| |
| |
|
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:
Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
$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. Optimize Your Pay Per Click Ads - 3 Quick Tips Running a pay per click campaign can be a valuable, fast source of online sales - but it can also cost you a lot of money if you don't know what you're doing. Many pay per click newbies sign up with a ppc search engine and end up spending lots of money very fast - without making a single sale. The Future of PPC Advertising For those of you who haven't used a Pay Per Click advertising platform like Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, take notes.Pay Per Click advertising refers to a style of advertising where the advertiser pays to display a link, an image, or text ad based on the number of clicks. Google AdSense Rewards Content with Adversiting Revenue If you've been looking for an easy way to increase your website's revenue, Google AdSense may be your answer.Google AdSense is a phenomenal new advertising revenue program that is taking the Internet by storm. 3 Strategies to Profit When Click Prices Increase (Part 2 of 3 Series) What are Website Conversion Strategies?Website conversion strategies are marketing and technology efforts focused on increasing your website's efficiency with turning visitors into prospects or customers. The majority of website conversion strategies involve redesigning your current website and re-writing your website's copy. Pay-Per-Click Fraud Exposed Has anyone else noticed a disturbing pattern in your pay-per-click advertising campaign, of the same IP addresses clicking on your ad, spending one or two seconds on your website and then leaving?That's called click fraud and it's a major problem among all of the pay-per-click search engines.Click fraud is a scheme that takes advantage of online advertising programs like those offered by Google, Yahoo/Overture, Findwhat and others. Adsense-ble, Or The Art Of Promoting, Without Promoting Hey, wait a minute. You can't have popups on the page. Successful Pay Per Click Ad Copy Writing outstanding ad copy for pay-per-click advertising campaigns is critical if a webmaster wants to be successful. Why waste money on clicks from people who aren't going to buy what a webmaster has to sell? To be as targeted as possible descriptive titles and effective ad copy are needed. The Sensible Way To Earn Money With Google AdSense! Dear friends,Google AdSense has rapidly gained a status of anindependent online business model. Many averagepeople with a little knowledge of HTML are earninga fortune with AdSense. The Click Fraud Problem Click fraud has become a major problem for online marketers. If you participate on Google adwords campaigns or Overture, you must already pay a lot for your campaigns. Targeting Usage Demographics to Increase Paid Search Conversions During conversations with web business professionals about pay-per-click search engines, "traffic volume" is always a hot topic. Over the last year or so, Google Adwords has emerged as the pay-per-click (PPC) search engine most enamored for driving "traffic volume". AdSense Secrets - Joel Comms Google AdSense Guide Reviewed Joel Comm is the best-selling author of a book called "What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense!"Some may wonder why Google never told you these AdSense secrets, but the reality is that Google tightly controls & denies their publishers from sharing specific click through, page views, and other internal metrics. It's probably a good thing that Google controls this data as it stops a whole series of events that would only cost time to contain. The Fastest Way to Get Traffic to Your Site Lots of people would like to get their Web site to the top ofGoogle's free listings. But that's precisely the problem: You'recompeting with lots of people. Pay Per Click: Whats It All About? No doubt you've heard the phrase "pay per click" before. This refers to any type of advertising where you only pay per click-through. Not Sure If Your Online Advertisement is Working? Without tracking, your online advertising is just a shot in the dark. Many new and seasoned marketing individuals spend significant dollars on banner advertisements, ezline ads, and other online media but do not know which ads have brought them the greatest success. 6 Easy Ways to Increase Your Adsense Revenue How much revenue do you generate from Google Adsense?Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over $10,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over $1 million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements. 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. How You Can Make Serious Money Self-publishing With Adsense Some folks may think that self-publishing began with the invention of the PC (personal computer) and others may be convinced that it has really taken off with the arrival of Adsense.It is important to understand what self-publishing is and its' enormous potential to fully appreciate and indeed take advantage of Adsense. Google AdWords - A Quick Overview for Beginners First of all, you know as well that Google is still the #1 Search Engine in the net, leaving Overture at the second place. If you type a word or a phrase in Google's search box and press "enter", a large number of links will appear in front of you, related to the subject you've typed earlier. 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 |
