Pay Per
Click Advertising
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved
Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both
extremely effective and extremely competitive. There are several
ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click
is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an
SEO, or search engine optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and
SEO are targeted to get your website 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
good SEO campaign.
Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search
engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires
a bid for 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 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 you understand the process and monitor your
pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. 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 campaign. What you do have to do in a
pay-per-click campaign is pay a fee.
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 keywords, 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 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.
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 (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can
about search engine 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 hassle 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 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 expert 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 monthly 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.
Looking for some training check out this great training program you'll find hundreds of articles, advanced SEO tools, training videos, downloadable strategy guides, and other resources packed with practical tips to help you market your website, build viral buzz, capture top search engine rankings, improve website monetization, and increase conversion rates.
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