Pay-Per-Click Advertising

 
Pay-per-click (PPC) search engines provide a very effective and inexpensive way to attract targeted traffic to your web site. With the most popular pay-per-click search engines, you can often buy this very targeted traffic for only 5 to 10 cents per click.

It's even possible to bid for great keywords for as little as 1 cent per click with some of the less popular pay-per-click search engines! This means that just $5 will bring you 500 visitors to your website!

Here are a few strategies that you can use to consistently drive a steady flow of traffic to your website and increase your sales:

1. Focus each ad on just one item or service. Promoting your entire portfolio of products or services will cost you more money and bring you less targeted traffic.
   
   Instead, choose a single product and promote it using a well-planned PPC advertising campaign. After you get the customer to your website (at the page promoting that specific product), you can promote your other products or programs next.
   
   Each click through should take the visitor to the specific page for the program or product that you're selling. This way you'll have less competition in bidding for very focused keywords and a greater chance of reaching only the customers who are really interested in your product.
   
   Avoid sending your customers to the homepage because it's likely to confuse them and they'll have to start searching for a link to the advertised product. Most customers simply don't have (or won't take) the time.
    
2. Research your desired keywords and see what the traffic is like for them. Most PPC search engines have a tool where you can see how many times a given keyword was searched for in the previous month. But remember that a keyword or phrase that was popular last month may not be as popular in the upcoming seasons.
   
   Use these reports only as a guide. My experience has shown that any relevant keyword that attracts at least 50 clicks per month is worth bidding on.
    
3. Develop a strategy before placing a bid on a keyword or phrase. Now that you know which product or service you want to promote and what keywords to use in the ad, you need to develop an effective strategy to ensure that your PPC campaign will be profitable.
   
   Generally, I recommend avoiding bids that are too high unless you have a large advertising budget and your product is very profitable and converts well. Instead, bid for less popular, lower-cost, yet relevant keywords. These produce a better overall return than the popular keywords.
    
4. If you feel that you must bid for the more popular keywords, place your bids for a lower and less expensive position. When you search on a keyword, many pay-per-click search engine results will also show you what each advertiser is paying for that position in the search results.
   
   Remember that you don't really have to be first to be successful with PPC advertising. If the top advertiser is paying 25 cents for the first position, and the second is paying 12 cents, you can get third place for only 11 cents!
   
   Try to aim for the first page of the listings, even if you're in position 15! Many surfers scroll down the entire first page, and they often click on a listing that isn't near the top.
   
   Research indicates that listings near the top and bottom of the page are more likely to be clicked on than those in the middle. With some pay-per-click search engines, increasing either your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) or your ad's click-through rate (CTR) will improve your ad's position.
    
5. Write interesting and relevant ad copy. Most of the time you'll only get one shot at getting leads and customers who are interested in your ad, so the headline and copy are critical!
   
   You must tell them exactly what you're promoting and why they should visit your site instead of one of the others. Remember, the goal of any successful PPC campaign has to be attracting interested (targeted) customers, not just anybody.
   
   You can increase your ad's effectiveness by offering your potential customers an added incentive by giving them a free gift. People love getting things for free! You can also use deadlines and offer discounts when applicable.
    
6. Bid only on keywords or phrases that are relevant to the product or service being advertised. I simply cannot stress this point enough. All of the pay-per-click search engines have rules concerning how relevant the keywords bid on must be.
   
   As a general rule, you cannot bid on keywords that have nothing to do with the page they're linking to. The fact of the matter is, bidding on keywords that aren't related to your product is a bad strategy anyway. It may result in more clicks (that you have to pay for), but the traffic generated by those clicks will be poorly targeted.
    
7. Bid on as many relevant keywords as possible. You can often get highly targeted clicks for only a penny each if you bid on less popular (but relevant) keywords.
   
   If you make an effort to bid on a few new keywords each day, you'll have a very powerful, yet inexpensive PPC campaign running within just a few days. And be sure to use more than one PPC search engine as well.
    
8. Track your keywords and their effectiveness. This is easy to do by checking your reports. Every pay-per-click search engine offers reports, the details of which vary widely from one search engine to the next.
   
   These reports will tell you how well each keyword in your PPC ads is driving traffic to your pages. Using this data, you can fine-tune your efforts by changing your bid amounts or adding and deleting keywords.
   
   Check your keyword position on a regular basis and do a lookup on your keywords. If you have picked popular keywords, you'll notice that your bids will change position as others place bids on them as well.

Ben Chapi is the owner of Venister Search Marketing Forums.

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