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Pay Per Click Advertising
(C) Michael Rasmussen
All Rights Reserved
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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.
Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and
author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online
since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and
succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free monthly
newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web site
promotions that can help YOU!
Go to
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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