How to use Pay Per Click to Advertise any
Product.
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.
By Paul Wilson
support@provenonline.info
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