differences
is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign
versus months for a successful SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is simply paid advertising that
many search engines, including some of the largest ones,
such as Google & Yahoo now offer.

It requires a bid by you to be made on a "per-click" basis, which
translates to your company paying the bid amount every time
the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is
the added bonus that when a pay-per-click site sends your
website traffic, your site often appears in the results of
other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and
disadvantages. If can you understand the process and monitor
your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very
effective ROI. One of the greatest advantages is that you never
have to tweak your web pages to change your position in
search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO -
Web Site Optimization campaign.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click
process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't
demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more
you know about search engines and keyword research, the easier -
and more effective - the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding
war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on
the search engine results. This means that you will have to
raise your bid to regain your position - which can
obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are
bidding on a popular keyword.

Google uses a combination of Maximum CPC & Quality Score.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective
form of marketing for your business, you must do some
computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site
is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit
you make on your website over a given period of time by the
total number of visitors for that same time period. For
example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were
2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50
cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which
your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show
a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you
are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost
considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way
around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be
paying too much for each individual hit.

The key is to learn everything about keyword research.
The good news is there isn't a limit to the amount of keywords
you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add
additional cost. This translates into a lot less trouble for
you because there is no need to optimize your site to index
a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than
others are, but they will not cost you anything except time
to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the
popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called
Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing) provides an online tool that
will give you the  data on how often particular keywords are entered into
their search engine. They also offer suggestions for
keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You
must understand that the object of your description is not
to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as
possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy
your service or product go to your site. You must use
tested marketing copy to guarantee that your description is
both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal
candidates to your site. This description is your most
powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is
that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important
that you bear in mind that the results of the top search
engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are
Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other
popular search engines. Because of this, the competition
for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find
that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click
to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on
that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when
you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in
essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in
place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword.
It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a
weekly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis
of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about
consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring
and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business
needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click
campaign is a success. Google offers Analytics Tool FREE.

PPC Advertising - Keyword Selection

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential
customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to
reach their destination " your website"  you need to
provide them with specific and effective signs that will
direct them right to your site. You do this by creating
carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the gateway of the
Internet. Find the exact right words or phrases, and
there you go! Much more traffic will be pulling up to your web
page. But if your keywords are too general or too
over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it
all the way to your site - or you seeing any real profits
from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords are the foundation of your internet marketing
strategy. If they're not chosen with some thought, no
matter how aggressive your marketing campaign is, the
right people may never get the chance to find out about it.
So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather
and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words
for your search engine phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't
followed certain specific steps, you are probably going to FAIL.
It's hard to be objective when you are solely in the heart
of your business network, which is the reason that you may
not be able to choose the most keywords or phrases from a new
visitor prospective. You need to be able to think like them.
And since you are a business owner and not the consumer,
your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of
potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words
from as many potential customers as you can. You will most
likely find out that your understanding of your business
and your customers' understanding is significantly
different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the
words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you
probably never would have considered from deep inside the
trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from
outside sources should you add your own keywords to the
list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for
the next step which is evaluation of these keywords/phrases.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a
small number of words and phrases that will direct the
highest number of quality visitors to your web site. By
"quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most
likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around
your site and take off somewhere else. In evaluating
the effectiveness of keywords, keep in mind three things:
How popular is it?

How specific should it be?

What will motivate them to take action?

Popularity is the easiest to measure because it is an
objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the
more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a
search engine which will then bring up your web site link.

You can easily access free software that will rate the popularity
of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating
based on actual search engine activity. Software such as
WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and
phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a
given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to
be directed to your site. The only problem with this
concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the
search engine position you will need to achieve. If you are
down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will
probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice.
You must move on to the next criteria, which is how specific
should it be. The more specific your keyword is, the greater
the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase
your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have
obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile
companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork
only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower
on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it
would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of
getting a large number of people interested in everything from
buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get
only those consumers with damaged front ends or bent
fenders being directed to your site. In other words,
consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will
immediately find you. Not only that, but the more specific
you are of your keyword the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this
requires putting yourself inside the mind of the visitor
rather than the seller to figure out what motivation
prompts a person looking for a service or product to type
in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at the following
example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as
an IT Manager in a new city. If you have to choose between
"Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do
you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were
looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would
you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second
keyword targets people who have decided on their career,
have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you
as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school
who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or
her life in between beer parties. You want to find people
who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires
subtle changes to your keywords until your find the most
specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most
motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done.
You must continually monitor & record performance across a variety
of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends
change, as does popular industry jargon. You can't rely on your log
traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how
many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been introduced to help you
judge the effectiveness of your keywords in particular Google &
Yahoo search engines. There is now reporting available that will
analyse visitor behavior in relation to visitor traffic.
This allows you to determine which keywords are bringing you
the best return on investment.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a
good keyword phrase; profits per visitor do. You need to find
keywords that direct visitors to your site who actually
buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your
product. This is the most important factor in evaluating
the effectiveness of a keyword or phrase, and should be the
measure used when discarding and replacing ineffective
or inefficient keywords with ones that bring better profits.

Ongoing analysis & testing of  keywords is the formula for
Internet Marketing success. This may sound like a lot of work -
and it is! But the amount of research and effort you put into
your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate success.