by: David Riewe
What is "Pay-Per Click"? "Pay-Per Click", is an easy to understand advertising strategy. There are around 300 million searches at major search engines everyday. This causes 80% of internet traffic. Placing your websites on these search engines is very important in reaching as many potential customers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most frequently, your website should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of a search engine so the lower your rank, the lesser the chance you will be clicked. In "Pay-Per Click" advertising, you pay to be always visible on the internet. You select keywords or key phrases about your website, and the highest bidder ranks the best. There is no upfront cost. You only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called "Pay-Per Click".
Everyday millions of people around the world click on Pay-Per Click Advertising Campaign. With the booming internet industry and the ever growing online business, an ad of virtually anybody on the planet can be seen on the internet anywhere in the world.
The "Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign is the premier growth area in online marketing. Last year, an estimated $741.2 million was spent on "Pay-Per Click" advertising. The usual search engine optimization can take weeks or even months to produce results. "Pay-Per Click" advertising can attract customers at an instant. Why? Because, this cutting edge ad campaign can be placed on any website and can be viewed by potential online customers, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The only challenge is placing the ads on proper websites that will attract possible customers for a specific product or services.
"Pay-Per Click" advertising campaign attracts the right consumers at the shortest possible time. This is the most cost effective way of marketing products or services. You can also monitor the customers who visit your site, what they are looking for and what they are buying. With the right creativity on using the right search-phrases, we can direct the right people who are willing to do business with us.
"Pay-Per Click" advertising can easily be managed 24 hours per day and 7 days a week through the internet. This allows you improve the campaign strategy by effectively responding to the activities of both customers and competitors.
So what are you waiting for? "Pay-Per Click" now and let your business take the fast route to success.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
"Pay-Per Click" Ad Campaign: Earn More By Spending Less
Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines
by: David Greene
Search Engines. What is a Pay Per Click Search Engine? A pay per click search engine is designed for pay for performance advertising. That means that an advertiser pays the search engine owners only for traffic that is delivered to his web site in accordance with key words that the advertiser chooses to bid on. Example: An advertiser has a web site that advertises vacations to Thailand. The advertiser can bid on "vacations to Thailand" as a key word. If he wants to be in the number one position on the search results page he can place a bid that is one cent more than the existing high bid for the key word term "vacations to Thailand". Let's say that the present high bid is $0.20 per click. A bid of $0.21 would than gain the top position for the advertiser. If his key word was clicked on 10 times in one day he would pay 10 X $0. 21 , or $2.10 for the traffic that was delivered to his web site for that day. The advertiser is paying only for performance. There is no charge for the number of times that the advertisers ad appeared on the search engine web site that day. The charges are based only on the number of times that a visitor clicked on the key word and was delivered to the advertiser's web site. Thus the name "pay per click". Why Use Pay Per Click Search Engines? In just a few words it is because the leading Pay per Click Search Engines (PPC) can quickly deliver quality targeted traffic to your web site. Anyone who has build web sites know that building web sites is the easy part. The tough part of the process is in driving enough qualified traffic to the site to make it worth while from a commercial view point. Even if you are successful in building a web site that the search engines love it will take some time, probably two or three months, perhaps longer, for the search engine spiders to find your site and for your site to be listed in the search engine. If you are trying to make money on the Internet that is a long time to go without traffic. No traffic means no sales and no income. That should not be your objective unless you enjoy building web sites no matter how few people ever visit them. With pay per click search engine accounts you can almost immediately drive qualified traffic to your web site. If you are serious about building a business on the Internet that is a pretty good reason to use Pay Per Click Search Engines. Pay Per Click Search Engine Tips. 1. Use quality pay per click search engines that already have a high volume of traffic. It doesn't matter how cheap the bid for your key words may be if there is little traffic on the search engine and your key words are never clicked on. 2. Know your market. If you are selling "vacations to Thailand" do some research to find out what words and phases folks who are thinking of traveling to Thailand are actually using in their searches. An excellent tool to assist in this research is Wordtracker . Wordtracker will quickly help you to decide which key words are truly worth bidding on. 3. Quality pay per click search engines will have starting bids from one cent to five cents per key word. It is important to know that about 80% of the traffic for any key word will go to the top three bids. So if you want a lot of traffic to your web site try to position yourself in the top three spots. Just as with real estate location makes all the difference in results. 4. Set up a realistic budget for each search engine. Quality pay per click search engines get a lot of traffic so be prepared for a lot of traffic to your site if you bid on popular key words. 5. Popular key words can be expensive so choose your key words with great care. It is best to stay away from key words that are too general in nature. Thus to continue with the example above bidding on the key word "vacations" would not be wise if you are selling vacations to Thailand. Yes, you would get a ton of traffic but it would be more than likely be too general and you would spend a lot of money for poor results. It is almost always a better strategy to bid on phases instead of one general keyword. Therefore bidding on "vacations to Thailand" would be a far better choice than bidding on "vacations". If you are selling vacations to Pattaya Thailand it would be better to bid on "vacations to Pattaya Thailand" than on "vacations to Thailand". The more keywords that you can find that exactly match up with whatever it is that you are selling and that folks will be searching for the more money you will save (less money will get you in the top three spots) and the better your results will be. Wordtracker is an excellent tool that can find key word phases that are actually being searched for and that you would probably never think of going it alone. 6. Think about using a lot of keywords rather that a common few. The common few will be expensive and will likely deliver to your web site a lot of poorly targeted traffic with poor conversion ratios (traffic to sales). People search for the darnest things and those who actually plan on buying something usually search by using phrases. With some effort you can find phrases that are cheap and that will deliver highly targeted traffic...the kind that converts into sales. 7. No matter how much traffic you drive to a web site if you are marketing sorry products or services or if you have excellent products and services but you have a sorry website you are wasting your time and money. Everything must be right to achieve business success. Make sure that your site is "order taking ready" before you turn on your pay per click traffic.
The Click Fraud Problem & how to eliminate it
by: Christos Varsamis
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. What is click fraud?Click fraud is the deliberate clicks to PPC search engine ads for completely other reasons than expressing interest for buying the related products or services.Overture defines click fraud as clicks arising for reasons other than the good-faith intention of an Internet user to visit a web site to purchase goods or services or to obtain information.Google defines click fraud, or invalid clicks, as any method used to artificially and/or maliciously generate clicks or page impressions.In simple words, Click fraud means that someone is cheating you and that you pay too much for your pay per click campaigns.Who is doing that?Three main groups click on pay per click ads, without real interest in the offered goods:People who joined Google AdSense or other per click affiliate programs click on the ads on their own web site to make a little income. Often, these people cooperate with other webmasters to click on each other's ads.Some unethical companies click on the pay per click ads of competitors to drive up their advertising costs.Companies (often in India, Russia and China) hire people who are paid to click on ads. Google and other search networks provide refunds to advertisers when click fraud has been discovered.Google and Overture employ "fraud squads," or teams of people dedicated to fighting click schemes. But at least two marketing executives say such countermeasures are missing fraudulent clicks that are responsible for between 5 percent and 20 percent of advertising fees paid to all search networks.This is a huge problem. There is no “pay per click” Company denying that click fraud exists. Web analytics companies estimates that the 50% of all click activity is fraudulent. This means that your pay per click marketing activities are half effective as they could be because of click fraud.Overture spokeswoman Jennifer Stephens refutes that estimate, saying that the numbers likely represent acts of fraud that are ultimately caught. She added that Overture filters most fraudulent clicks with the best antifraud system in the industry, which combines technology and human analysis.Most advertisers are aware of the click-fraud issue but have not delved into it because of the technical complexities involved. Others are concerned that they could jeopardize their relationships with the powerful search networks if they complain too loudly.One of the best ways to eliminate click fraud is using anti click fraud services such as ppctrax (www.ppctrax.com). They provide services like the below:IP address capture.IP address geographic Location.User Agent (browser, bot etc.)See exactly what keywords are generating your clicksDate and Time stampSystem detects sudden click spikes from one or more IP addressesReal-time email alerts at 80% and 100% of your account's transaction utilizationIP address history - alert you to prior offendersAnother similar service is “who is clicking who”:http://www.whosclickingwho.com Other ways is the click fraud capture software like Click Auditor: http://www.keywordmax.com/click_auditor.html
Web Site Promotion: Give Your Online Promotion An Instant Boost
by: Ken Leonard Jr
Promoting a web site the right way means using a multi-layered system. If you are expecting big sales from a one or two method web site promotion plan, you are in for a rude awakening...Most useful promotion methods take some time to really kick-in. For a sudden surge of traffic to your web site, think about adding some well-placed targeted advertising into the mix.Any web site, including yours, will require continuous testing. From the headlines to your sales letter, and right down to the price you are charging, you have to apply three very important ideas:1) Test2) Test again3) RepeatTo get your testing into gear, it helps to start a Pay Per Click ad campaign or buy some targeted ezine ads. Within a week, you can have some serious targeted traffic so you can get an idea of what's working and what's not.Google AdWords is a good place to learn the Pay Per Click game. If you can get the hang of AdWords, you can get some good traffic fast. You are going to pay for each visitor you get, but your other free and low-cost promotion methods will help to balance your spending. Adwords advertisers get to use built-in ad click and sales/lead conversion tools at no extra cost. This makes it easier to put the testing formula above into action.If you want to speed up the AdWords learning curve, which can be very frustrating and expensive, you really should check out this helpful resource... http://adwords.kljonline.com This best- selling resource will save you tons of money otherwise wasted on trial and error when you don't know what you are doing, besides saving you months of learning time.Another way to get fast traffic to your web site is to buy top sponsor or solo ads in related email and online newsletters. There are services available that will place an ad for you in many different quality ezines at once. The ad is seen by your target customers, so you get quality traffic as long as your ad copy pulls. Quality traffic is more likely to translate into leads and sales than poor quality traffic.Buying Pay Per Click and ezine advertising can help you make up for a slow start with your web site promotions. Your free and low-cost promotion methods will give great results over time. A good mix of free promotion traffic and paid advertising traffic will give your product or service the online exposure it deserves!
5 Secret Tips to Effective Pay Per Click Advertising
by: Jan Peterson
Yes, pay per click advertising will cost you but if you do it right, it should make you money. If you are running pay per click advertising campaign and more money is going out than coming in, something is not right. Here are 5 steps to targeting the right keywords and minimizing costs.Are your keywords too broad?Let's just say you have developed an amazing diet drink that is safe, effective, tasty and will guarantee that people will lose 15 lbs in 30 days. You know you have a product that is a winner and are excited about marketing it on the World Wide Web. However, you are relatively new to the Web and pick keywords that are too general and expensive like 'dieting' or 'weight loss'. Not only are you perhaps disappointed by your PPC advertising results but it will likely be draining your bank account. This is why niche keywords are so important. Look at bidding on keywords such as 'weight loss supplement' or 'weight loss drink'. Go to Overture or Word Tracker and find keywords that are more niche oriented and not so competitive.Is your ad dull or attention getting?It is worthwhile to spend some time learning about effective copy writing. It could be the difference between mediocrity and success. You want to know how to get someone's attention. Unfortunately saying "I have the best diet drink on the planet" doesn't work. You have to motivate and inspire people to take their time to look at what you have to offer. And, in pay per click advertising you have to do it in very few words. This can be a challenge. Learn the words that sell or attract or grab someone's attention like "Must see", "Quick results", "New…", "The truth…", "Groundbreaking…", "Instant…" Double Check your URL!Sounds like a no-brainer but many times people either misspell their URL or send someone to their home page instead of the page that directly relates to their question. In other words, you may have a website that is dedicated to weight loss but in your pay per click advertising, you want to direct them specifically to your diet drink. So, you would want your URL to read http://www.myweightlosssite.com/dietdrink.html. There is nothing more frustrating to the website visitor than having to go hunting for the information. Your job is to make it easy to find and informative. If they have to look long, they will leave. These are dollars lost to you.What is your competition doing?It is likely that your competitors who have a high PR (page rank) and continue to advertise, are doing something right. Learn from those who are successful. While the differences may seem subtle to you, in the World of PPC advertising a word or sentence can discourage or invite a potential website visitor. What should my title be for my PPC ad ?Plain and simple use the keyword that is being searched on. Don't get fancy or creative here. If someone is looking for diet drink then your ad title is 'diet drink'.Give the website visitor what they want.The bidding war is onTry your best not to get caught in the bidding war game. There are plenty of ways to drive traffic to your site without spending a fortune. General keywords will always have high prices like 'dieting.' Don't fall for the trap. Most refined keywords will have lower priced bids but are excellent because they will target your traffic. A Website visitor may only be looking for diet recipes and dislike diet drinks. They are not your customer. Same for the website visitor who may want to tone-up while they are dieting. The more specific you can target your market, the better you will do.Two other tips: If all the bids are around 25 cents and the lead bid is at $5.00, you know someone is trying to own the number 1 position. If you want to have fun bid $4.99 and they will get nailed $5.00 for every click and you will only pay 26 cents if they click on your ad. Warning though: if you want to play this game, keep an eye out so they don't drop their bid. I sometimes do this as a temporary measure to bring someone back to fair playing grounds.Secondly, keep any eye on all of your bids. People do change what they are willing to bid on any given keyword or search term. I do an overview every few days.The test results are backOne last key to good pay per click advertising is testing your ads. You can set up two different campaigns and rotate them for the same period of time. What you might learn could surprise you and benefit your bank account!Jan Peterson founder of http://www.goldstarreview.com researches and reviews business opportunities Over 400 FREE reports available. Successful e-book with reprint rights also available.
Piggyback Promotion - The Future of Low Cost Promotion
With the ever-increasing prices for search engine promotion and pay per click advertising, it has become next to impossible for low budget businesses to compete effectively in that field. A unique concept, piggyback promotion, looks at search engines from a completely different angle. By docking two of the most effective forms of online advertising, it is now possible for low budget businesses to compete on the same level as that of the more financially blessed.(PRWEB) April 6, 2004--It is an undeniable fact that search engine visibility has become a fundamental necessity to any business - both large and small.- Predictions for 2005 suggest that there will be a billion people online globally (IDC).- Research shows that 85% of all traffic to websites and 70% of all online purchases originate from a search engine or directory, like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. (According to the Georgia Institute of Technology and Jupiter Research.)Although search engines are hands down the best source of targeted visitors, due to the expensive nature of search engine promotion and pay per click advertising, most businesses with a low marketing budget simply give up on the whole idea. Those who still dare to tread the rocky, narrow road by themselves, end up tired and disillusioned by the whole experience.But what if the concept of search engine promotion was approached from an entirely different angle? Rather than trying to make your "website" visible, concentrate on making your "business" - the actual product(s) or service(s) - visible.A1CyberAds (http://www.a1cyberads.com) has taken the two best methods of advertising, namely classifieds and search engine promotion, and combined them into one, the CyberAd.The advertiser puts a full-page detailed description of his business on A1CyberAds, much like a large classified ad - large enough to satisfy the search engine spiders (also commonly known as robots or crawlers). This is then manually optimized by a professional and promoted to search engines and directories worldwide. In effect, this business is "piggybacking" on A1 to attain high rankings.In this way, the advertiser's goal to draw people to his "business" through search engine visibility is accomplished at a mere fraction of the price it would take to promote his own "website".An interesting side-effect that can be expected stems from the latest shift in Google's algorithms to giving preference to sites that are rich in content. This, however, is more easily said than done for the webmaster of a small site.On the other hand, if many small businesses were to come together on one site, that site will automatically become content rich, resulting in the fact that each CyberAd will have a better chance of ranking high.If you're one of the millions who have given up hope on search engine visibility, then piggyback promotion is definitely your answer. No more wasted time and money on search engine submission or pay per click keywords. And no more burning the night oil trying to stay on top of the ever-changing search engine algorithms.
Leia MaisThe hottest new craze to hit the Internet - Pixel Ads
by: Rebecca Gilbert
Every website needs traffic in order to generate business. Without traffic, your product will never be seen by the general public and your Internet Business is doomed for failure.I generate traffic to my website through traditional channels such as writing articles, submitting to directories, link exchanges, Search Engines, etc. I also have supplemented this traffic through paid advertising methods such as Pay per Clicks (PPC), paid inclusion, and banner rotations to name a few.I remember a few years ago when I could target a high traffic keyword through the Pay per Click search engines for .01 cents a click. Wow! Those were the days. Now, you’re lucky to get that same keyword for less than a $1.00 a click.While some of these advertising methods bring decent traffic, most are becoming oversaturated with advertisers, which automatically brings the price up and the effectiveness down.Recently, I stumbled across another advertising method that is affordable (and sometimes free) that is highly effective. In fact, I’m seeing these sites Alexa rankings shooting from 800,000 to the 1,000’s in less than a months time. The upward trends on the Alexa charts are without a doubt astonishing.This new type of advertising is called Pixel Advertising. Go to any of these pixel websites and you will see a multitude of small boxes. Each box is usually equal to a 10 x 10 pixel in size. The costs of renting these boxes are ranging from $5.00 a box to $25.00 a box, and some of them are actually free. Simply select the quantity of boxes you want and upload your image.The “BEST” part of this is that your image will stay on that site for up to 10 YEARS!The demand for this type of advertising exposure is in high demand and these sites are popping up all over the Internet. My suggestion is to find one of these sites that are just getting started and offering the free or low cost pixel boxes. (Example: http://www.best-pixel-ads.com) Get your image on these sites and sit back and wait approximately a month for the traffic to get going good. As the traffic surges, the free spots will not be available any longer and the cost of the pixel boxes will rise.You have nothing to loose and absolutely everything to gain. This type of advertising is sure to get oversaturated and less effective over time, but at the moment, it’s the cheapest most effective advertising method on the Internet today.
Marketing Your Business - How Do I Adapt To The Internet?
by: Martin Lemieux
By: Martin LemieuxThe way we do business is changing rapidly. From VOIP, video conferencing, email support, telephone answering services, and the almighty internet. As a business owner we are faced with hundreds of decisions our parents and grandparents never had to contend with.Some of you keep hearing from other business associates that internet marketing is the greatest method of increasing business and building a foundation for customer support. The only problem is, you've just learned how to send emails to people! Never mind learning about SEO, web design strategies, content analysis, pay per click, ROI, etc!Do you hire an SEO company or do you learn yourself?Investing time into your company is what we business owners do best but, in many cases, when it comes to learning new methods we quickly open our wallets to anyone out there who seems like the right person to help with your situation. This is the worst possible decision you can make.Diving into the internet marketing community with your wallet open will result in a disaster if you aren't properly trained on how to spend your money wisely. The key is not to hire an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company to take your money and promote your business behind your back. Try finding someone who offers you their "training services" in order to train yourself or someone within your organization to learn more about what is required online, how much effort it entails, and what pitfalls to avoid.As a business owner, if you blindly search online and pick a company, you have no idea what you could be getting yourself into. There are no secrets to promoting your business online, only a lot of hard work. That being said, anyone with a computer can easily learn how to get their company high search engine rankings. Search engines don't look to see whether or not you're running a scam. No, they are concentrated on delivering relevant results for your search terms.Old Fashioned Marketing Tactics:In the old days (and still practiced today), business owners would devise their own marketing plan through print media, business cards, postcards, flyers, brochures, newspapers, magazines, TV ads, and radio ads. By doing this, the company could track their results by trial and error and really find out what truly works for their industry.Old fashioned marketing is a simple trial and error process. So is the internet. Unfortunately, all too many business owners don't have a clue how to start their own internet marketing process and they fail to even put their foot in the water. Instead, many business owners simply hire anyone they can find that seems reputable and then turn a blind eye and say; "Here's my budget, you are the professional, you tell me what to do". This is simply preposterous. You've worked so hard to get to where you are now by learning and adapting and as soon as it comes to marketing your business online, you simply shut down.I hope that this article has awoken some of you. Don't be afraid to dive into the internet's vast realm of marketing potential. So what if you fail the first time around. When we started out, we had no idea what we were doing, 3 years later our website ranks higher than many other internet marketing companies world wide.The ULTIMATE secret to internet marketing is simple...A concept I call "T.I.M.E."T - Try and try againI - Internet changes all the timeM - Marketing opportunities are around every cornerE - Eventually you too can succeedThink of it this way (Illustration only)Here is a timeline of your internet marketing campaign:Start date - Research only: June 7th, 2005Hired a website designer - August 31st, 2005Website Complete - October 15th, 2005Website launch - October 20th, 2005Started an internet marketing campaign - November 1st, 2005Started a Pay Per Click campaign - November 10th, 2005Made a sale - November 15th, 2005Increased our website’s link popularity - January 1st, 2006Website gets hit by the Google Sandbox Effect - January 20th, 2006Increased our Pay Per Click campaign - February 5th, 2006Made some changes to the website - February 21st, 2006Increase the website’s link popularity - February 28th, 2006Got listed in the Yahoo directory - March 3rd, 2006So here you are 10 months out of the gate and your website may still be "locked in the Google sandbox" ( Search for "Google Sandbox" in Google for an explanation). Your link popularity is just starting to grow a little bit. Hopefully you haven't tried to link to everyone you can find and are actually linking to companies that are directly related to your business. Your PPC campaign is doing good. People are finally starting to come through Yahoo & MSN search results. You can sometimes find your company in the 200th spot within search results in Google and you are now wondering why this is taking so long.Welcome to the world of marketing your company on the internet!!!This timeline representation from above is just something to show you how "T.I.M.E." is the key of success on the internet and all we are required to do is keep plugging away and keep learning more every chance we get.For most people who simply open up their wallets, they would have learned nothing in those 10 months and for everyone else starting an internet marketing campaign, those who didn't simply just open their wallets, their websites are probably 10 times further than yours!In Conclusion:Learn more about how to increase your marketing campaign on the internet. If you have to, hire someone in-house who can learn for you and give you updates on everything. If you truly need to hire an SEO company make sure it's for the right reasons like "starting and finishing a marketing campaign with you learning in the process", or "enhancing a campaign that is already in place", or "to revise your website’s conversion rate" or "create a impactful key word optimization campaign", etc. Take your time and use "T.I.M.E." to increase your business slowly but effectively on the internet.I hope you've enjoyed this article!
Adwords, Affiliate Marketing And Cashing In On The Xmas Spend
by: Darren Yates
It's going on right now.The biggest Xmas spend online ever.It stands to reason that each year more and more people get online. More of the people online begin using their credit cards to shop online and more of these shoppers realise the great convenience that shopping online offers. So they start to spend more on a wider variety of products and / or services.So when Xmas comes around it makes more sense than ever to do the shopping online from the comfort of their home. They avoid the crowds, the traffic, stay in the warm, comparison shop, read online reviews and then get exactly what they want and get it cheaper too.You can tap into this huge spending surge right now by utilizing Google Adwords and Affiliate schemes.Things have changed at Google HQ when it comes to Adwords you can no longer link directly to an affiliate site.You may now wonder how you can make any money with Adwords and affiliate schemes.As it goes the change in policy at Adwords had zero effect on the most profitable affiliate promoters. In fact for the smart ones and even the not so smart ones it actually increased their profits!How? well it's simple.The smart affiliates didn't send their prospects directly to an affiliate site anyway. Instead they constructed their own site on which they presold the product or service they were promoting. By presell I mean they softly emphasised the benefits of the product, showed mouth-watering pictures, made comparisons to other similar products to emphasise the benefits of the product they were promoting. In essence they wrote a favourable, and what appeared to be an unbiased review.You can do exactly the same. You don't need a full site just a single landing page will do. You could even have a page for each affiliate product you're promoting on the back of one of your existing sites.The single biggest thing to keep in mind when you do this is that you must not go for the hard sell. Try to be unbiased and if there are bad points to the product you're promoting via Adwords be sure to mention them. In fact I'd go so far as to say, make sure you list something you're not happy with.I know that sounds nuts but it will give your review much more credibility than if you gushed overly enthusiastically about how great this product is.Mention a bad point or a minor irritation but then be sure to follow with a major good point or qualify why exactly you didn't like this one feature.What should you promote?You need something either with a good conversion or a high commission. Preferably both. You also need to find low cost keywords and lots of them if possible. That goes for anything you promote really.Consider what people will be buying this Xmas. What has the largest price tag but is still in high demand? Ideally stay away from the obvious e.g. ipods, Xbox's etc there will be too much competition and so to high a click cost.In conclusion the method of promotion mentioned above has served many people well and in fact resulted in, believe it or not, an annual six figure income for more than one lucky affiliate marketer.Get your Adwords Xmas campaigns running now. Each day you hold of on starting your Xmas Adwords campaigns you loose money.
Advertising Your Work From Home Internet Business With PPC Search Engines
by: Tom Worsley
If you want to make money online with a work from home business then you are going to need lots of good targeted traffic to your web site and or affiliate links. One way to get good targeted traffic is to pay for it. I know you were hoping to do this business of yours without spending a dime right? Well if that’s what you are thinking you better keep working for someone else and forget about working from home with your own internet business. I have been paying for traffic ever since I started my online business over 4 years ago and one of the best sources of targeted traffic is through pay per click search engines (PPC) or pay for placement search alternatives like Google adwords or Yahoo Sponsor Listings, formerly Overture.com . Google adwords and Yahoo Sponsor Listings are the kings of pay per placement search engines. They are also the most expensive but you will get the most targeted traffic from them. If you cannot get a free listing in the top 10 on their main search results under the sponsored listings then you may want to consider pay per placement. Sponsored listings usually appear at the top above regular listings on Yahoo, and down the right side of the page at Google. If Google and Yahoo are too rich for your liking then try some of the smaller PPC search engines like 7Search, Findwhat and or Kanoodle. I have put together a web page with links to these PPC search engines at the following web page. CLICK HERE-----> http://bigmoolla.com/ppc.html The key to good PPC advertising is to find cheap key words under .50 cents per click that will land you in the top 5 positions. There is no need to be number 1. A number 5 placement may cost you a few cents per click less and you will likely get the same traffic or in some cases even more than a number 1 spot. Try to pick as many key words as you can that are directly related to your product or service. If you are advertising a work from home internet business try breaking down what I just typed. Work from home, home internet business, internet business, work from home business, home business. YOU GET THE PICTURE. If you want to advertise a product like multivitamins try keywords like vitamins, supplements, vitamin supplements, health supplements, diet supplements, multivitamins. YOU GET THE PICTURE. If you don’t have your own web site and only an affiliate link you may have to get a redirect URL from someone like http://tinyurl.com . Most of the PPC engines will not allow you to use an affiliate link. But you can get a tinyurl for free and have it re-direct to your affiliate link. If your affiliate program allows you to key code for testing purposes like SFI does then you can get several tinyurls and direct them to a different key code. That way you can actually test your PPC ad campaign to see which key words are working the best for you. This is important if you want to reduce your advertising dollars without sacrificing traffic to your web site. (We all want to do this right?) PPC is only one advertising method that you should be taking advantage of, but it’s an important one so give it a try if you have not already. It may just change the way you do business and effect how much money you make with your work from home internet business.
SEO Advertisting & Pay Per Click PPC
by: daniel chow
Advertising can be an easy way to break into the internet but there are many downsides to it. Unless you are running a community based site, have a site offering very unique content, a valuable service or product the traffic usually only comes as long as your paying for it. Of course ad campaigns can also be very expensive to run and maintain so you need to be sure your squeezing everything you can out of it. You should only proceed with a ad campaign if you are positive your site is the best it can be, otherwise you may just be pouring money away. There are thousands of companies on the internet who offer to provide you with ad campaigns, many of which never deliver, do not let any of these points put you off advertising. If you want quality traffic with affordable prices you are recommended to stick with the major search engines and their partners. Google Adwords, Overture and MSN are all well respected companies which will deliver you the best traffic. All of the forementioned websites use pay per click systems which can be perfect as they drive traffic with keywords you specify directly at your site, these advertisers are all interlinked with the main search engines so you should expect to get the most widespread sections of the population from them. Because they have the traffic numbers to support ad campaigns there can sometimes be bidding wars on popular keywords, I advise you to stay away from popular keywords and do your research. Overture provides a free Keyword Selector Tool which can help you find out how much traffic similiar keywords recieve each month, these are usually a lot cheaper and still provide the same high quality traffic. As I mentioned before advertising wont necessarily mean a good flow of traffic after you stop paying, other routes of advertising can mean you get listed in a search engines immediately for a set fee. Yahoo offers the ability to pay for a index within their search engine or directory, although your site still needs to abide by the same rules as other sites it gives you the opportunity to get indexed immediately within the search engine, a more subtle way of advertising power. Alternatively you can find quality sites that are related to yours on Sitepoint.com and WebHostingTalk.com who may be willing to put a one way link up for a nominal fee. You may find websites on the internet offering "banner exchanges", "free traffic" and other such promises, I wouldent look at them twice unless you want to lose out. The traffic they send you is of the worst quality, many of these websites operate bots, own networks of link farms and even pay people to visit your site. This of course means that no one being referred from these sites are actually interested in your content or services, in worst case scenarios you may even end up being banned from search engines due to these malicious sites. Even if they are reputable companies it is hard to judge whether they will work for you, many of the smaller search engine companies simply do not get the traffic to give you value for money.
If You Build It, They Will Come
by: Adrian Kennelly
...No they won't. On the web, building a web site is not enough. If there are no links to the site anywhere, no-one is going to visit it. The site won't even be listed in any of the search engines without some incoming links. To get traffic, you will need to do some promotion.Web DirectoriesThe basic part of any promotion campaign, web directories, whist they may not generate much in the way of traffic, will help in your site's search engine ranking. A good list of free, non-reciprocal, search engine friendly directories can be found at http://info.vilesilencer.com.Pay Per Click AdvertisingThis is advertising such as PPC Search Engines, like Yahoo!'s Overture, and contextual advertising, like Google's AdWords. Be warned, it is very easy to go through a substantial amount of money for no reward using these services if you are not careful. AdWords (amongst others) lets you pick a maximum budget a day, but, although $5 may not sound like much, $5/day is $150+ per month. Better make sure your keywords are correctly identified, and, in preference, not highly competed on, and that your sales copy is good enough before doing this.Quality Traffic, not Just TrafficIt's what everyone is after, more traffic to their website. Traffic is easy to obtain, though. Autosurfers, manual hit exchanges and purchased traffic will all send visitors to your website. However, this traffic is just visitors, many of whom will just burn up your bandwidth for no reward. Unless you are receiving decent money for pay per impression advertising, such as banners and popups, this traffic can be totally valueless.Repeat TrafficUnless you only require visitors to visit your site once, because you are selling a one-off product, and your sales copy is fantastic enough that they are hooked to buy on the first visit (and if you are regulary doing this, write an ebook explaining how and sell it), you will want visitors to return. If there is nothing of value at your site, visitors may come once, but they won't come back of their own accord. Typically, it is estimated that a prospective customer will be exposed seven times to a product etc. before buying.Reciprocal LinkingWhilst somewhat frowned upon, and generally thought to not be as valuable as one-way linking (see below) for search engine optimization, a relevant reciprocal linking campaign can be an important traffic generating tool. swap links with sites in a related, but non-competing, business to your own. It isn't really a good idea to link to competitors; although visitors will be interested in your product, there is a good chance you will lose them to your competitor, especially if their website or product is better or looks better than your own. Not a desirable outcome. For example, a web hosting site could link to a site that sells scripts and programs; visitors to one will more than likely use the other, but the sites are not in direct competition. You can also swap links with web directories that require a reciprocal link.One-Way LinkingConsidered the best form of link for SEO purposes, this can also be a good source of traffic. There are a number of ways of getting one-way links. The easiest is submission to free web directories (see above). Another good source is by writing articles relevant to your site or industry, putting a resource box at the bottom, then posting the article on the directories such as GoArticles, or by sumbitting to the ezines. Webmasters and ezine publishers are always in need of fresh content, and will publish your article for free. The hardest way of getting one-way inbound links is by having websites voluntarily link to you. The only way to do this is by providing a valuable tool, service or resource that other webmasters will want to direct their visitors to .
10 Adsense Tips for Maximum Click Through Rates
by: Christos Varsamis
1) You should make your Adsense ads look as a part of your web page. They shouldn't look like an Ad. People are negative to advertising. They search the internet for content not ads. Especially Banners have a less of 0,5% response. Their days are over. Imagine if you have an Adsense ad looking like the typical Banner with different colors. It will not be profitable.2) Text ads are better than image ads. Like before, people are more responsive to text than images. In a way it is considered as a part of the online document and is more clickable. 3) No Border ads. One of the best tricks is to erase the borders of Adsense ads and make them again having the same color with your website's background. 4) No other advertisements. The first reason is to be legitimate according to Google's Rules and the second more practical reason is that you do not want to distract your visitor's attention and go somewhere else without clicking your Adsense ads.5) Placement. Even if you have the best Ad, people will not respond if they don't see it instantly. The best place to see the ad is the top of your web page and the next is asideyour document's text. Visitors will click it more frequently since it will look like your text.6) Traffic. Try to use legitimate ways of traffic. Some people use Google Adwords and other Pay per Click search engines. The problem here is to search very carefully for the right niche and keywords in order to make your campaigns profitable. Other ways is link popularity techniques like link exchange directories, software or even mass blog submission techniques. Don't use link farms and classifieds for that, because search engine's algorithms are extremely clever and they will ban your listings.7) Do not rely on one website. Yes you can make money with one website but try to make as more as possible.8) Relevant content is King. Articles are one of the best tactics to create huge websites that will be crawled by search engine's robots. Don't forget search engines exist to provide relevant content at first. One excellent resource to automate your article directory procedure is http://www.articleequalizer.com .You can create an article database in minutes which otherwise is time consuming and it would take you a week! 9) Use site maps. Google's site maps visit your site and crawl it much sooner that any other submission process. More information is here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps 10) Relevant ads. It's one of the most important factors for Adsense success. If the internet user can't find relevant ad in your page he or she won't click the ad. Would you act differently? So it's critical to create relevant resource for your web page. In order to do that, you must do the following steps.First the file must be saved with the appropriate name for example: Golf-Secrets.html if your article is about golf. So the webpage will be:www.yoursitesname.com/Golf-Secrets.html Second thing you must change is your title tag. For example: Title Golf-Secrets article titleThird is the heading. The first sentence must have this heading: 12 Golf secrets .
You Gotta Think -- Strategic Internet Marketing!
by: Mark Williams
- Mark Williams ©Have you ever been lost in the woods - wondering around aimlessly, not knowing where to go or what to do next? Most online marketers are lost in the woods of the internet.So if you want to get out of the woods and be an online marketer, you better start thinking strategically! That is, you need to practice strategic internet marketing techniques.You're probably asking, what are strategic internet marketing techniques?Let me start by telling you what it is not!Strategic internet marketing is not buying 100,000 guaranteed hits.It is not aimlessly placing banner ads all over the internet. It is not about using free classified ads and it is certainly not about depending on surfing for traffic sites.Strategic internet marketing is simply about having an advertising PLAN that utilizes proven marketing tactics to get high converting results. Every promotion must have a purpose and it is critical to track the results of each and every advertisement.Tracking is vital to finding ads that are successful and more importantly finding those that are NOT. Ads that do not perform need to be thrown out and those that do convert need to be rolled out on a larger scale.If you are going to be serious about marketing online then you have to get serious about tracking your marketing methods. I will only say this once, if you do not track the results of your advertising methods you might as well throw your money out the window of a moving vehicle.Now, that you know the importance of tracking your ads, let's talk about marketing techniques that work! To make a living marketing on the internet, you need to use these methods. If you don't, you will join the long list of people that say you can't make any money selling on the internet.Below I have listed some of the marketing techniques I have used to build a profitable online business from the ground up:Pay per Click Advertising - For the fastest and most predictable results Pay per Click can't be beat. If done properly, you can get immediate traffic that is laser targeted and high converting.Write and Submit Articles - This is one of my favorite marketing techniques because it does two things for you. The first is that it builds credibility for you and your web site. Second, it is a tremendous way to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site for free. You don't have to be Hemingway, your articles just need to be informative and have very few grammatical errors.Start Your Own Ezine - This is probably the most powerful marketing tactic on the web today. Having your own list of subscribers to send a newsletter to on a regular basis is powerful! I would much rather obtain a new subscriber over a single hit to my web site.Banner Ads - Banner ads can be extremely successful and are a very cost effective way to drive traffic to your site. The most effective banner ads are text rather than graphics. Write a compelling ad that forces them to click, and this technique can provide you lots of sales.Viral Marketing - Give something away that people can use and put links to your web site in it. Information is a powerful tool in marketing. Allow them to share it with their friends and family. Before you know, you will be getting a stampede of traffic to your site.Linking - Reciprocal linking is critical to your online success. This is a time consuming tactic but it is well worth your time and effort. Search engines judge the importance of your web site by the number (and quality) of incoming links pointing to your site. By the way, writing articles is a great way to get high quality incoming links pointing to your site.Ezine Ads - Purchasing ads in quality ezines is like doing joint ventures without sharing the profits. You need to identify ezines in your niche that you can run promotions in. This is an excellent way to get your ads in front of thousands of potential customers at an excellent value.Search Engine Optimization - You need to make sure that your pages are fully optimized for the search engines. The cheapest and most targeted traffic you can receive still comes from high search engine rankings! Make sure your site is optimized and anchored to certain keywords that are relevant to your site.If you will stick with these proven marketing strategies you will get more laser targeted traffic to your site than you know what to do with. You may even have to get more server space and buy a wheel barrow to get your deposits to the bank!So forget about the gimmick marketing tactics that are all over the internet. Stick to what works! This list is not that long and online marketing is not that complicated. To be successful you need to implement proven marketing methods and have a strategic internet marketing plan. Make sure that every ad is tracked and that it has a definite purpose in your marketing plan.So quit wondering around aimlessly in the woods and start thinking about marketing strategically!
Your Real Estate Website Template or Custom solution?
by: Michael Alves
Online marketing for Professional Realtors Building your Real Estate website with template or, custom solution.Online marketing for Realtors involves the application of many different online tools. As a professional Realtor, the decision as to which of these tools is best for you can be somewhat confusing. Here is a break down and brief explanation of some of the many options available to realtors in this modern age.First you need a website. Your Real Estate website introduces you to you customers and establishes you as a professional in your field. Your website should be attractive, informative and easy for your potential customers to navigate. There are an endless number of people and companies online that can build a website for you. However, I would suggest you have your site constructed by an individual or company that specializes in building Real Estate websites.Next you have to decide if a "template" website is right for you or, should you look for a "custom built" solution. There are several online companies that have excellent, Real Estate templates available. They have the look and feel of a professionally designed site and include all the bells and whistles. Included in many of these templates are MLS or IDX capabilities, dream home finders, featured listings, pages as well as mortgage calculators, dynamic mapping to available listings, contact us, and about us pages and much more.A custom designed website is also a very real option. There are web developers out there who concentrate on Real Estate sites. There is a greater amount of flexibility to a custom designed site. Custom designers utilize the most cutting edge technologies available, such as flash, slide shows, dissolving text, mouse rollovers, virtual tours, and more. A custom Real estate website is a thing of beauty and can give you a truly unique online presence.There are two other factors you should give a great deal of thought and consideration to when making your decision. There is the cost involved, but equally as important is how much control you want to have over your site after it is finished. Down the road you will inevitably want to make changes to your site. You need to consider how this will be done.There is an excellent template driven, Real Estate website company online that I would highly recommend. To begin with you can get a Free website to work on and customer support while you are learning is 100% Free. They have over sixty custom built templates available and you can change your template anytime you like, on the fly. There is no software to download, you simply go online, log in and work on your site. When you decide to publish your new website, you can have your completed website live and on the internet for less than twenty dollars per month. This solution allows you to have complete control over your website and at a cost per month that is less than the cost of taking the kids to McDonalds for lunch.A custom solution will most likely cost, anywhere between nineteen hundred and thirty five hundred dollars. The expense can be well worth it, as they are one of a kind, and unique to you and the professional image that you want to present. However, You will have to contact your webmaster when you want to make any changes. There is usually an expense involved. I have only been able to find one company that offers a completely custom solution, and gives you complete control of your website after it is completed, and has 100% Free customer support for as long as you own your site.
Getting NON-STOP Traffic By Writing Articles
by: Beth Scott
Dreaming of getting tons of targeted traffic to your site without spending a red cent? Fantasizing of effective free advertising?Then you should deffinetely start writing articles for promotion!The things you’ve gotta love about articles are:A. They’re free to submit, allowing thousands of people to read them (and see your web link) without costing you a dime.B. They prepare a visitor for purchasing your product or service much more effectively than a three line Pay Per Click ad possibly could.C. They create a ton of inbound links to your website, which in turn boosts your Search Engine ranking (making it easier for people to find your site).So, whether you have a product to sell, an affiliate product to promote, a newsletter, or just want more truly targeted traffic to your website, writing articles is THE way to go.Here are the 4 steps to getting NON-STOP traffic using articles:1. Write an informative, interesting article that your target audience would enjoy reading. Make sure that the subject covered in your article relates to the content on your site or you won’t convert very many sales or opt-ins.For instance if your website caters to dog owners: DO write an article on the different breeds of dogs or anything else to do with dogs, but DON’T write an article about cats.2. If you don’t believe you can write a very good article then pay someone else to write it for you. Elance.com is an excellent place to find potential article writers. Someone on Elance will write you a quality article for a low one time fee, and then you just slap your name on it and promote it as your own (this is perfectly legal).3. The next step is writing the “ad” that is inserted at the end of your article in the byline, author’s bio, about the auther, resource box or whatever else it may be called. This little 3 to 5 line “ad” will entice your readers to visit your site.EXAMPLE:Jane Doe is the author of “Hot Copywriting Tips,” a must have online newsletter for all website owners. Go to http://www.JanesSite.com to grab your FREE copy now.4. Submit your article to every article site that has a category relevant to your article, and you’re ready to roll. My favorite article sites are:www.ideamarketers.comwww.goarticles.comwww.articlecity.comwww.articlesfactory.comwww.buzzle.comwww.ezinearticles.comwww.netterweb.comwww.isnare.comNow get started promoting your articles. Get them out there fast if you want to set your traffic counter spinning.
Gomvents Corp. and giveRAMP.com Release New Website Submission Software!
by:
Boston, MA (PRWEB) January 6 2004--Gomvents Corp. and giveRAMP.com Release New Website Submission Software! It can be found at (http://download.com.com/3000-2181-10253317.html?part=6245381&subj=dlpage&tag=button)What is so great about this software and who is it for?If you own a website then this is for you! This Website submission software submits your URL everywhere it needs to be by placing your website on over one million search engines, directories, and link pages to get listed in the search engines--1,239,820 to be exact. This software by Gomvents Corp. will submit your websites and every page of them to every search engine and directory out there. Gomvents Corp. will optimize your site's code free of charge through email communication after you purchase the software. Not just meta-tags, the whole site, meaning every page and all the code (Text, alt tags, comments, other relevancy issues, etc.). Gomvents Corp. also hand submits all your URLs to AltaVista.com. Gomvents Corp. also provides hand website submission to Dmoz.org and other major directories. Every purchase also comes with lifetime tech support and a $10 credit at the giveRAMP.com pay per click search engine. NOTE: To buy, send $45 PayPal to billing@gomvents.comDirect all other questions to contact@gomvents.comYou may also choose to install the giveRAMP.com Toolbar, an option in Website Submitter 1.0The new giveRAMP.com Pop-Up Blocking Toolbar (Found at http://www.giveramp.com/install.html) offers an easy way to search giveRAMP.com for all your favorite products and research topics. The toolbar blocks all types of pop-ups and we challenge you to find a better solution to blocking pop-ups! Pop-ups can often contain active-x and other auto-installing programs including viruses and Trojans! You can also highlight search terms with the giveRAMP.com Toolbar showing you exactly how relevant the search results you just got are! Unlike Google's and Alexa's toolbars, the giveRAMP.com Toolbar does not send any information to anyone! It is a free service to also users to search the giveRAMP.com database.The three main focuses of the giveRAMP.com search engine are paid product and service listings, along with relevant research results if you are looking up a historical fact or even a product review. Check out www.giveRAMP.com for more information. You can even "Add to Favorites" by clicking a button down towards the bottom-left of the page to bookmark the site for future use.About giveRAMP.comA subsidiary of Gomvents Corp., giveRAMP.com offers pay-per-click search engine advertising with no setup fees, no monthly fees and a 1 cent minimum cost per click price. You can have your website displayed in the giveRAMP.com search results and affiliate sites by purchasing pre-paid advertising, similar to a pre-paid phonecard. You can start your campaign with as little as $10, and you can "recharge" your account as often as you like. Your account (like the phonecard) only uses credits after someone has searched for a key word or phrase that is relevant to your site (that you submit to us) and then clicks though to your site.
Five Steps to Profit from Google Adwords
by: Gerardas Norkus
Although I was marketing online since 1997 and was makingmoney on the Internet, as soon as I discovered the famousGoogleCash ebook I was instantly hooked. It seemed so easyto profit from Google Adwords: just join an affiliateprogram, promote it on Google Adwords pay per click (ppc)search engine starting from only five dollars, and watchyour profits soar...However, soon I realized that it was not that simple. Youmust know how to select profitable affiliate programs, howto research keywords and group them in ad groups, how tobid and manage your campaigns, how to track your keywordsand ads, etc.The subject was very interesting for me and I just keptreading a great deal of information related to makingincome with Google Adwords: ebooks, guides, tutorials ande-mail courses.After trying to implement the knowledge gained inpractice, after long trial and error months, I was finallymaking profit and not losing my money.Here are five little-known steps that you should take inorder to profit from Goolge Adwords:1. Target profitable two-tier or residual income nichemarkets.2. Use effective tools and software for your GoogleAdwords keyword research.3. Get a domain name, a hosting account, and create asimple landing page with an opt-in form.4. Promote your landing page with Google Adwords andcapture your visitors' e-mail addresses.5. Follow up with your subscribers and profit bypre-selling your niche products or services.Let's quickly analyze each of the steps outlined above andsee why you should stick to the plan if you want tomaximize your income from Google Adwords.Promote Profitable Niche Two Tier Or Residual IncomeProducts And ServicesFirst, the products or services that you will promote withGoogle Adwords should target a niche where people have lotsof money and are willing to spend it.Second, you can make much more money if you advertisetwo-tier or residual income products or services.Usually, majority of Google Adwords books teach you tochoose an affiliate program from publisher networks likeClickBank, Commission Junction, LinkShare, etc. But theseare the programs that everybody use. So, try to do aresearch on two-tier or residual income programs in yourtarget niche, and you may be surprized with the results...Two-tier programs reward you for signing up affiliates.This way you earn commissions not only on your sales, youearn commissions on their sales too.A good example of residual income programs are web hostingaffiliate programs where you can profit from your saleslifelong!Use Effective Tools for Your Google Adwords Keyword ResearchFirst, did you know that you can spy on your competitorskeywords by using an amazing tool called GoogSpy:http://www.googspy.comSimply, enter a domain name of your direct competitors andsee what keywords they are bidding on. This little-knownsecret could make your online profits soar instantly.Second, as you probably know, the competition amongadvertisers in ppc marketing is fierce. That's why youshould avoid using only free keyword research tools likeOverture's Keyword Selector:http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestionYou will miss lots of profitable keywords if you do so. Tosucceed with ppc the only tool that works is WordTracker:http://www.adwords-revealed.com/wordtrackerYou should take at least a one day's subscription when youare ready for your keyword research.Get a Domain name, a Hosting Account, and Create a SimpleLanding PageIf you don't have your own web site for your niche productor service that you advertise with ppc search engines, youare leaving money on the table. Here's why...Capture Your Google Adwords Visitors' E-mail AddressesYes, you can promote affiliate links directly with GoogleAdwords. However, this way you will lose lots of prospectsthat could be contacted later.Picture this...When you promote an affiliate link you drive trafficdirectly to your affiliate web site. If a visitor doesn'tpurchase the product or service immediately, the chancesare he or she will never purchase from your affiliate linkagain.Of course, top affiliate programs place cookies on theirweb site visitors' browsers. This way you get paid even ifyour referral returns to your affiliate web site later.That's why it is important to select the best affiliateprograms from the begining.If you can achieve 1% visitor to sales conversion ratio(it means 1 sale from 100 visitors) with Google Adwords -you have a winner!Imagine... What if you could set up a simple opt-in formon your landing page and write a great copy encouragingyour visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or an e-mailcourse? You would enjoy not 1% but 20 - 30% visitor tosubscriber conversion ratio when driving targeted trafficto your web site with Google Adwords!You see, when you capture email addresses, you build alist. And, as they say - money is in the list!Follow Up With Your Subscribers and Pre-Sell Your Productsand ServicesThis step is where you make real profit. Simply, createquality targeted content in your newsletter or ecourse andfollow up with your prospects using autoresponders.It is said that online products and services are soldafter 7 - 9 follow up messages. Besides, you can contactyour subscribers anytime later as new quality products hityour targeted niche market.This simple surefire action plan should help you boostyour homebased Google Adwords business profit instantly. Asyou can see, without a web site you cannot profit as muchas you could by simply creating a one-page website.
Determining the Value of Links from Link Renting
by: Aaron Wall
What is Link Renting?Link renting is a means to ‘rent’ the popularity and traffic flow of another site – you pay a monthly fee in return for a text link pointing to your site. In doing so, you can directly and indirectly drive more targeted traffic toward your website.Many industries such as travel, pharmacy, pornography, and gaming have search results which are hyper competitive and require heavy advertising or aggressive SEO techniques. Some niche websites may see an even greater ROI on smart link rentals since many of their competitors may not include link renting in their online marketing budgets.Some rented links provide great value in direct targeted traffic, whereas some other links provide greater value from the effect they have on search relevancy.Most links are rented on a monthly basis with an option to renew at the end of the month. Some link prices can be as low as a few dollars a month whereas some can cost thousands per month.There is no singular one-size-fits-all way to directly assume the value of a link. Most effective marketing has risks associated with it, but you can minimize the risks and maximize your return by breaking the value of the link down into its elements:1. Direct traffic from link renting2. Viral effect of advertising3. Effects of link rentals on search relevancy.1. Direct Traffic from Link Renting:Link renting can drive significant direct traffic. The first things you need to know are:* what is the quality level of the traffic?* how related is this audience to my product?* how much traffic does the site receive? What is the Quality Level of the Traffic:Where does the bulk of their traffic come from? Someone recently asked about ePilot, the pay per click search engine, at Search Engine Watch forums. Andrew Goodman replied "The first question I would ask myself would be: 'where does ePilot's traffic come from?' Answer isn't clear? Then it would be no surprise that the so-called traffic doesn't convert to anything."This same concept holds true with any site. If you do not see any quality inbound links that could indicate a problem: or they could get most of their traffic from pay-per-click ads. Whatever the case, if you are going to spend money renting links for traffic, make sure you know where their traffic comes from.How Related is the Audience:It will be somewhat of a guesstimate as to how exactly how related the traffic will be, but generally it is fairly obvious when something is on theme or off theme. Some things you may want to consider when determining traffic quality:* What is the mood / mind set of their traffic? Related traffic may not be traffic that converts. At the 2004 Webmaster World Las Vegas Conference a speaker mentioned that a website about prom hairstyles may not be a good place to advertise prom dresses since girls do not usually look at prom hairdos until after they have already purchased their prom dresses.* What product should I advertise? Sometimes it makes sense to send traffic to your home page while other times it is more logical to advertise a specific product because it is hot or more related to that particular audience.How Much Traffic Does the Site Receive:Most honest webmasters who sell ad space understand that the traffic they receive is a large part of their ad value and should have no problems giving you that information.Some systems such as Alexa also track traffic, but their statistics can be inaccurate due to their limited distribution.. The best way to use such systems is not for traffic estimates but for comparisons between sites. Note that Alexa has a heavy bias toward webmaster resource type sites. Additionally other companies such as Hitwise may provide more accurate traffic statistics.From the base traffic level there is a bunch more research you can do to determine how much traffic the site may bring:* Who currently advertises on the site? You may want to ask them about their advertising experience. Some ad networks such as AdBright show past advertisers average cost per click and ad renewal rates.* How many ads are on the page? Each additional ad will split up some of the traffic.* Where does your ad sit? Ads that are tucked away in the footer or in common ad space may get less exposure and drive less traffic. Ads near the content may gain additional exposure and drive more traffic.* What ad formats can be used? Certain ad creatives may provide greater value than other ads.* What is the ad turnover rate? Advertisers tend to stay with a site that delivers traffic. A high turnover rate may indicate other problems.* Have advertisers made any suggestions? Ask if any of their past advertisers made any suggestions or stated that they found any particular setup as being especially helpful.* Is the traffic seasonal? Some sites have large shifts in traffic volume due to seasonal factors.2. Viral Effect of Advertising:Some ads go through click tracking systems which may prevent them from being indexed by search engines. This means that the only value of those particular links would come from direct traffic. Sometimes ads lead to additional exposure though.3. Effect of Link Rentals on Search Relevancy:Many links have a greater indirect value than direct value.When someone links to your site it is seen by search engines as a vote of quality. The anchor text and other page elements such as the page title and headers may also help search engines further classify the link. On image links the image alt text plays the roll of the anchor text.On the commercial web many links are bought and sold, and thus for search engines to remain relevant they must find ways to regulate link purchasing.Some of the things you may want to look for when buying links to help maximize your ROI and minimize your risks:* Are the links direct links? Links that go through an ad server usually do not help build your link popularity.* Is the page on theme? On topic links from industry hubs are given significantly more weighting in clustering or community based algorithms such as Teoma's topic distillation and Google's Hilltop. If the site allows off topic links then it has a greater chance of having its link popularity blocked or devalued.* How many links are on the page? If a page sells an unlimited number of ads then the outbound link popularity is split up many ways, and that also could look a bit unnatural to search engines. If there are hundreds of internal links on a page then each additional link will be getting an exceptionally small share of link popularity.* What anchor text can I use? If you can use descriptive anchor text then the value of the link is greater since the link text helps search engines understand what your site is about.* What is the cost difference between site wide and individual page links? Generally site wide links may drive significantly more direct traffic, but likely they do not provide much additional weight beyond a single link from the best page on the site.* What is the PageRank of the page? Generally many people place too much value on PageRank, but a higher PageRank does equate to greater connectivity and slightly additional value.* Who links to the page and to the site? If the page or site is well connected within your topical community then search engines will likely consider links from it as being far more important than links from pages which are not as well connected. Summary:To best determine the value of a link you need to consider both its direct and indirect effects. Generally it is best to buy on topic links since they provide both direct and indirect value.
Tips for Successful Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
by: Eddie Machaalani
IntroductionPay per click (PPC) is by far one of the easiest and quickest methods of driving targeted, consistent traffic to your website. While this may seem like a daunting method of advertising for some, it's actually quite easy and can end up becoming that one marketing method that you can't live without.What I'd like to do today is provide some tips and techniques that I personally use when creating and monitoring PPC ad's. Hopefully these tips will help you in your future marketing endeavors.Experimenting With Different Search EnginesThere are many PPC search engines, with some being better than others. The top two are Google and Yahoo, which was previously known as Overture. It's a good idea to start your PPC campaigns with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.Generally speaking, I've found Google Adwords is better for more technically orientated products or services, including software, hardware, web design etc. Yahoo, on the other hand, is better for general consumer products, including insurance, toys, music etc.What I wrote in the previous paragraph is very general, and you should analyze your campaigns carefully to see where they are performing their best. We'll discuss this in detail a little later in the article.Selecting the Right KeywordsThe keyword selection process is probably the most important of all when it comes to creating your PPC ad's. You'll need to select keywords that are specific to your product or service offering, but you need to be careful not to select keywords that are extremely popular, as this may deplete your PPC funds sooner than expected.The keyword selection process begins by asking yourself just one question:"If I was searching for a product just like mine, which words or phrases would I search for?"Using your answer(s) to this question as your base, you can then use a thesaurus and common sense to start building your keyword list with plurals, synonyms, similar words, etc.To see which keywords your competitors are using, simply try searching for them. If you see a PPC ad along the side for your competitor, then note that keyword down and add it to your list.Another way of coming up with great keywords is to use the overture search suggestion tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/Type in a set of keywords and it will list similar keywords, including the number of times that keyword has been searched for on Overture (Yahoo) in the last month!There's often a fine line between selecting keywords that are either too specific or keywords that are too general. Try to keep away from these, as they can often result in wasted PCP funds.A typical example of this would be an ad that I created recently for our latest product, TrackPoint, which -- not coincidently -- is an internet marketing return on investment (ROI) tracking tool. Although the product is heavily geared towards internet marketing, using such a broad term would have made it virtually impossible to compete with the other advertisers.The term "internet marketing" is searched for 825,674 times per month on Overture alone. Combined with the huge number of different advertisers that target this keyword, the top bid for "internet marketing" on Google AdWords is $13.84 per click! With an average of 240 clicks per day, a single day of advertising alone would cost $505!Now, unless you have an extremely high conversion rate of visitors to sales, or you're selling a high priced item that usually has a high customer acquisition cost, I suggest targeting more specific keywords. Not only will this decrease your overall competition with other advertisers, but it will also increase the chances of turning your newly found web site visitors into customers.Back to my earlier example, I chose to be specific with my keywords. One keyword was "ROI tracking", which is searched for 1,828 times per month on Overture and has a much cheaper top bid. This keyword is also more targeted to the product I was marketing, meaning that a large percentage of people clicking on my ad should turn into customers.It's also helpful to note that taking the top bid is not always necessary, and anywhere in the top 5-10 can generate great leads. This really does come down to budget and analysis.Attracting People to Your AdNow that we've selected our keywords, we need to get those searching to click on our ad, which in turn will result in them clicking through to our web site and potentially purchasing our product.One of the simplest ways to get peoples attention is to use their search keywords in the title of your PPC ad. This has been proven to increase click-thru rates on ad's by over 50%.Why? Simple. If the potential customer is searching for "ROI Tracking" and the title of a PCP ad begins with "ROI Tracking", then their attention will be grabbed instantly. He or she doesn't need to know much else, other than that the PPC ad is catered specifically for him or her.One thing to keep in mind is that you can sometimes create a more relevant title by combining your different keywords into one PPC ad. For example, I could have easily used something like "ROI Tracking PHP Script" as the title of my ad, which effectively would have decreased my click-thru rate, but definitely caters my ad more to a specific audience. Once again, this comes down to analysis and adjustment.Another important technique to attract attention to your ad is to differentiate yourself from your competitors. In our particular case, the majority of our competition offer hosted solutions, whereby they manage the software on their servers in return for monthly or per traffic fees.Our product caters to a different audience, those that want more control over their software, as well as those not wanting to pay monthly fees. So, in this example, I would make the title of my ad "Pay no monthly or per traffic fees".Next -- and this is where experimentation is extremely important -- we need to create a description for our PPC ad that will attract the potential customer and let them know that our product is exactly what they are searching for. To do this, I start my ad's description with "Track PPC, campaigns & search".Finally, it's good practice to add a "Call to action" at the bottom of your ad. If you're not familiar with this term, its usually an instruction to tell the person to do something, such as "Click here to view a demo", "Download Now", etc.Marketing experts seem to agree that the average human needs to be prompted to click on an ad or take action, so we'll add this line to the end of our PPC ad's description:"Track PPC, campaigns & search. Try demo!"Reducing Click-Thru'sSometimes it's important to reduce the number of clicks your PPC ad is receiving. This could be because you are attracting people who are only after free products/services, or even the wrong target market.The two quickest ways to reduce click-thru's are to make the description of your ad more targeted and to add the price of the product to the ad.Making the description more targeted (as I've discussed above) can reduce your overall click-thru rate, but potentially increase the likelihood of a click resulting in a purchase.In my earlier example, by adding the words "PHP script" to the description, we are effectively filtering out those looking for a hosted solution, downloadable software or even those with a server that isn't capable of running PHP scripts.We also increase the targeting of our ad because we now know that the majority of those clicking on the ad are looking for a PHP script, which is exactly what our product is.Secondly, by adding the price of the product you are selling to the end of the ad, you instantly eliminate those looking for free products, and target those willing to purchase your product or service.Tracking Your Clicks and ConversionsThe fundamental core of a successful advertising campaign -- whether it be a PPC ad, banner ad or even newspaper ad -- is knowing whether or not your ad's are actually converting into sales or not.If your ads aren't making you money then you're more that likely better off saving your advertising dollars and adjusting your ad's or using your marketing budget elsewhere in your company.Both Google and Overture have built in tracking and conversion tools that you can use to get a holistic view of your current PPC ad campaigns. You can even use external tools which let you add conversion code to your website to tell you exactly which of your ad's are converting into sales and which aren't. This is often referred to as knowing your ROI or Return on Investment.We need to know exactly how much money we are making per dollar spent on every PPC ad. If the ROI is positive and we are making more money than we are spending, then the ad is working and we can use this knowledge to further improve our other ad's or increase ad spending for that particular ad/set of keywords.If, however, our ad's are costing us more than they are returning, then we can reduce our spend, change our approach, or remove these ad's altogether. It's a rather simple formula, but frustratingly ignored by many advertisers.You must track your ads if you want to succeed with any form of Internet advertising. You should also constantly monitor and adjust your ads according to how they are performing, your return on investment, etc.ConclusionHopefully I've provided you with a clear insight into PPC advertising and techniques that you can use to improve your advertising campaigns. It pays -- pun intended -- to do your research and understand your target market, because the rewards can sometimes be much more than you expected.
Great Website! But where are your customers?
by: Kim Valentine
You have a great website now where are the customers? A great website without customers is like a mega mall in the middle of a desert with no road leading to it. In order to sell you need customers, but how do you get the traffic to your website? There are numerous ways to drive traffic to your website, in this article we shall examine the paid methods of getting traffic. 1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Nothing new to anyone on the net. Every major search engine offers it in one form or the other. A great way to drive traffic to your site. But only if you know how to use it. You must select keywords that will drive traffic to your site but will not cause your CPC bill to skyrocket without converting prospects into sales. Your description must also complement your keyword so that it reinforces your products and services. The persons who click have interest in your goods but are still prospects. What goods are they interested in however. If my food site should use a keyword phrase "oral pleasure" relating to food and tastiness, I might be surprised to get a lot of clicks but no sales. Why, you might ask? Most likely the persons clicking on my link got there while searching for adult links for oral pleasure. Funny you might think, but everyday, advertisers haphazardly choose keywords that have no bearing on their site. They now start to receive customers but have no conversions as these were not targeted visitors. By now the CPC bill is high and sales are still low to non-existent. So for my food site, a better choice of keyword would be "jerk seasoning", and if I wanted to narrow my target market more with specific searches, I would use "Jamaican jerk seasoning". This would be sure to send me only targeted customers searching for my products. My conversion rate will be higher out of this batch of qualified prospects. 2. Text Ads Advertisers can sponsor text ads for varying periods on different search engines. These text ads run from as little as $12 per 3 month period and give good exposure to a wide market, but is again dependent on keyword and description choices. 3.Buy Traffic There are sites that are wholly designated to selling web traffic. The rates vary but traffic can be bought from as little as $2.99 per thousand visitor. The type of traffic is dependent on where the traffic is from. Traffic is generated from expired domains and redirected traffic. Traffic can also be classified into geographic regions and by shopping preferences. The more targeted choices are more costly but give a better quality visitor. If your business is in the USA selling golf shoes, a US visitor who is a golfer is going to be a more qualified visitor than one who lives in Bahrain and does not know what golf is. Some traffic sites send visitors based on auto generated views. This might boost the stats on your site but will not generate sales. You need to ensure that real people are viewing your site and not automated software. If you are going to pay for traffic then you need to get real traffic. Some websites will tell you they are sending visitors, when they mean hits. 1000 hits is not the same as 1000 visitors. Everytime a visitor comes to your site they generate hits. Every image that opens generates a hit. So you can see the difference between the promise of 1000 hits vs 1000 visitors. 100 visitors just might, depending on your landing page, generate a 1000 hits. 4. Links Joining paid link exchanges is a great way to get incoming links to your site. This method until recently was a good enough method, but Google's recent change to its view on paid Link Exchanges means that less value is placed on incoming links. It is still a fairly valuable tool as the other members with whom you link, the traffic from their sites now have a link to you. The drawback is when your link is so far down the page that customers to that site will never have easy access. 5. Search Engines Not by any means last or the least effective method. The major search engines will drive most of your traffic tot your site. Google delivers at least 60% of a sites search engine traffic, and so websites must be optimized and tweaked to achieve higher ranking in the engines. Higher ranking translates to appearing in the first few results. the higher up you rank and place the more your traffic from the search engine. With this method, optimization and submission of the site is paramount. A good SEO can tweak your site to make it search engine friendly including optimizing your meta tags such as Keywords, description and title.
Starting A Home Business: Step 6
by: Ken Leonard Jr
Have you been a good student? Congratulations for making your dream of owning a home business a reality. Today you will learn how to get qualified traffic to your product web site and how to build your house list of email leads.(If you missed the first 5 steps, you can catch up here) http://kenleonardjr.com/step1Now that you have your online marketing system ready to go, it's time for you to learn how to bring targeted visitors to your site.The fast way to get visitors to your site is to run targeted keyword based ads with one of the major pay per click search engines. You can open an account with Google AdWords, then learn how to use it properly. Though you can get fast traffic to your offer from a PPC campaign, you should direct traffic to your main page only for testing the offer and sales copy. The most efficient way to take advantage of PPC traffic is to send the visitors to a page that asks for contact info before they can see the advertised information. Those that don't give their email address (or more) are redirected to the sales page anyway when they close the lead capture page.You must know what you are doing when advertising on Google, Overture and FindWhat, or you stand to lose a lot of cash very quickly. You can check out a very popular resource for learning the finer points of running ads with Google AdWords here: http://www.kljonline.com/GoogleCash.htmlThe online market research tool I mentioned earlier in this series would be a valuable tool for you if you decide to take advantage of Google AdWords. You can check it out here: http://marketresearch.for-your-biz.comI mention this tool again because it comes with a very good AdWords tutorial. You could save some cash by getting the research tool with the free AdWords tutorial, then you don't have to get a copy of GoogleCash. You have to do something to educate yourself though, or you could really do some serious damage to your advertising budget.Now for the cheap way to get traffic to your site, search engine listings. Learn how to optimize specific web pages to rank highly in Yahoo, Google and other major search engine listings. Create each page to focus on a specific keyword phrase that you found while doing online keyword research earlier in this series. But don't spend too much time on this method, since search engines are not very consistent in their listing ranking criteria.The next method you can use for generating quality traffic to your site is to run ads in targeted email newsletters and ezines. Running ads will cost you some cash, but will really make your traffic meter go crazy. You can build your house list this way and make direct sales, too. Here is a free tutorial to help you write effective ezine ads: http://kenleonardjr.com/articles/WritingNetworkMarketingAds.htmlMake sure you track every link you use in your email newsletter campaigns. Doing this will show you which ads are working and which are not. You will also find out which ezines are working, a valuable thing to know. What works for you will depend on your product and your target customer.Writing promotional articles is a very good way to develop a long term traffic source. Write content that would be useful to your target customer, then ezine publishers and webmasters give your articles exposure to your market. This will send you high quality targeted visitors that like what you have to say. Here's another free tutorial for you, so you can learn how to write articles for web promotion that will bring you quality traffic: http://kenleonardjr.com/writeBuying banner and link space on high traffic sites that are related to yours can be a good source of targeted traffic, but be careful. You could spend a lot of cash, get a lot of traffic to your site but not get ANY sales or ANY leads! So start small and work your way up. This is a good rule to live by when learning to market online using any paid advertising.Buying email leads is another effective way to get qualified visitors to your site, if done correctly. When purchasing email leads, make sure the lead signs up for your list specifically and that a proper record is made of the request. There are only a few reputable sources for co registration email leads, so choose carefully. Such a lead provider that is used by many professional online marketers can be found here: http://leads.for-your-biz.comPut these methods into action and you will get targeted traffic to your web site and your offer. Some will produce short term sales while others will bring results later on. Some of these tactics will require a bit of cash while others will cost you your time. Don't make the mistake of thinking that your time is cheaper than spending cash, it is not. Treat your time as you would your money. Sometimes a small fee to get a job done is a lot cheaper than the time you would spend doing the job.Now that you will be getting some serious traffic to your site, you will want to make sure you are using the most effective follow up series you can. Your follow up messages can make you a lot of cash if you know how to put it all together.In Step 7 of this series, you will learn to follow up with your prospects effectively. How to deliver a powerful resource and sales message that will make buyers out of visitors that would have left your web site, Never To Return.Don't miss it...
How To Get Instant Traffic To Your Website For Only A Nickel A Lead!
by: Brad Callen
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the most cost-effective methods of getting leads known to Internet business owners. It gives you instant traffic, and allows you to test your business model in real time. At the same time, pay-per-click advertising (or PPC) is not as simple to use as the PPC companies will have you believe. If you jump into the system without preparing for ‘tracking' your results, doing deep keyword research, establishing your ROI and most importantly, testing your ads, you'll lose a lot of money really fast. Before we start talking about the major PPC engines, here's a brief overview of what you need to know. The Basics Of Pay Per Click There are some terms that you should know if you want to understand any discussion on PPC. Some of these are self-explanatory, some you might have heard before. Either way, go through this section and make sure to read those parts that you don't know of. The PPC Model In the PPC advertising model, you have three core elements – keywords , ads , and bids . These three elements are combined with ‘ placement ' to create an advertising model that displays ‘relevant' ads on search engines (in response to keyword searches), portals and websites that opt to display such ads on their pages (the ads to be shown are determined by a keyword analysis of the page). For a PPC campaign, you need to know the keywords that you are targeting. For example, for a niche site that promotes a time management product, I would create a list of keywords that included keyword groups containing terms related to time management, productivity, saving time, self improvement and maybe even business soft skills. As I've told you before about keyword research, you should have a big list so that you capture most, if not all, of your target traffic. The next step is to write the ad copy for the ads that will be displayed for your searches. The ad copy is extremely important because along with your bid amount, this will determine the ‘conversion rate' (explained below) of your ads. Write concise, compelling ad copy that highlights the benefits of your website / product, and avoid fluff. Once you've written your ads, it's time to bid . The bidding mechanism differs from PPC engine to engine, but the idea is the same – your bid amount is the maximum cost (usually calculated in U.S. dollars) that you are willing to pay for each keyword. It's important to know how much you can afford in terms of bidding costs so that you avoid going into bidding wars with your competitors, and also so that you don't spend more than you make through this campaign. Cost-Per-Click Cost-Per-Click ( CPC ) is the amount you pay each time a potential customer ‘clicks' on one of your ads that they see on their search engine results or on websites. This is often less than the maximum bid amount you set for each keyword. Conversion Rate Conversion Rate is the ratio of clicks over impressions (the number of times your ad is displayed on searches or page loads on websites). A typical conversion rate is between 2 to 3 percent – that is, for every 100 impressions, you get 2-3 clicks on your ads. Conversion Rate is closely tied in with the quality of your ad copy , and also with Placement , which I'll discuss next. Placement If there is more than one person bidding for a keyword (as is almost always the case), the placement of the ads (which ad comes in on the first slot, which comes in on the second, etc.) is determined by bid amounts of each competitor. The higher your bid, the better your placement (Google adds the conversion rate into their placement calculations, and I'll tell you how later). Your conversion rate to a certain extent depends on how high your ad is placed on the ‘rankings' and this leads advertisers to place high bids just to rank at the top. The trouble with this approach is that you might enter into a bidding war with your competitors and lose a lot of money. Tracking Tracking refers to measuring which keywords are bringing you the best leads or sales, and which keywords are bringing you ‘window shoppers' – people who are ‘compulsive clickers' and don't buy or sign up. Tracking your ad campaign will help you further fine-tune your ads and improve your ROI. ROI Your Return-on-Investment (ROI) is determined by how much you are spending over how much you are earning in net profits from your ad campaign. It's important to establish a base ROI before your start your ad campaign – assume a conversion rate of 1 percent – so that you don't over-spend and are able to run this campaign within your budget. The Pay-Per-Click World Currently, there are two major PPC engines, Google AdWords and Overture (now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing ). While there are many alternatives such as Espotting (now Miva), MetricsDirect and Kanoodle, the top two PPC engines are a class apart when it comes to delivering results. However, one of the first pieces of advice you'll hear from most people is that bigger PPC engines such as AdWords and Overture are too ‘expensive' to break into (with CPC for top positions easily passing $3-$4 for many keywords, and reaching $10 for really competitive keywords). In reality, if you are just starting out, it's critical that you pick one of the top two PPC engines. Why? Traditionally marketers judge PPC engines on the following criteria:Reach – How large your potential target market is. Cost-per-click Quality of traffic – Do the leads fit your customer profile? Are the willing to spend on your products? Quality of service – The tools and help offered by the PPC engines. Overture and AdWords beat their competition on all of these metrics except CPC. However, the benefits of ‘cheaper' clicks are more than compensated for by the ease of use of the big two, and more importantly, as any PPC expert will tell you, the quality of traffic from Overture and AdWords is far better than from other PPC engines. Overture Overture was purchased by Yahoo!, and recently renamed to Yahoo! Search Marketing. The name's not catchy, but with Yahoo! Behind the ‘second-largest' PPC engine on the Internet, you can expect that the quality of traffic and services will improve over the next year. Yahoo's acquisition of Overture is the single biggest reason advertisers have started paying attention to Overture again, although Google AdWords still commands leading respect. Overture is a manually edited PPC engine. When you write ads for your website, these ads (and the keywords you specify) have to be approved by human editors before they can appear in search results on Overture partner websites. While this ensures that the quality of ads remains above a certain level, this is also a hassle, as new ad campaigns can take several days to be approved, and there is a distinct lag between the time you plan to improve a section of your campaign (for testing) and the time those changes actually go live. Overture keyword bids are totally transparent, meaning that any advertiser can see at any time what other advertisers are paying for that particular keyword. This is both useful and harmful – advertisers can accurately target their ‘ad placement' positions, but knowledge of the top 2 or top 3 bid amounts can easily lead into a bidding war, and competitors undercutting your ads by posting a bid that is $0.01 higher than yours. Google Adwords Google AdWords is the leading PPC engine on the Internet, although it's closely followed by Overture. Combined, the two PPC networks are distributed on nearly every search engine or portal. Google is totally automated – your ads go live within minutes of being written. This is one of the two significant advantages AdWords has over its competition – no need to wait for ‘approval' of your keywords and ads, which can take a few days on other PPC engines. Google AdWords, like Overture, does not charge you your maximum bid amount, but just one cent more than the bid lower than yours. On the other hand, AdWords bids are not transparent like Overture – bidders have no idea what their competition is bidding. This reduces the threat of bidding wars. The second advantage of AdWords is that it includes conversion rate calculations in its ad-ranking algorithm. Simply put, your ad may rank higher than your competitors' even if you are bidding lower, just because you have a higher conversion rate. AdWords rewards ads that are better written, and thus provides a subtle barrier against ad spam. PPC advertising has become the ultimate marketing tool for testing new ad campaigns, business models and landing pages without spending too much money. Where else can you test a sales page by sending it 100 leads for $5? If you are looking to promote your website / product effectively but cannot wait for your search engine rankings to show on Google or Yahoo, you should seriously consider PPC advertising as an advertising tool that not only brings in instant traffic (and sales), but is a hedge against ranking fluctuations by ensuring that you stay on the top page for your target keywords. This is just a general overview of Pay Per Click marketing/strategies. Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon, where I'll go into some much more advanced techniques to really ramp up your traffic, all the while spending less money!
