Profit Improving Online Strategies

Use Powerful Profit Improving Internet Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Online Business!

Building Paid Traffic

Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on web sites, especially search engines. Pay per click advertisements are usually text ads placed near search results; when a site visitor clicks on the advertisement, the advertiser is charged a small amount.

Pay per click is also sometimes known as Cost Per Click (CPC). The most popular pay-per-click search engines are Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), followed by Findwhat, Shopping.com, NexTag, Bizrate and Pricegrabber. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines.

Run ads at the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engines only when you have tested your site's conversion rate. With PPC the traffic stops when you stop paying for it, so make sure you see a positive Return on your Investment (ROI). It must certainly be high enough to warrant your time and expense. In contrast, clicks resulting from an investment in search engine optimization will continue for months and possibly years to come.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Strategies

The most intuitive and most expensive strategy is to bid for the top keywords that are most important for your product or service. Essentially, you bid the market rate for your keywords and key phrases.

You may not be able to afford the top three positions that get huge amounts of traffic, but perhaps you can afford position #10.

With this strategy you need to calculate the conversion rate (and thus the cost per sale) for each keyword or key phrase that you use. Once you find that a keyword or key phrase is cost effective, then bid it up to the point where it'll generate significant traffic, hopefully into Yahoo!/Overture's or Google's top three.

You ideally want to be listed in the top three since the top three ads get shown on partner search engine pages as "Sponsored Ads", on the first page!

Thousands of less popular keywords and key phrases at minimum bids

A different strategy submits thousands of less popular keywords and key phrases at minimum bids and works the niches.

The combined click-throughs from these thousands of search terms (relevant keywords and key phrases) brings you significant traffic at a very low cost -- a pence a click.

Here's how it works. If you only find a couple dozen keywords and key phrases, this strategy won't produce much traffic. You need to find thousands and you can do this in two ways:

Mine your site's logfiles to find all the keywords and phrases that brought people to your site in the past year. Offer to pay someone by the hour to do this for you if you don't know how. Essentially, it involves using a logfile analysis program such as WebTrends Log Analyzer (www.webtrends.com) to slice and dice each and every logfile entry that came from search engines, and then makes a list of each separate search term used. Use Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) to find thousands of appropriate keywords and key phrases. If you're going to work this strategy, then Wordtracker is an essential tool. Try their free demo first to see what Wordtracker will do for you.

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Ideally, you'll use both these tools to find the thousands of keywords and key phrases you need to make this strategy work. A "Thousand Keywords" strategy will bring in a considerable amount of traffic, but perhaps not enough to meet your sales goals. You may need to supplement this strategy with a carefully-thought-out prime keyword strategy, as well. Your thousand strategy will lower the average cost per sale over all, while your top keyword strategy will increase the number of overall sales.

smart Keyword Bidding

Use a smart Keyword Bidding Strategy when bidding for your keywords:

- Only outbid competitors not just anybody bidding for your keyword! - Let non-competitors get their clicks. - Bid a penny higher than the highest site, that reaches your target market. - Try to get into the top 3 listings for your main keywords - Use Yahoo!/Overture's "Maximum Bidding" tool to set the ceiling on your keyword bids (automatically adjust bid to get best price available, only pay $ 0.01 more than bid of listing below yours, eliminate costly bid gaps) - Not the number of click-throughs is what matters, it's the quality (make sure your listing is seen by your target market, don't pay for click-throughs that don't convert) - Your ROI should be 2-3 times what you pay per click on your most important keywords - Periodically re-evaluate your visitor worth so you know how much you can afford to bid - Use Yahoo!/Overture's DirectTraffic Center to see which keywords are yielding the best results - Be specific! (Place different ads for each product you sell, and link ads to landing pages where these products are sold) - When using Yahoo!/Overture, make sure you have your settings on "exact match" for all your keywords - Use "geotargeting" for businesses that offer local services or products that are useful only in specific regions - Get your site listed at the smaller PPCs (use Sitesell or AtlasOnePoint to manage multiple campaings)

Search engine positioning will bring you lots of traffic, but

Search engine positioning will bring you lots of traffic, but it may not be too targeted and it can take months to build. PPC strategies can bring lots of traffic almost immediately and if you've done your calculations, for a reasonable cost per click.

As with Search Engine Positioning (SEO) vs. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) so it is for Google Adwords: Compare and use both approaches when appropriate.

Is Google AdWords better than PPC?

In some ways, it's better and more flexible and in some other ways, it's worse. The Google AdWords program is definitely much more difficult to learn, and it's definitely a lot easier to lose money at! However, once you understand how it works, you'll love it.

What makes Adwords so different is, that on a typical Pay-Per-Click SE, it's pretty easy to figure out where you are going to appear in the rankings for your selected keywords. All you have to do is determine your bid level, and the corresponding position is yours until someone outbids you. Ultimately, your involvement depends on your budget.

The AdWords program isn't nearly as transparent. Nonetheless, depending upon the keywords and the market you are targeting, it may be a viable alternative to Overture.

comparison of google adwords and yahoo! overture

Despite the drawbacks, the AdWords program does have benefits over your average Pay-Per-Click SE. It does take a little longer to get into the swing of things with AdWords, but once you do, the flexibility of the program and its ability to serve up ads to an extremely targeted audience are powerful positives indeed!

And remember, you don't have to bid upon expensive keywords. If you can dig up enough low-cost keywords, and if your ads are highly targeted, AdWords can represent a credible, low-cost advertising option for you.