Understanding The Concept of Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay per Click is essentially an auction to get your advert shown on the search results pages based upon specific keywords. Search engines call these advert sponsored links or sponsored ads and they appear above and to the side of natural search results.

As it's an auction it is governed by the relevant advertising rules and regulations for your region. Search engines take into account several factors and then arrive at a Quality Score (or Quality Index for Yahoo!). The score is then assigned a minimum starting bid which is the least you have to pay to be in with a chance of getting your advert shown, which is called the Cost per Click (CPC). Adverts are then ranked using the following formula:

Rank = Maximum cost per click bid x Quality Score

How is Quality Score calculated?

No search engine has published their exact formula for arriving at a quality score, however they have indicated the following factors influence the score:

Click-through rate (aka: CTR) - how often has you advert been clicked on in the past?

Relevance of ad text - is the text contained in your advert relevant to what search the user has performed?

Historical keyword performance - how well has the chosen keywords performed in the past?

In addition, other smaller factors also come into play such as geographic region for where the advert will be placed and how quickly your page loads in a browser. A good company offering PPC services should know this.

WHAT ELEMENTS MAKE UP GOOD PPC SERVICES?

4 key elements make up good PPC services: keywords, content, landing page and budget.

Keywords: Having already considered this as part of your natural search approach, you should look to use the same or similar keywords to ensure your advert gets best placement. Generic terms will cost more but will also drive more traffic, whereas brand keywords will convert better.

Content: How you weave your keywords into a compelling advert is essential. Remember it is an advert so should be short and punchy to draw the user into clicking it. Content is the block of text in between the primary link and the website address.

Landing page: The page the user sees once they have clicked on our advert is as important as the advert itself. You need to maintain the momentum you've generated through the advert and bring people along on your journey into a specific and prominent call to action.

Budget: The amount of money you have available to put towards this campaign. In many respects you should consider the budget allocation as you would for any traditional marketing campaign, but bear in mind you could end up paying loads if your advert is a huge success!

ADVANTAGES OF PAY PER CLICK

There's a whole range of benefits for doing pay per click advertising over more traditional advertising methods, but essentially there are 5 key advantages:

Scalable: the scale of you campaign is limited only by your budget and can be deployed to a number of search engines for maximum breadth. It is important however to identify and stick to your budget as this will allow you to compare different PPC services and allow you to measure a return on investment for each campaign.

Tactical: pay per click is much more responsive than natural search as you can make immediate changes to your adverts that yield instant results. This means you can make changes on the fly to take into account learning made early into a campaign or changes to the market around you.

Informative: you get to decide what your advert says, within the limits set by each search engine, meaning you advert can describe exactly what you want the customer to do or see.

Measurable: in addition to the budgetary controls, you can set targets and goals for the campaign. Such targets may include a certain number of clicks on the advert, how many people follow-through top your call to action or how many people buy the product your selling.

Controllable: you can control the user experience via well thought-out copy and a great landing page.

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A Few Tips on Boosting Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Traffic

Increasing your pay per click (PPC) traffic and optimising your PPC campaign is a common problem for anyone who is trying to get the biggest bang for their buck. A poorly run pay per click campaign can haemorrhage money whilst simultaneously bring in the wrong kind of traffic.

This can be due to many different reasons and it is not easy to get on top of things by just following the available procedures. You need skill, experience and professionalism to create and manage a tightly run PPC campaign. In this article I will share a few key insights that can help contribute towards you achieving a much more optimal campaign.

Conduct your research - Proper market research will help you reach your target market in the easiest way. It's incredibly important to know as much as possible about your prospective customers and their online behaviours. Everything you find out will contribute to effectiveness of your pay per click campaign. Keyword Research - Getting to Know your audience with proper research will give you an overall idea of how they would reach your website. On top of that you absolutely must conduct keyword research. Use a keyword research tool such as the one provided by Google to determine the most effective keywords for your pay per click campaign. Doing this will help you determine where to put your resources and help the long term effectiveness of your campaign. Create Suitable Adverts - Your PPC adverts should be intimately based on your keyword list. This is important if you want to maximise the amount of targeted traffic you receive for the money you spend. just as important is to remember that your ads should be a short, sharp, informative, sales message. Once your avert is in the right place you still have to capture the attention of your audience. Planning Your Budget - Your budget will help you decide on the amount you are willing to pay for every targeted click you receive. Most people opt for a daily budget which can assist you in spreading your overall budget across a timeframe. This is especially useful if you have little experience of running an efficient pay per click campaign. Monitor Your Campaign - Weekly, daily or even hourly monitoring of your PPC campaign is incredibly important in your pursuit for an increased pay per click traffic. This will help you refine your campaign and improve efficiency. It will help you weed out low traffic keywords and ineffective ads and bring up any other anomalies that are impeding the overall efficiency of your campaign.

These are just a few factors involved in the day to day creation, implementation and running of a targeted pay per click campaign. There's a lot to it and I would always recommend professional help but with enough learning the small business owner can run a small campaign both efficiently and effectively.

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How To Create More Pay Per Click Traffic

A common problem that most internet marketers come across these days is how to increase their pay per click traffic. There are various reasons for this. An example would be that it is not as simple as following the process that will help you get started with PPC advertising. In this article, you will find useful information that can help you accomplish this task for the advantage of your business.

Coming up with a list of objectives you have plans of achieving will help you. Having a prepared list will allow you to focus on tasks that will help you get closer to your target each day, and will allow you at the same time to improve your visibility in the World Wide Web. Researching on your target market is the simplest way that will certainly be one of the factors why you want to achieve an increased traffic. It is a must that you find out the facts about your target market. Find out what they need, and what are the search terms they enter in search engines when searching for answers to their queries. Having the answers to these simple questions will be a great contribution to the success of your advertising campaign.

Now that you have an idea of your market, it will be easy for you to get an idea of the words that they make use of in order to reach your internet site. Come up with a list of these words in order for it to help provide a structure for your campaign. Making use of a keyword tool will also assist you in determining the number of searches that these words get on a month to month basis. This will also help you find out about the words that come at a minimal cost per click, but can provide you with plenty of searches in the internet on a daily basis.

Come up with a suitable advertisement by selecting the best terms in your keyword list. Ensure that your ad is short and has a clear sales message in order to interest your market. Make sure you have decided on the budget that you are willing to spend for your PPC marketing. Lastly, monitor your ads. This will help you analyse if your keywords are effective in increasing traffic. You will also see if they are costing you more money instead of helping you gain.

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Successful Pay Per Click Techniques

Before you write, organise and schedule your pay per click campaign, check out these tips to maximise your ROI (return on interest) and help make your ads as effective as possible. Pay per click advertising can be time consuming, so it's important to make it worth the time by giving your campaign the best chance at success. Here are a few simple techniques and ideas to consider when starting your own paid search marketing plan.

Local Targeting

Utilise local pay per click targeting to maximise the response from your ads. This is relevant to both small, local businesses as well as nationwide or international companies. Why waste money showing ads to people hundreds of miles away when you could be bringing in customers from your actual catchment area? If you see an ad for a company that you may have seen or driven past, or even one that mentions your home town, that familiarity is going to make you more likely to click through to see what they have to offer. Use geo-location targeting to aim your ads at appropriate IP addresses, or by responding to specific local keywords.

Negative Keywords

Removing 'negative' keywords from your list means that your ad will not be shown to any user who types in that keyword. For example if your company only sells laminate flooring, you might want to remove "carpets" from your keyword list so you don't waste ads on people who aren't looking for your particular product. It's a good idea to check on your analytics and see what search terms people are using to find your site, and work out if they are relevant, or if they are mistakenly being taken to your website in search of something different.

Promotion

As consumers, we see a lot of online marketing while we browse the internet. What makes your ad stand out? You need to make every word count when writing PPC ads, and ensure that your advert is going to grab the attention of your audience. Run a promotion, a special offer, a flash sale, a competition - entice your audience to your website and give them a reason to choose you over your competitor.

Precise Keyword Matching

Use your web analytics information to utilise exact keywords and phrases that previous customers have searched for to find your website. This dynamic keyword matching allows you to best match what users are actually typing into search engines. The thing to remember with this technique is to ensure that your copy reads naturally. The aim is to strike a balance between precise keyword matching and sounding professional, not simply putting in a string of nonsensical keywords!

Split Testing

Make the most of split testing and analytics to try out different wording and keywords for your ads. Monitoring and analysis is a big aspect of any pay per click campaign, and you need to be keeping an eye on the performance of each ad in order to maximise your budget and success rate. Try making small changes to your ads and running them in parallel and then slowly decide which types of ad work best for your purposes.

Long Tailed Search

Long tailed search terms are strings of 3 or 4 keywords that specifically describe your product or service, for example instead of "SEO", you might use "SEO for local businesses" to more accurately target your desired audience. This works in two ways: firstly it narrows down your target audience to increase the likelihood of a click-through, and secondly it often reduces the price of your cost per click, since fewer people may be bidding on your keywords.

Relevant Content, Relevant Landing Pages

If you clicked on an ad for a particular product and got sent to a home page where you then had to search for the item you were after, it might very well put you off even bothering. It may seem obvious but many paid search users simply set their homepage as their default landing page. Make sure your ad clicks through to a relevant and targeted landing page so that you make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy what they have clicked on. You may even need to set up a new page specifically for your ad.

Monitoring and Adjustment

We keep mentioning analytics, and that's because it's a big part of any pay per click campaign's success. Keep an eye on your ad performance, your conversion rate, your click through rate, your Google Quality Score, the timing of your ads, and any split tests you may be running. If you can determine which ads work well and which are wasting money, you can boost your marketing budget and save time and effort while you run your pay per click campaign.

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