| |
| |
|
PPC & Advertising Information |
|
|
|
Buying Your Way to the Top with Pay Per Click Advertising
Imagine if you could advertise ONLY to people who have actually expressed an interest in doing business with you? That's basically what happens whenever a prospective customer or client types a phrase into a search engine that's relevant to your business. But how do search engines decide which sites are worthy of top placement in their search results? It turns out that some of the results are ranked by the search engine's computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using Pay Per Click Advertising. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC for short) is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business. Businesses buy advertising on specific search phrases, and are then charged each time a person clicks through to their web site. How does this work? Try running a search on a major search engine like Yahoo or Google for a common consumer product like "DVD players." When reviewing the results, you'll likely see a set of results labeled as "Sponsor Results" or "Sponsored Link". Some results may appear in the same format as the main search results on the page, while others are listed within colored text boxes along the site of the page. All of those results are paid advertisements from the sites listed within the ads. The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. In the example search for "DVD players" the current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click - one penny more than the #2 advertiser. The ads are purchased through pay per click advertising suppliers, and the two largest happen to be owned by Google and Yahoo. Google's program is called Adwords and displays results on Google.com, AOL, Ask Jeeves, many smaller search engines. Yahoo's program is run by an acquired company called Overture, and the results appear on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and many other syndication partners. Why should I pay for traffic? For businesses that have had success with search engine optimization, the idea of paying for visitors is not particularly enticing. However, if you can make more money off a visitor to your web site than it costs to get them there, why wouldn't you pay for those visitors? Keep in mind that you can choose exactly what search terms you want to advertise on, and you only pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad, so it generally comes down to deciding how much you can afford to spend for those visitors rather than whether it's worth doing at all. How much should I spend? The main factors influencing how much money can be spent on a PPC campaign are: 1. How many searches are conducted per month using phrases relevant to your business? 2. How much are you, along with your competitors, willing to pay for those terms? The average monthly ad spend on PPC advertising is a couple thousand dollars, but this varies immensely from less than $50/month for regionally targeted and niche businesses to millions a month by large national retailers. The goal of any advertising campaign should be to bring in more money from the campaign than it costs to run it. Pay Per Click is no different, but the level of detail you can measure in PPC is significantly higher than most types of advertising. For example, with relatively inexpensive (some are even free) tools, you can determine which ads are generating sales or leads for your business. Beyond that, you can determine how much money you spent on a specific ad to generate a sale or a lead. By measuring what's working, you can aggressively advertise on terms that prove to be winners for your business while shutting down ads that don't deliver. Tips for Success 1. Advertise on a large number of relevant search phrases. Brainstorm beyond the first dozen terms that come to mind to describe your business. Advertise on the terms used to describe your products, the product names, product codes, and the questions a prospect might type into a search engine that your services answer, and more. 2. Build unique ads for each search phrase. It takes a lot more time to write a unique ad for each search phrase relevant to your business rather than creating one ad for all of your search phrases, but the extra work will definitely be rewarded. Ads that are aligned with the corresponding search term receive more clicks, which will mean more targeted traffic, and in some cases paying less per click (on Google Adwords) due to the intricacies of how the advertising is priced. 3. Send visitors to the most appropriate page of your web site. If you place an ad for a specific product within your online store, don't send visitors to your homepage and force them to dig for what they just searched. This will frustrate your visitors and increase the chance that they'll hit the dreaded Back button. 4. Track your results. Spending money without measuring the return on your investment is not a good business practice. At the very least, consider installing the free tracking tools available through Google Adwords and Overture to measure which terms are delivering results for your business. Beyond that, consider using a 3rd party statistics tool with conversion analysis to compile the results of your various pay per click programs into one easy to manage interface. Go for it People are searching for what you sell at this very moment! If your site is not showing up near the top of the results, your competition thanks you. About The Author Ed Kohler is the President of Haystack In A Needle, Inc., a web marketing firm in Minneapolis, MN, offering search engine optimization and pay per click advertising consulting services.
MORE RESOURCES:
PPC-Advertising - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
PPC Fraud, Google Stands to Lose Millions Google stands to lose millions if fraud continues. It is only a matter of time before the current problem of click fraud implodes on Google. $1 Million in Google AdSense Earnings They are calling him the million dollar man. Jason Calacanis recently revealed in his blog that he is on track to earn a million dollars from AdSense over the year ahead. Paid Search Advertising that Delivers Maximum ROI Paid Search Advertising (also Pay-Per-Click, PPC) has gained a significant influence in the search engine industry over past couple of years. Whilst a traditional search engine optimisation still remains the online marketing strategy number one, more and more e-marketers discovering the potential of online advertising campaigns. Google Adwords: Here is Why It Can Explode Your Business! The beauty of Google Adwords set up is its simplicity. Google programmers seem to be a close follower of the maxim taught by Edward Debono when it comes to simplicity. A Smart Trick for Attracting Higher Paying AdSense Ads There are no guarantees in life, so I don't guarantee that following these tips will bring you more money every time. However, I do guarantee that they will greatly increase your chances of pulling more of the top-paying AdSense ads to your site than if you don't follow these suggestions. Seven Tips To Getting The Nost From Your Google Ad Word Investment With Google Ad Words . . Keywords, How to Find Them, and Use Them Effectively To be a successful affiliate marketer takes a ton of work. You probably know this by now. Optimizing Adsense For Better Performance and More Money! So you want to make money with Google Adsense? I don't blame you, who doesn't want residual income! This article will show you how to better optimize Google Adsense to make more money from your web site(s).Before we get into it, learn more about Google Adsense here: http://www. AdWords Campaign Set Up Tips - Part Two Ready for more tips on how to make your AdWords campaign work more effectively for your business?Start with a Modest BudgetJust as you should start with a smaller geographical region, start with a modest campaign budget. Spend a few days or a few weeks fine tuning your ads before you really decide to pump up the budget. How To Find Your Own Valuable Adsense Keywords For Free There's tons of money to be made from the Google Adsense program for web masters and blog owners. That's why "the vultures are circling" and folks are getting sucked in with all sorts of offers that promise instant high Adsense revenue. How to Help Google Make Up Its Mind As an AdSense sponsoring web site, your goal is to have contextually relevant ads displayed whenever a visitor comes to your site. That's the goal, and it sounds simple enough, but sometimes it seems that Google is bent on not cooperating with you in the least. How To Get Banned From Google Adsense In Just 2 Clicks The darkest nightmare a hardworking affiliate webmaster fears is receiving a dreaded Google Adsense Warning, or even worse, a notice that Google Adsense has been disabled for the entire account.The notice starts out like this:"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the ads on your web pages. Google for Resellers: Leveling the Resell Playing Field With so many people trying to make money on the web and so many products being sold with resell and master resell rights, it's a wonder anyone can make any money at all at it!Indeed, most people don't.Why?Sometimes it's because people get in on the tail end of the product being sold and start trying to resell it just as the original creator decides to start giving it away for free. Google Adwords - Manipulating Keywords For Success As you probably know, Google Adwords is a pay-per-click solution offered by Google. As with other PPCs, you are given the ability to place your small advertisement on various platforms controlled by Google. How to Quickly Create an Adsense Site That Brings In the Bucks One of the hottest crazes for online marketers is Adsense sites. These marketers trade in information and build sites that are tightly focused around one small niche. Top 5 Secrets to Making Money with Adsense Did someone tell you you can make money easily with Google Adsense? Did they tell you that to put up a site and people will click on the ads and you can make hundreds of dollars per day?Maybe that's true, for them, because they have a system to make this happen. They may have omitted how to make and Adsense site successful. How To Screen Your Visitors When Using Pay Per Click Advertising If you are using pay per click advertising, I don't need to tell you that it can get very expensive if you have a lot of unnecessary click throughs. In this article I will explain how to screen your visitors and how to apply it to your pay per click advertising campaign, so that you can screen your visitors before they click through. 99 High Paying Keywords: The Secret Is Out! Incorporating high paying keywords into your site is critical to maximizing your income. Who has the time to figure it all out? How much are you willing to pay for this type of information? The secret is out: Here are 99 keywords you can use with payouts averaging $2-$100 per click:1. Broad, Phrase, Exact, Negative - Four Google AdWords Terms You Must Know for Advertising Success A few days ago, I was setting up my latest Google AdWords campaign. My brother was watching me work through the process, and he asked me:"Why do you put quotation marks and square brackets around some keywords?"I was a bit surprised to realise that I couldn't actually answer him - not in any definite way, at least. 4 Steps To A Successful AdWords Campaign Not getting the satisfaction you want from your AdWords account? Want to make more money by spending less?Google AdWords has made many businesses successful by providing them with a great deal of highly targeted traffic for as little as 5 cents! Yet many webmasters and advertisers are incompetent when it comes to using AdWords efficiently. After $100 in losses and having many failed campaigns, I have learned how to solve many of these setbacks, so I have put together a list of the 4 steps required to come out on top.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
