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PPC Vs SEO

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 10:18 AM permanent link on Monday, December 14, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

PPC

Pros

1. Its great for starter websites. They don't have to go through the major process of going through the big SEO process and can instantly come to top if you shed more money to Google.
2. Fast and reliable -As I said before its very fast you setup website today later that day you setup a adwords account and boom your ads are live and running and you are even in 1st page if you bid high. Its not possible in SEO atleast for medium to high competitive terms.
3. You can control your budget. If you can pay more you can get higher traffic and it all depends on the money you are willing to spend.
4. Good quality score helps you boost your ad positions and bid money.

Cons

1. Too costly if you have a big website you need to have big budget to make PPC work.
2. You ever keep paying money you stop paying and your positions and ads disappear.
3. Limited knowledge required for better performance of your ads. You need to spend your precious time to learn something about PPC to get good results.
4. Bigger companies can easily beat you with their money. Its all about money more you have better your results, keywords and positions are.

SEO

Pros

1. SEO is best for quality sites. If you have a quality site and have time and resource SEO is best since organic results can drive huge amount of traffic to your website.
2. Non stop listings. Your listings are there 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
3. You never have to keep paying. Once your site is established in rankings you can stop SEO and still will reap the benefit of search engine listings and rankings.
4. Great for low budget and even non-profit sites. You don't have to keep paying and small budget can still get you on top.
5. Not the rich wins here but quality wins over the rich people. I have some great sites run by just simple person and it brings 1000s of visitors per day to their website.

Cons

1. Slow and long term. If you need quick fix for your results SEO is not right since it takes time and patience.
2. Sometimes it can be costly since lot of man power involved.
3. Don't have full control. Since organic results are very unpredictable you will not have 100% control like PPC. We need to be going by search engine guidelines.
4. Experts required since it takes lot of time. In PPC you can get it running in a day but if you need organic results you need to learn a lot to get yourself qualified.

Overall both have advantages over each other. At times SEO is better and sometimes PPC is better. Its very difficult to say which one is best.

Labels: pay per click

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Google does it again now badder and stronger slap

Written by seg @ 12:33 AM permanent link on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

I have already complained of weird PPC behavior where I had 10/10 quality score but my ad was 5$ for a 5$ highest bid keyword. Usually I tend to get very low prices when I get such quality score but here Google wanted me to pay full even if my quality score was great. I thought it's a singled out problem but now I realize I am not alone. Lot of other people in webmaster world has faced similar problems.
One webmaster in webmaster world says he has terrible problem with the current Adwords scoring system. It's too tough and since its completely automated it is bound to make mistakes. Human's are much better in judging and the webmaster highlights that in his post here http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/4020049.htm . I second his thoughts i feel the whole quality score thing should become much more lenient. It's too tough now and sometimes it's also very faulty. We have clients spend at least 100,000$ a month with adwords but still not getting good quality score because of minor mistakes handling 1000s of pages. We sometimes manage large campaigns with 100s of landing pages and there are some pages which might not be relevant and that one page affects a ad group and certain important keywords. We need to keep our eyes always open to identify such type of problems.
Taking action automatically is fine but if an account is having some problem automated closure shouldn't happen. A reviewer should review and give the final word. Yahoo does that but Google prefer to depend on automated methods. If some cases this has proved to be true. Google's method of depending on automatic validation is not working as expected. It's weird results are hurting some Businesses like for one of our client. I feel Google will look into this issue more deeply and will take action.

Labels: pay per click

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Four important strategies for pay per click

Written by seg @ 9:05 PM permanent link on Monday, October 26, 2009 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

1. same size and ads doesn’t fit all
2. keyword planning
3. think about your bidding strategies
4. optimize for success

Same ads don't fit all:
It is not necessary that taking same keywords and ads from Adwords will fit every one in the same manner and pour in conversions. They might not deliver the same results. Your ads needs to be more persuasive and real in order to drive traffics and clicks. Special offers and promotion in your ad will have more effect than an ordinary ad in order to drive traffics and clicks. The basic objective of your ad should be to attract buyers and make them click on your ad.

Keyword planning:
Keyword planning is very important for your PPC ad campaign as it helps to drive traffic. We should know which keyword is most appropriate to get conversions. Proper research should have been done before setting up the keywords for your campaign. Keyword plays a most important role in your PPC ad campaign. Also make sure to set up negative keywords which mean you don’t want your ad to be displayed when the particular keyword is searched on the search network or content network.

Think about your bidding strategies:
While bidding your ad make sure you bid it more effectively in order to appear on the first page of the search networks and content networks. As the importance of ad appearing on the first page carry more weight age than on any other ad which will in turn help you to drive traffic and clicks. Recent analysis also says that 90 percent of clicks come from ads in the top three positions in listings.

Optimize for success:
The success of your ad is measured by the volume of traffic your ad gets from day to day and also volume of clicks you receive. As result regular optimization is required in order to get best out of your search and maintain the quality of your ad campaign. Regular optimization is best way to track the success of your ad campaign because this helps us to know at position our ad is and what are the necessary changes need to be done in order to make ad more effective.

These are the four strategies for PPC marketing which will help you to plan and run your ad effectively on the Adwords or any other search marketing engines

Labels: Adwords, pay per click, PPC Optimization

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Tips to get more traffic with long tail keywords that convert in to sales

Written by seg @ 5:11 AM permanent link on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

In pay per click management keyword targeting is always the hot topic and use of long tail keyword is one of the best keyword discussed. The use of long tail keyword will bring in additional traffic to your sites all you need to do is spend time in optimizing those specific long tail keywords for better ranking in search engine.

Once you plan to optimize your keyword, you can build on more traffic to your sites in two ways that are as follows:
1. Write more and more content using those keywords. It is one of the most popular ways to optimize your long tail keywords and your site too.
2. If you think that your particular long tail keyword is bringing more and more traffic to your site then put more offers, special discount or other deals that convert this traffic in to sales, which will in turn help you to achieve your return on investments and your advertisements goals.
These are the two ways that will help your pay per click campaign to get more sales with traffic you are already receiving.

Labels: pay per click, PPC management, PPC Optimization

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How to get higher Quality score in Google adwords Pay per click

Written by seg @ 6:04 AM permanent link on Tuesday, September 8, 2009 | Post a Comment | 2 comments

Before proceeding to know how to get higher Quality Scores, l, we need to understand how a quality score is calculated. Simply stated, a Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query - or in other words, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad.

Then, it is necessary to know why Quality Score is important. The Ad Rank or the position an ad shows on a search result or across the content network - is determined by maximum cost per click and quality score. There is a widely accepted formula to arrive at the ad rank and the formula may be stated thus:

Ad Rank = [(keyword / ad group] quality score) X Max CPC]

Though somewhat confusing, one needs to understand that for search purposes, the keyword quality score is used and for content the ad group quality score is used. For keywords, every keyword has a quality score fixed to it. So, it is important to keep in mind when talking about ad copy as it will be associated with multiple keywords.

Here's the step by step instructions on adding your quality score column to your keyword view.

First, navigate to the keywords in your AdGroup. Next, click on the 'customize columns' option seen below.

This will let you see the drop down menu:

Click on 'Show Quality Score'. Your AdGroups will now look like this

A keyword's Quality Score influences its cost-per-click (CPC) that is, how much the advertiser is charged for a click on the ad when it is triggered by a keyword. The higher a keyword's Quality Score, the lower is its Cost per Click (CPC), and vice versa.

Quality Score also determines, in a way, if a keyword is eligible to enter the ad auction that occurs when a user enters a search query. Usually, the higher the Quality Score, the lower will be the applicable costs and the better your ad position. Every time one of your keywords matches a search query, the combined Quality Score and cost-per-click (CPC) bid is evaluated to see if it's eligible to enter the ad auction. Keywords with a higher Quality Score will be eligible to enter the auction more easily and at a lower cost.

On the keyword analysis page, there will be a metric called 'first page bid estimate,' that means the CPC bid required for your ad to appear on the first page of Google search results assuming the search query exactly matches your keyword. The estimate is obviously based on the Quality Score as well as the advertiser's competitors for that keyword. However, it is to be noted that succeeding in your first page bid is no guarantee of your ad placement which will depend on Quality Score, your CPC bid, your budget and user and advertiser behavior.

It is to be understood that ads are positioned on search pages and content pages depending on their Ad Rank. The ad with the highest Ad Rank obviously appears in the first position, and the other ads appear in the order of their rankings. For Google, to put it simply, the Ad Rank is determined by your keyword's Quality Score and (CPC) bid.

Labels: pay per click, quality score

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In sponsored results even if you didn't advertise?

Written by seg @ 2:47 AM permanent link on Friday, June 19, 2009 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

Yes it's possible but very rare. Sometimes this might be good or sometimes bad. I have heard cases in forums and blog posts where people notice their website popping up in search sponsored results without them advertising. There are few possible reasons for it.
1. If you have affiliates they might be advertising your name without notifying you. It can help or hurt you, you need to decide whether you allow them or not.
2. Some competitor is so keen about competing with your keywords and rankings that they might end up entering your URL instead of their own URL for destination URLs. Yes its possible and has happened in our experience one of our PPC trainee did this mistake, she was supposed to research competitor sites and have them as reference she ended up adding the competitor URL in destination URL and the campaign ran almost a day without noticing.
3. Potential black side is some competitor trying to be unethical to you by advertising for some crap keywords that are not relevant to your Business and redirecting those keywords traffic to your site to spoil your reputation. Yes its possible though I haven't heard something like this happening.
4. Also sometimes it might be someone in your own company advertising without your knowledge. Did you check your company and with everyone including the marketing department whether they are running any small test campaigns. It has happened before for our own clients.
5. Also I read once Adwords advisor in webmaster world said it could also be fan interest on your website. There are some fans who for good will want to direct traffic to your website. You need to check this highly potential possibility.

Labels: pay per click

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Is PPC in Bing any better?

Written by seg @ 5:07 AM permanent link on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | Post a Comment | 2 comments

It's too early and too unfair to give any judgment for Bing search engine. Bing is only establishing itself now as a genuine search engine. In just 15 days already Bing has produced some quality relevant results and has already captured some decent market share in search engines. I am sure Bing is a search engine of future they have good quality results almost as good as Google in some areas. I see a lot of geo-targeting going on and they don't have easy access to areas where I can set my geo-location. But even if I set a geo location I still cannot see only US results I see a lot of results from my country and countries popping up due to geo targeting happening through IP location.
I feel as a PPC manager I need to start focusing seriously on Bing. This is what Microsoft has to say about Bing and its search advertising program.
"Microsoft is committed to Search and Search advertising, and is dedicated to providing you the best value for your online advertising dollar. The innovative Bing search experience is designed to maximize opportunity to capture and retain new users, grow query share, and most importantly, help you make the most of your online advertising investment.

In the coming months, a broad reaching awareness campaign spanning television, web, radio, and print will inform and entice consumers to try Bing. Now is a great time to take a look at your current search strategy and take advantage of the momentum that this campaign will drive."
We all know how aggressive Microsoft is. I am sure they will promote Bing aggressively and seeing the quality of results and the ever increasing user base I am sure we might need to do a lot of PPC for Bing in future.

Labels: pay per click

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1. Can a new ecommerce website get away without PPC

Written by seg @ 4:29 AM permanent link on Monday, June 15, 2009 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

Pay Per Click search engines have come a long way from just being one way of targeted traffic to being one of the most important and primary source of targeted traffic. Google Adwords, Yahoo search marketing, MSN AdCenter, Adbrite and we can name a lot. Online Businesses had become so much addictive its virtually impossible to see one good online Business that doesn't use PPC campaign as their source of Business. In this so much dependency on PPC world, can a ecommerce website survive without running a PPC campaign?

Well it's a question that makes itself difficult to answer. There are ways to get away from PPC and still prosper. But PPC cannot be avoided altogether. Pay per Click should always be the starting stage for all ecommerce websites. It gives you a clear insight that your targeted users are, where those visitors come from, what keyword they search for, which keyword converts better etc. This type of quick start and detailed analysis is not available in organic traffic or any other traffic source. If you want to be great by yourself you need to be already established or come out to internet with a bang. If you are Amazon or EBay you don't need to depend on any sort of search engine traffic. Amazon, eBay and other top sites get traffic from countless sources. But they get this because they are already well established its not that easy for new sites. I have heard of some rare instances where a website comes with a bang and becomes instant popular. This happens especially in word of mouth referrals.

Apart from these you cannot avoid PPC. Pay per click should always be the starting point for traffic for ecommerce sites. You don't have to use it ever but to learn the way online Business works you need to get started with PPC. Long term results should be organic so SEO is the best for long term solution but the starting point is PPC. Till now I haven't heard of one ecommerce Business who come to us for SEO that never used PPC. So PPC is here to stay and can never be avoided especially for ecommerce startups.

Labels: pay per click

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Advertising trademark keywords in URL:

Written by seg @ 1:32 AM permanent link on Saturday, May 30, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

There are reports that Google is slapping bad quality score for domains that contains trademark names. One of my friend tried to advertise with a keyword Google in its domain name. For a week the campaign was fine but everything changed 2nd week all the ads stopped showing up because of bad quality score. It looks Google is catching on advertisers who might be advertising with trademark names in their domain name. I feel this is a bit harsh it is fair enough to stop sites for advertising trademark keywords but not the best to stop them from using domain names with keywords that are trademarked.

Say for example you might be selling Nike shoes. And your domain might be nikeshoesforsale.com. I don't see anything wrong with a domain like that going in for advertising. Users like to buy from domains like that since its very much relevant to the query performed by the users. So I request Google to remove any restrictions on advertising with domain names that might contain names that are trademarked.

Labels: pay per click

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Is it possible to block individual domains in search network?

Written by seg @ 12:06 AM permanent link on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 | Post a Comment | 2 comments

That has been the question of the ages. I'd love to know if there is a way that I may have missed.
Many search referrals that I see look good, ISP home pages, legit search portals, but I've also seen 'search partners' that are --- well, no content except a Google search box! I can't accept that humans visit these pages for any legit reason.
Now, some time back I put Google search boxes at the bottom of some of my sites. I thought it might please the Google G-ds and give my sites extra credibility. However, they've never generated enough revenue to make them worthwhile. In fact, they come off as I have reason to update the pages.
I am assuming that I only earn from a search through them if the searcher clicks an Adwords ad, If that is accurate, that may explain why the box gets a reasonable amount of use, but scant $$$ on my legitimate sites.
If the above assumption is true, that should tell you that some former MFA types are abusing that box.
Surely it is not a technical impossibility to implement a feature that would allow me to 'pick my partners' or similar.
I'm sure many would love to hear an answer on this. It's a tough choice to sacrifice the AOL's and cable/DSL home pages that many of my customers see when they launch their browsers just to avoid these gamers.
I already had to dump Search for my higher dollar campaigns and I saw income shoot up. Similar to the way I dumped Content completely early on after seeing my logs.

Labels: pay per click

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Click forensics reports significant drop in clicks:

Written by power @ 4:05 AM permanent link on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Click forensics a company that monitors invalid clicks in pay per click search engines has reported significant drop in click fraud. We monitor number of PPC campaigns and yes we do notice significant drop in fraud clicks. It's a very good sign especially for advertisers who spend their hard earned money to make business.

According to click forensics

"- The overall industry average click fraud rate was 13.8% for Q1 2009. Thats down from 17.1% reported for Q4 2008 and from the 16.3% rate reported for Q1 2008.
- Click fraud traffic from malicious scripted programs increased in Q1 2009. Unlike botnets or malware, these new threats exist as simple Javascript programs that execute upon a page view or site visit. Ad networks were found to be especially vulnerable to these attacks during the quarter.
- In Q1 2009, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada, United Kingdom and Germany. "

What I think we're really going to see, is Google and the other click advertising distributors take a long hard look at technological ways of detecting/defeating the fraud.
And just like with Spam, the hard core fraudsters are gonna stay up late at night trying to figure out new ways of beating the system. Eventually, it will become prohibitively costly to try and beat the system, for the vast majority.

Until then, any script kiddie with a bit of patience can come up with ways of beating the click advertisers for quick cash.

Labels: pay per click

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Keyword suggestion tool goes regional:

Written by power @ 3:24 AM permanent link on Friday, April 24, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Google search based keyword suggestion tool is the top tool in search engine industry. Since the data comes directly from Google's results its very much reliable. Google keyword suggestion tool searches both by user input as well as analyzing the content of a website. Now Google adwords team made solid improvement by adding new attractive features.

Before you cannot select your country or language, now you can do it just by a single click.

If you haven't tried the tool yet, getting started is easy:

Go to http://www.google.com/sktool.

Sign in to your AdWords account.

Enter the URL of your website.

Use the Language or Country/territory settings to get results specific to your selection, or keep the default settings to show global data.

Click Find keywords.

Google also added new features to enable greater customization and help you get even more targeted results:

Language/Country-specific results: Narrow your results by adjusting your country/territory and language settings. For example, you can use this if you only want to have the tool match your website against searches from Canada or Australia.

Ad/Search Share filters: Filter by Ad Share and Search Share, in addition to the other advanced filtering options. These filters help you customize your results to focus on queries where you're not showing up in the natural search-results.

Labels: pay per click

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Bidding against you :

Written by power @ 9:49 PM permanent link on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Is it possible? May be I am a bit crazy today thinking all weird stuff. Well what happens if I setup multiple sites with same or similar content. Then I setup different adwords accounts for different sites bid for same keywords on different adwords accounts. What will happen if I do that? I will virtually be competing with my own sites. Though this might not have any impact on keywords it could have some impact on quality score. Today quality score plays an important role and when I am my own competition I can see the movement of quality score right?

One other way is to have the same set of keywords for different landing pages in different ad groups under same campaign it's possible. The only disadvantage with this is your Quality score might get split when Google triggers your ads for same keywords searched. I want to test out the different site theory to see how it works. It just came out of my mind.

Labels: pay per click

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Performance trends on CPA on content network:

Written by power @ 6:04 AM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Google has published an interesting article on improving your CPA on content network. Most of us don't have luck with content networks. In most of our PPC campaigns we just turn off content network because it rarely converts. I am happy to see Google has brought something effective to tackle this problem.

How do Content Network ads perform for advertisers? We recently analyzed conversions, cost, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on the Content Network, and compared them to performance metrics on the search network across thousands of campaigns and many geographic regions.
This white paper presents the findings from this analysis. It shows that advertisers who advertise on the content network see good results on a number of levels:

1. Ads on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective - or even more cost-effective - than ads on the search network.

The median advertiser has a content CPA that's about 2% lower than their search CPA.

2. The Content Network drives a significant share of total conversions.

The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.

3. Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion.

Labels: pay per click

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Bad performing keywords delete or temporary pause:

Written by power @ 11:47 PM permanent link on Sunday, April 19, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

If you are running PPC campaign for a long time you would have come across lots of keywords that either doesn't perform well or not converting properly. So what do we do with these keywords I recommend deleting non performing keywords than just pausing them.

Non performing keywords are always non performing they will never perform even if paused. If you pause non performing keywords later you will have double mind whether to re-enable them. It's better to delete keywords so that you are not confused. There is only one disadvantage when deleting keywords in Google adwords you might lose quality score that you had before for that keyword. But then again if the keywords are not performing I am sure they will not be worth even if they have decent quality score. From my personal experience most non performing keywords are not properly related to the landing page or website. One other reason is the keywords are more generic than the products you are selling. So I recommend just delete keywords that are not working for you and relax.

You need to decide carefully which keywords you need and don't need.

Bidding rules using bid management:
-Great converting keywords and low CPL's -> own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% sov and bidding for pos. 1
-Great converting keywords and medium CPL's -> Own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% SOV but bidding according to lead needs at that time/in that country (the whole quantity vs quality debate)
-Great converting keywords and high CPL's -> Own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% SOV but bidding for lower positions

-Converting keywords and low CPL's -> up budget and bids for 100% SOV
-Converting keywords and medium CPL's -> same budget but lower bids
-Converting keywords with high CPL's -> minimum budget and minimum bids

-Non converting keywords with low cost and low positions -> Look at relevance, if relevant up bids for higher position in low budget campaign. If not relevant delete
-Non converting keywords with low cost and high positions -> Look at relevance, if relevant keep as is, if not relevant delete
-Non converting keywords with medium and high cost -> delete

Then all is left is setting objective standards for High, Medium and Low: impressions, positions, CPL's, number of leads and budgets.

Ads texts are always set up as follows:

-2 per adgroup; both are similar except for one line
-Always make the ad - line 1: headline with keyword, line 2: benefit, line 3: offer/call to action
-Only keyword insertion on relevant long tail keywords
-After enough data has been collected (look at statistical significance) we decide on a winner ad, pause the other and make one additional ad (with again only one line changed). This is a continual process.

Labels: pay per click

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More ad variations - instant positive quality score:

Written by power @ 9:46 PM permanent link on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Recently few of the keywords I setup for my client got a bad quality score around 3-4 and were rated poor. My client was worried and he complained we need to fix it immediately. I know we are good with landing pages just our ads are not too relevant. So I told my junior to make more ads relevant to the keywords that got bad quality score and boom next day the quality score of the bad keywords were back to 7 or 8.

I have seen many people afraid of this quality score. Personally it's an excellent feature if done right you can use it to your own benefit. Some high quality score keywords can perform better even with lower bids. So make sure you maintain a healthy quality score for all the keywords you are advertising in a ad group.

Remember if you are an affiliate site you are not welcomed both in PPC and SEO. Bad quality scores are common in affiliate PPC campaigns.

Labels: pay per click

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Is PPC dead or on the death track?

Written by power @ 10:01 PM permanent link on Thursday, April 2, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Some suggest PPC is dead or heading towards to a lower trend there are other online marketing ideas taking over PPC. But is PPC really dead?

I don't think PPC is dead at all, in fact I think that in a lot of industries it is about to blossom. There are a that a lot of companies have been throwing money at it, and needing a second or third purchase to return a profit, but many companies are pulling back on that now, as they can't afford a loss leading marketing channel, so they're focusing on a realistic CPA and account optimization, and in many cases I believe they are finding that they can generate a similar level of sales with a "clever" campaign, rather than a "money black hole" campaign.

I read an article on tech crunch that PPC traffic is flat in January or even less in February but I feel its mostly due to people's spending power in this crisis period. We are still in global crisis and people are holding back their money. I am sure when things get back to normal people will start using PPC more.

PPC is far from dead there is still a lot more to go in PPC sometimes PPC is better than SEO and will be here for a long time.

Labels: pay per click

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Ideas to learn affiliate marketing:

Written by power @ 11:13 PM permanent link on Monday, March 30, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Affiliate marketing if done properly is one of the most successful strategies in online Business. If you hit the right way to do it I assure quality income from it.

Affiliate marketing is mostly trial and error. You need to try different types of affiliate marketing programs and select the one best suit you. There are 1000s of good affiliate programs available online and there are people making 10s of 1000s of dollars from being a good affiliate.

1. Learning to be an affiliate will not come in a day you need to keep updating yourself from various quality resources. A forum like webmaster world is a good start you can go through the affiliate programs thread. You can find tons of quality information from great affiliates in this forum.

2. EBooks': Most eBooks' are meant to be sold to the customer don't get over excited about eBooks' thought some eBooks' provide some decent advise most of them are just sales copies.

3. Using Adwords and other PPC programs for affiliate marketing has been around for a long time. But now Adwords also penalizes site that are strictly affiliate so be careful and make a site valuable for your visitors.

4. Time and money is important: Be prepared to spend 2 to 5 hours per day (depending on how fast you read and learn), a minimum of 4 days a week, for at least two months to really know if this is something you want to become a profession at or if you want to peruse something else.

5. Attend WebMasterWorld conference or affiliate summit and network with other affiliates. This is a community I recommend for new affiliates, there's a lot of noise there, but there's also some real good people that will help you some, like this place as well, but there it's all affiliate subject matter.

Some tips from an affiliate:

"I didn't go looking for the highest paying offer or the latest fad or any of that.
I took a look at my life and the various systems I've developed for doing various things, and asked myself if there was anything I was doing that was relatively unique to *me* - maybe an uncommon way of performing a common task or need, and could I find a niche there?
Didn't take long, because I have several such. I took the one I thought had the most 'commercial' appeal and went to see if the vendor for one of the products I use for this had an affiliate program, and lo and behold - they did! Not only that, I found a vendor for some accessory products as well.
Then I built out the site on a Word Press format, adding my own personal experiences with this system, why I thought it was better than the 'standard' way of doing things, and I'm now in the process of making some videos to demonstrate it, and adding various other enhancements.
It's early yet, but I'm pretty sure it'll be a success, because I'm not just tossing up a product feed and relying on the thing to sell itself; I'm adding my own personal experiences, my own methods, video demonstrations, related stories, tips, etc.
It's also a pretty expandable topic, so if it takes off like I hope, there's a lot more I can add to it, including guest posts, new products, recommendations, reviews, the possibilities are pretty endless.
THAT kind of affiliate site has no problem doing well with Adwords (and in fact, I have no quality score issues at all so far) It brings more value than just the product offer, and that makes it a lot easier to deliver a quality user experience.
The world doesn't need more sites with outsourced content devoted to weight loss berries."

Labels: pay per click

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Complying with advertising standards when you advertise

Written by power @ 4:28 AM permanent link on Friday, March 13, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

When you advertise, the claims you make for your product or service must comply with a number of standards to ensure fair trade. They must also comply with regulations protecting:

the intellectual property rights of copyright holders
registered trade marks
all groups protected by discrimination law

The major pay per click (PPC) providers will ask that you comply with copyright, trade marks and anti-discrimination law when you use their services.

PPC terms and conditions will typically set out that it is your responsibility as the advertiser to:

check your right to use any copyright or copyrighted content - i.e. you must not promote copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder
not advertise products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods (a replica item contains the trademarked name or logo of a designer brand, but is not made by that brand)
avoid using words that could be considered discriminatory or offensive to any protected group

Labels: pay per click

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Choosing a pay per click agency

Written by power @ 9:06 PM permanent link on Tuesday, March 10, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Pay per click (PPC) advertising agencies can help you start your PPC campaign and attract quality sales traffic to your website. A good place to start your search for an agency is to open your favourite search engine and search for one in your area. If you find a name in the top ten generic results and again in the top three sponsored links, you could click through and see whether the landing page matches your expectations.

Before contacting an agency, consider the skills and competencies you expect of an agency and your marketing goals and objectives.

There are certain similarities with traditional advertising agencies - eg you'll want prospective PPC agencies to provide testimonials and customer references or case studies. See our guide on how t0 choose and manage advertising agency.

However, PPC agencies must have different skills and a different mind set. Ask prospective agencies whether they're accredited as a Google AdWords Qualified Company, a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador and/or a Microsoft adExcellence member.

A good agency should have proven experience in the particular complexities of a stand-alone PPC campaign and Internet marketing campaigns that include PPC and other online marketing strands - eg banner adverts. They need to be able to show:

an understanding of the pros and cons of the top PPC providers
a good grasp of your market sector and competition
proven experience and the necessary technology to set up, manage, track and analyse PPC campaigns
a creative approach to PPC essentials - keyword research, bid management, daily budget, website optimisation and advert writing
excellent strategic analysis and web analytic abilities
how they set and achieve agreed targets
how they plan to report to you and how often
how they intend to maximise and measure your return on investment
how they intend to charge you (eg a flat fee, a percentage of the campaign expenditure or on the basis of campaign performance)

Labels: pay per click

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Writing the advert is a critical point in your pay per click (PPC) campaign. You need to attract targeted leads and you have barely 100 characters to

Written by power @ 3:53 AM permanent link on Friday, March 6, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Writing the advert is a critical point in your pay per click (PPC) campaign. You need to attract targeted leads and you have barely 100 characters to do this. Your copy needs to be compelling and you must attract the right buyers - ie those who want your product or service.

PPC gives you the flexibility to run different adverts in different regions, at different times of the day - or night - and target your copy to specific audiences. Because of the immediacy of the internet, you can prepare several adverts and test which works best, changing them every day if necessary.

Adverts have four short lines, the most important of which is the web address from which potential customers will click through to the landing page on your website.

Key points to consider when writing your adverts are to:

include your keywords
use phrases that relate to your keywords
be specific - if you only serve a particular city, include it
offer benefits - if you have a time-limited offer, say so
your URL is part of the advert - make your keywords part of it
keep your copy simple

Labels: pay per click

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self managed pay per click Vs. full service pay per click

Written by power @ 12:52 AM permanent link on Friday, February 20, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

1. Self managed pay per click is nothing but a business owner or marketing specialist run the ad campaign themselves whereas full service pay per click involves an expert run the ad campaign.
2. The business owner is responsible for everything here. He has to create an ad, optimize an ad, set geographies, set budget and study the metric whereas in full service PPC the expert or the representative is responsible to undertake the following task:

Interpret results and statistic.
Set up categories.
Set up geographic target.
Set up budget.
To develop creative ad content.
To place the brand in better position in e-market.

3. Self managed PPC is suitable generally for small businesses that allow them to review the ad and refine it immediately without much resources involve in it whereas full service PPC is suitable for large business where lot of resources are being involved to review and refine the ad.
4. Self managed PPC allows the small businesses to remove the middlemen whereas no such benefit is available in full service PPC.

These are the major difference between self manage PPC and full service PPC but both equally beneficial according to their need.

Labels: pay per click

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Few things to be considered for your pay per click campaign

Written by power @ 10:37 PM permanent link on Monday, February 16, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

There are few things that have to be considered for pay per click campaign. Generally, pay per click campaigns are expensive to run and carelessness towards your pay per click campaign will lead you to loss of your marketing investment. It is necessary for any one who runs pay per click campaign to consider it regularly because you spend lot of fund on such campaign to generate new sales. Any pay per click campaign requires careful preparation.

Let's have a look at few things that needs to be considered:-

1. First thing you need to consider when you run PPC campaign is to know your product well then only you can be convincing enough to sell the product to others because your aim is to build trust among potential customer towards your product.
2. Set a budget for PPC campaign. There are many PPC campaigns that fail but sticking to your Budget will help you to cut the losses.
3. Make sure that you have professional look website or sales page because this PPC campaigns are meant for some one to click on link and that will take them to your website. Most of them fail in this area. So make sure you have designed your site well.
4. The most important thing that will lead your PPC campaign towards success is the use of right keyword. List out some keywords and check the effectiveness of each keyword and use the best one.
5. Know how to bid your keywords effectively without draining out all your cash before you really get started. You should be able to manage your campaign to maintain the proper balance.
6. Not all PPC campaign works well so you should be smart enough to know when to cut the losses and when to invest more money for successful campaign.

Running a successful PPC campaign is not easy at all but PPC campaign gives you an opportunity to succeed online. By considering above things you will be able to run an successful PPC campaign.

Labels: pay per click

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Do all the pay per click marketing are equal?

Written by power @ 1:10 AM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 1 comments

Everyone is aware that absolute fortunes are made through Google Adwords system. So they tend to think that all the other pay per click marketing is also doing wonders for their business. Let's have a look on some pay per click marketing system that is available online.

The king of pay per click marketing is of course run by Google. The Google Adwords system performs the entire process. Once the relevant keyword and ad goes in the system, the ad will get displayed immediately in search engine result pages. They also provide you with the option to display your ad in millions of websites around the world through Google AdSense system. Therefore Google pay per click marketing system provides you with lots of exposure and also gets lot of traffic in short period of time.

Next, we can talk about yahoo search marketing or YSM for short. With the use YSM you can receive decent amount of traffic to your site. YSM tends to be little bit complicated and difficult than Google. But once you are comfortable, you can easily make any moderations to your ad whenever you like. Though they send less traffic as Google, the traffic you get is qualified traffic.

The new entry in pay per click marketing is MSN. The system here is user friendly. As it is new to pay per click marketing it require to be reviewed properly as it is not effective as Google and Yahoo. The system sends you qualified traffic on a consistent basis.

Finally, after discussing about few pay per click marketing it is believed many systems like Yahoo and MSN will not send you much traffic if so then they are all fraud clicks. And it is also known that Google is top among all that provides you with the best traffic.

Labels: pay per click

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How to avoid pay per click fraudulent traffic to your site

Written by power @ 11:28 PM permanent link on Tuesday, February 10, 2009 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Pay per click advertisement brings targeted traffic to your site but how to avoid such frauds that needlessly drive up your cost.

Pay per click advertising is direct marketing platform with intent of spending one dollar to make two. Do you think the traffic being supplied to you is the genuine and real?

Here I will guide you on how to avoid the fraudulent traffic to your site.

As a website owner and advertiser, you must take all possible steps to protect yourself. The first and foremost thing you are supposed to do is to check whether you are working with credible PPC search engine and publisher, so that you receive a good return on investment (ROI).

All the PPC engines rely on network of sites to drive traffic to your sites. You should be aware of their partners and also ensure what are the safety measures they provide for your site. Make sure that your spending on PPC ad is effectively used. You should not work with those engines who partners with sites offering incentives for clicks and searches. As this are just way to fill in their own pockets and drive fake customer to your site.

Labels: pay per click

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How can you increase your quality score with backlinks?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 7:47 PM permanent link on Tuesday, December 2, 2008 | Post a Comment | 2 comments

Quality score of PPC ads are based on how well you have optimized your landing page too. It makes sense to use common SEO approaches to help you boost the trust factor of your landing page. Do your on-page SEO on the landing page the same way you normally would. There are two factors that you have to consider when thinking about landing page optimization.

1. Your primary keyword in your URL
2. The title tag

Other elements to those you have to give attention are-

Meta description tag
Headers - H1, H2, and H3 tags
Usage of main keyword in the page content
Internal links

Apart from these, inbound links are the most important SEO tool you have. By building backlinks to your landing page from high authority sites within your area using keyword anchor text, you are effectively building up optimization for your landing page and its ability to secure a high quality score from Google AdWords.

Labels: Adwords, pay per click, PPC management, PPC Optimization

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Every Little Detail Counts in PPC

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 8:01 PM permanent link on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

When considering PPC ad copywriting, the title is true. Even spaces will be counted.

Suppose you are selling wristband. Or is that wrist band? Google both and you'll probably get different results. Ignoring the paid search ads, when Googled "wrist band" the top five results were:

www.wristbandsupply.com
en.wikipedia.org
www.wristband.com
www.wristbandexpress.com
www.reminderband.com

But when I Googled "wristband", top five results were:

en.wikipedia.org
www.wristband.com
www.wristbandswithamessage.com
www.wristbandconnection.com
www.trendywristbands.com

So what do organic search listings have to do with paid search listings? It is nothing except that when you bid on a keyword, the specific keyword that you bid on is the page on which your ad will appear in the SERPS. If you bid on "wrist band" then your ad will show with the first set of results; if you bid on "wristband" then your ad will show with the second set of results. Best option is to bid on both and if you have a tight budget then you have to make a choice. Notice that some of those organic listings rank for "wrist band" but that the word in the description or title of the SERP listing is "wristband". That's because those website optimizers did a good job of targeting both keywords, but you don't have the space to do that in a PPC ad so you'll have to target one or the other. The best way to target both is by using two separate ads - one for each keyword.

Labels: pay per click

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PPC For Special Holiday Advertising

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

December is the month for three separate and simultaneous holidays. Hanukkah starts on Dec. 21 at sun down and continues for eight days. Christmas falls on Dec. 25. And Kwanzaa (an African-American cultural holiday) starts on Dec. 26 and continues still Jan. 1. If you have products that demand to all three market sectors then you should not advertise them mutually in the same campaigns. Your objective should be targeting your holiday advertising to the right market. All these holidays symbolize something very important to those who observe them. If your products demand to each market sector then you'll want your PPC campaigns to target each sector independently. What you should do is do the proper keyword research for each targeted campaign and optimizing your ad groups for different landing pages. Try to know your market better and approach it with your customer's needs in mind. That is the perfect holiday advertising and you can achieve your goals in this holiday season.

Labels: pay per click

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Local PPC Optimization Tips

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Monday, November 10, 2008 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

Local PPC advertising is like local geo-targeted SEO. You have to strike the right phrases for the right market. Suppose you are running a flower decoration service in Fontana, California. What has to happen for you to hold the best quality score possible and the lowest bids on your significant keywords to drive targeted traffic to your landing page? First, you have to create a well optimized landing page that forces people to click and convert. Obviously your sales will increase. If your landing page doesn't convert, there is no meaning in spending money to get traffic to it. Make sure that you have optimized your landing page to the best of your capability and putting your calls to action in the right place. Now you can set up your pay per click campaign. Use the same keywords that you are using for your landing page. Don't add complex keywords. Make sure that you are targeting the right geographic key terms. For instance, optimizing your landing page and PPC ad with "Orchid garland" won't cut it. You've also got to target them to "Fontana, California" residents. That means you have to add sufficient of the geo-targeted term to your landing page and pay per click ad content to make your quality score go up and bids for the keywords go lower. It sounds nice but it requires some testing from your part. Geo-targeting starts with the right keywords and ends with the right target market.

Labels: local PPC Optimization, pay per click

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Should I Have More Than One Landing Page?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

I highly recommend multiple landing pages and I have reasons for that. Different pages will do well in different search engines. It is because each search engine has its own ranking criteria. For Google, we can create a more text content oriented page with all the product descriptions, service offerings and provided benefits of using this service. For yahoo, we can create a landing page with images, testimonials and content in a brief form. Use bullets to show features and benefits. Think which are the keywords you are optimizing your landing page for. We can create two separate landing pages with similar keywords and each could rank well for their respective keywords in the same search engine. To do this, you have to write a separate ad for each landing page. Sounds bit odd right? But I've heard many companies who use this tactic quite successfully. Normally, I use more than one landing page. You have to decide which campaign needs a second landing page and set goals according to that.

Labels: pay per click, PPC management

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Integrative PPC Campaigns

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Friday, September 26, 2008 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

What will you do when you start a new PPC campaign? I mean whether you keep your new campaign as a stand alone one or integrate it with your existing campaigns? You might try being more integrative with your practice and see whether you get better results or not. If you integrate your new PPC campaigns into your current marketing scheme, what you already do should be successful enough to benefit from an add-on. If it is not successful and beneficial enough then there is no point in doing that. PPC integration is one of the crucial aspects of your total marketing plan. The true meaning of PPC integration is taking the most successful parts of your other marketing campaigns and making them work together with a PPC advertising. Even if you are using off-line marketing, article marketing, blogging or display advertising, you want your pay per click advertising to compliment your success. If you are using the same keywords and landing pages for your campaigns then you can measure the difference in results using an analytics application like google analytics. It is better to Take your pay per click campaigns and integrate them.

Labels: pay per click, PPC management

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Elements of a Landing Page Design

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Many times we have discussed about the importance of landing page in PPC. The following elements on your landing page should be considered for every landing page design you undertake:

* Call to Action - Your call to action is one of the most important elements of any landing page. This is the content that will ask for the sale. Without a strong call to action you will not see as many conversions as you expect.

* Page Content - Your content must be clear, enough descriptive and keep them reading.

* Headline - Your landing page headline must grab your readers' attentions. They'll never read your outstanding content if you don't get their attention first.

* Overall Design - The design of your landing page is very important. It should be attractive to stick the visitors in your website.

* Landing Page Layout - Page layout is one of the most important component of building a quality landing page. Place your photos and graphics optimally. You should not have exit links that encourage page visitors to leave before making a purchase. You should make good use of bullet points, headlines, sub-headlines, and other page elements.

These points will help you building better landing pages. You have to determine which of elements will give a rise and down to your conversion.

Labels: pay per click

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Are Meta Tags Important For PPC?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

You are sure that there are some value for meta-tags in SEO and then what about PPC? Your ads are not going to use them. But landing pages? I've seen landing pages without meta tags. But I think landing pages with carefully associated meta tags can do much better. The 3 meta tags you need to consider for your landing page content are -

* Title
* Description
* Keywords

Don't spoil your landing page content with meta tags that aren't helpful like robots tag, author tag, copyright tag, etc. These tags don't help the search engines at all. Ensure that your title tag has your keyword in it somewhere near the beginning. The title of your page will appear at the top of your reader's browser and should be well-written. That will be seen in the SERP for your organic listings so make sure you have a well-written and optimized title. Your description tag will be the description that comes in your search engine listing. This is important, particularly if your pay per click ad appears on the same page. If you have a well-written description then you increase your chances of getting the click-through. Don't add a huge list of keywords to your keyword tag. If the keyword doesn't appear in your content then don't include it in this tag. Not only will that affect your organic listings, but it will also affect your quality score. Meta tags are just one way of influencing your quality score. Give them the value they deserve.

Labels: pay per click

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Should I Bid On My Competitors' Brand?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Monday, September 15, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

As you know pay per click advertising is keyword-based advertising. Your ad text is based on a cautiously selected campaign is created based on the best keywords for your business. Whether those keywords involve your competitors' brand names? There are currently no laws that say you can't bid on brand names as keywords (at least in the U.S.). Some people say it is a controversial practice to bid on competitor's brand in pay per click advertising. I too agree that they worked so hard to get that place in market and advertising. But a lot of companies are now trying to guard their copyrights and trademarks by following the search engines and advertisers whenever their brand names are used for advertising. If you compete with a huge company with big pockets then you could lose. That's a risk that you'll have to take (if you want to). In TV advertising, you can't use a competitors' brand name. In ppc advertising, you can -with a few limitations. But it is dangerous and you should consider the risks carefully before you do it.

Labels: pay per click

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What Are the Most Important Criteria for a Good PPC Campaign

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Thursday, September 11, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Recently I have come across a nice article. It says there are mainly 7 criteria for a good pay per click ad campaign. Here are the 7 criteria:

* Use conversion tracking
* Don't use Google's default settings
* Keep a fixed schedule when optimizing keywords and ads
* Study the competition before you begin
* Treat your keywords, ads, and landing page as one unit
* Be selective in capitalization
* Keep it simple with a strong call to action

My doubt is whether one of the criteria is more important than the others? For example, is being selective in capitalization more important than avoiding Google's defaults? In my view all these are important. But I will give more preference to these aspects -

* Use conversion tracking
* Consider your keywords, ads, and landing page as one entity
* Keep it simple with a strong call to action

These are basic to any successful campaign. You cannot run a successful campaign without calculating conversions and you should understand how they relate to ROI. Optimization means your keyword usage in your ad with the keyword usage in your landing page and making the two work together. A strong call to action associated with a well-written, highly optimized ad is the best treat for an average performing campaign.

Labels: pay per click

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Conversion Tracking - The Best Tool to Measure Your ROI

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

One tool that you have to be included in your pay per click advertising is conversion tracking. This tool will help you test how healthy your campaigns are performing. By seeing the conversion tracking, you can easily find whether your ROI is positive or negative. If you aren't making money from your advertising then it is not worth. There are times when you can achieve a greater benefit by losing money in order to gain branding and top-of-mind marketing results. For most advertisers, ROI is very much important. ROI is measured by subtracting your pay per click spend from the revenue earned from your advertising hard work. Suppose you spent $50 on advertising and as a result of that advertising you made $60 back from sales. Then your ROI is $20. Conversion tracking is a tool that tracks the buyer on your site to find out when they make a purchase. As soon as a customer clicks on the ad to go to your site, they have a cookie dropped on their computer and when they make a purchase, a conversion is logged. By using this tool, you'll know in an instant whether your advertising is truly being effective. You can take conversion tracking code from PPC service providers. MSN adcenter's and Adwords' conversion code you have to place in between Body tag of the html of your tracking page. But yahoo search marketing conversion code you have to place in between head tag of the html of your tracking page.

Labels: pay per click

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Preserve Keyword integrity in Your Ad Groups

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Saturday, September 6, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

It seems that people are keeping same keywords in different adgroups of the same campaign. Never do that. What is the point in doing like that? You want them competing against each other? You'll get much better performance from all of your keywords if you don't use the same keywords in multiple ad groups. Suppose you are running a wristband campaign. Keep the keyword "silicone wristband" in only one adgroup not more than that. If you want to do some experiment, then pause the ad group with that keyword and experiment your keyword in the new ad group. If you want to move it, move it completely. Don't copy it. If the issue is critical, then stop the adgroup. But don't do that too often. The keywords that you feel right to be together should stay together. You should keep the integrity of your keyword groups as much as possible.

Labels: pay per click

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PPC Summit Los Angeles September - 25 & 26

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Thursday, September 4, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Early Bird Registration cut off date is September 18.

Pricing - Includes full summit access, all sessions, keynotes, Continental breakfast, lunches, breaks, comprehensive "How-To" manuals, promotional items, networking opportunities etc.

Individual Passes Regular Early Bird*
One Day Pass (Day 1 or 2) $699 $599
Best Value!Two Day Pass $1199 $999

Additional attendees from the same company get a DISCOUNT ($100 off) when registered at the same time!

Company Passes Regular Early Bird*
Two Day Pass Only Not Available $899

* An additional 10% discount may be granted to account holders of Sponsors on Individual rates when the appropriate Invitation code is entered during registration. This discount is not reflected in the pricing above.

* This discount applies to the Early Bird rates only and will be deducted at checkout when you enter your Invitation code

* To be eligible for a Company Pass, all company attendees must register prior to the Early Bird deadline, at the same time and with the same credit card. If registering separately you must use the individual pass rates. No regular or On-Site registration is allowed with this group discount.

For more details and registration Visit http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=172278 or mail to registration@ppcsummit.com

Labels: pay per click

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Using Organic and Paid Search Together

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Why you are using pay per click advertising? You don't want your targeted users to miss your service when they are searching for that. Estimations show that 10% - 25% of searchers click on the paid search ad. If your website is not listing is 1st or 2nd page of Search engine result, you will loose majority of your users. Many marketers are satisfied with 75% of the search market that clicks on the organic listing. But revenue is revenue. It is hard to see people click on someone else's paid search and missing your service. Right? Why should you loose your target audience? According to SEM researchers, out 12% of the searchers on search engines clicked on the top pay per click ad and 7% clicked on sponsored links on the side of the search results. That's 19%. If you are not running some kind of search marketing campaign through paid search then you will miss some sales. Try to maintain PPC campaign along with your SEO tactics. If you are 1st or 2nd in the organic search result, you can pause your PPC and when you are down in organic, you can resume your ppc. One of our clients is doing the same. He's ranking top for "auto transport". If he's going down means he will start ppc. He is ready to pay $30(cpc) to get the first position in PPC.

Labels: adwords ppc, pay per click

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How to Increase Landing Page Relevancy

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Friday, August 29, 2008 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

There are five ways to make your landing page more relevant to your visitors. These are wonderful ways to increase the relevancy of your landing page:

* Search applicability
* Keyword importance
* Loading speed
* Strong call to action
* Construct Trust

The great thing about these recommendations is that these are important regardless of the PPC provider you are using. No matter whether advertising through Google AdWords or MSN adCenter, if you want to be effective you'll need to include these five things into your landing pages. Search Applicability means you have to maintain your landing page in a way that its content should go with the content in your ads. Suppose a user types a keyword and sees results. Your ad is matched with the keyword that is used for the search. Likewise, your landing page needs to match with that too. Keyword importance means make sure your landing pages use the keywords that are most important to your users. Loading Speed of your landing page should be minimum. Reduce image sizes and flashes. It may slow down the loading process. Give more relevant text content. Sometimes load speed can lower your quality score too. So design a landing page that loads quickly. You can design custom landing pages for your PPC purposes. A strong call to action will tell the visitors what you want them to do. Ensure that your landing page convey the message that you provide security and privacy to the visitors. Be honest and truthful.

Labels: pay per click

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Give Time for Your Ad Campaigns to Prove Themselves

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Thursday, August 28, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Don't expect boon results in one month. One of the most significant characteristics of running a PPC campaign is the time factor. Take your time and assemble your campaign slowly by concentrating in periodic ad testing, daily budget, and bidding. This is very important. Your ad testing should be simple. You can create 2 or more adcopies and compare them with your current ad text. You can do this weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. I suggest monthly. You're building your campaign one day at a time. The daily budget will avoid you from spending huge amounts too soon. It allows you to make mistakes without much risk. You can test your ads and change your bids peacefully. Bidding changes are essential because if you stay at the same bid all the time, then you will rise and fall according to the market changes. If you are not changing the ads and bids periodically, sometimes your top position ad will list in the 10th page. That's what I am telling you every time. Monitor your campaigns on a daily basis.

Labels: pay per click

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How to increase Click throughs on your Ads

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Main problem in PPC ad writing is there's no enough space for you to express your ideas. Humm? For example, in adwords there are two description lines with 35-35 characters and a title with 25 characters. Shrinking our ad to this much character spaces is sometimes really difficult. Your sale process starting at your landing page. But bringing people to your landing page is done by your adcopy only. The number of visitors coming to your landing page depends on how effectively you could convey the ideas and features of your service. So utilize all the characters effectively.

Here are three ways you can increase your click-throughs - Use influential Words in Your Titles - An influential word is an emotionally thrilling word that gets the attention of visitors and makes them click because you've strike a trigger. Some powerful power words are: amazing, incredible, successful, vital etc.

Promise a Benefit - Tell your visitors that you are going to give some benefits like free shipping, free consultation, discount etc. But it should be genuine.

Be Specific - Be specific when telling about figures like company turnover and revenue. If you are concentrating more on these steps, your adcopies will give you more click throughs.

Labels: google adwords, MSN adcenter, pay per click, yahoo search marketing

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Concentrating on a Single PPC Provider?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

It seems that 95% of PPC Advertisers concentrating on Google adwords only. What you think? Is that enough for your online marketing? How will you reach people who exclusively using other search engines like yahoo and msn? So it is better to create PPC account in other search engines also. It is not a must. And do a market research before doing so.

For some product, I have seen yahoo is working better than Google. Especially tax saving, payday and consolidation programs. Normally we are seeing minimum clicks and conversions in MSN when compared to adwords and yahoo. But remember one thing. What you are spending in MSN for that clicks and conversions are also very less when compared to the other two search engines. so try to create account in at least two search engines. But don't go too risky.

Labels: google adwords, MSN adcenter, pay per click, yahoo search marketing

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What should you do if unexpected increase found in PPC?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Saturday, August 23, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

A sudden increase in clicks means that either your campaign is working nicely or it could be a click fraud. What should you do if you find a click fraud?

First, try to discover why you are experiencing a spike in click. According to Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, a sudden spike in clicks may happen because of any of the following reasons:

* Changes to an ad's ranking in search results
* Change to the match type used for your ads
* Keyword seasonality
* A new distribution partner added to the Yahoo network
* Yahoo Buzz placement
* Yahoo Front Page placement

You could see a spike in the number of clicks if there is a change in the placement. Example one of your major competitors paused his campaign and suddenly your ad got a better placement. That could increase the number of clicks that you are getting. Adjust your budget and monitor your campaign. If it's a click fraud you can see many clicks without adequate conversions. Yahoo can help you. You can report sudden spikes and ask for an investigation. Yahoo's Traffic Quality Center will help you. They will send you a report which can tell you why your clicks have suddenly gone up and you'll be able to take action accordingly. Each of the search engines has a service like this. What you have to do is report it on time. Remember all sudden rises in clicks may not be frauds. Think logically. Suppose your site is down and search engines are showing your ads. What will happen??

Labels: pay per click, yahoo search marketing

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Website Optimizer has Added New Features

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:30 AM permanent link on Friday, August 22, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

If you have not yet used Website Optimizer, I greatly recommend it. It is a wonderful testing tool by adwords and saves you lots of money on ppc campaigns by allowing you test your landing pages before you start driving traffic to them and to minimize money on low conversions. Website Optimizer has added new features to its site. According to AdWords blog announcement, the new features include:

1) Experiment Pruning
2) A/B Offline Validation
3) More Intuitive Reporting

Experiment Pruning: This new feature allows you to disable one or more combinations from taking part in your Website Optimizer experiments. Pruning can help you achieve faster, more meaningful results by allowing you to remove poorly performing or illogical combinations. This is especially helpful in cases where your experiment may have too many combinations relative to the amount of traffic it receives.

A/B Offline Validation: If your test or goal pages aren't accessible to Website Optimizer then no worries. You'll now be able to just upload a copy of your tagged page and Website Optimizer will make sure that everything is tagged properly.

More Intuitive Reporting: We've enhanced our reports to more clearly show how your combinations are performing, and to better indicate when we've found one or more high-confidence winning combinations. This will help prevent you from drawing false conclusions from results or from ending experiments prematurely.

Labels: google adwords, pay per click

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Tips to Increase Ad Quality

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 1:01 AM permanent link on Thursday, August 21, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

It is very important to pay attention to your ad quality. Each search engine that uses a quality score and you can check that very easily. Your keyword bid is inversely proportional to your ad quality score. That means the higher your ad quality score, the lower your keyword bids will be. You can expect a better ROI and save money with higher ad quality. It is nice to see something ensuring you better click throughs. You can do three things to increase your ad quality. Applying these very simple ad campaign management tactics will improve your ad quality.

Select the right keywords - Find maximum number of keywords relevant to your product or service. Some keywords might be appropriate to your whole campaign but only be applicable for certain ads within that campaign and some others might be relevant for every ad in the campaign. Remember to avoid too generic keywords.

Stay with your budget - Never spend too much or go overboard. You can't reach your expected ROI. You will spend more on low performing keywords also. So always stick on to your pre-decided budget; if the change is not essential.

Group highest converting keywords together in one ad group. In yesterday's post I have explained it.

Have a look.

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/pay-per-click/2008/08/tips-to-optimize-your-ppc-campaigns.html

Labels: google adwords, MSN adcenter, pay per click, yahoo search marketing

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Tips to Optimize Your PPC Campaigns

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 1:01 AM permanent link on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

So as to ensure that your PPC campaigns are optimized and working effectively, there are few things that you should do right away. The most important ones are listed down.

Reduce number of keywords in each adgroup. Ask yourself. How many keywords are enough for your PPC Campaign? See my previous post about this over here.

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/pay-per-click/2008/08/how-many-keywords-are-enough-for-ppc.html

Get rid of keywords which are performing under your expectation. Monitor your campaign on a daily basis to do this. It will take weeks and months to identify them. Group your highest converting keywords together. You can place your underperforming keywords in a separate adgroup and create advariations and experiment them. Never mix them up with your highest converting keywords. Keywords are the back born of your campaign. So treat them nicely.

Separate Sponsored Search and Content Network keywords. Some PPC advertisers are not using content network. Me too not encouraging it much. If you feel a content network targeting is essential for your campaign, and then go for that. Try to separate your keywords for the Sponsored Search from Content Network. Now you can make changes easily to any of these campaigns without altering another.

Labels: pay per click

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Incremental and Demographic Bidding

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 8:35 PM permanent link on Monday, August 18, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

I think you know what I am going to tell here. Like geographic targeting, you can target people of specific gender and age group in your pay per click campaigns. Each search engine has the capability to target your ads in the direction of a precise demographic. It is known differently in different search engines. Google calls it demographic targeting and MSN AdCenter calls it incremental bidding. It is very simple. What you do is simply modify your keywords bid for the targeted demographic which is already defined. Suppose you are selling anti-aging cream targeted toward women ages above 30. You can adjust your bidding for the important anti-aging-related keywords that you are targeting so that you bid on the demographic that is important to you. You can bid .50 on "anti aging cream" and up your bid for that keyword to $1.00 for the 30 and above age range. Obviously women ages 30 and above are more valuable to your business than women in the 18-30 age range and it makes sense. You can still attract the younger women through your normal keyword bidding, but by using a higher bid for the older group target demographic as more valuable and the search engines will place your targeted ads effectively.

Labels: Adwords, MSN adcenter, pay per click, yahoo search marketing

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How Simple your PPC Campaigning is?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 10:00 PM permanent link on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Simplicity is the most powerful policy behind a successful PPC campaign. It should appear simple. Sometimes it is very hard to do. But remember thing. Something appears simple and clear only will be attracted by your targeted visitors. It takes time and skills. Make your PPC ad and its landing page language as simple as possible. Usage of colloquial phrases and terms sometimes makes opposite effects. The users might not be able to understand what you are actually wanted them to tell. Result-they won't click on your ads. And sometimes colloquial terms will help. Some scientific or technical terms won't be familiar to the audience. In that situation use simple colloquial terms. So always think what your target visitors will search for and what terms they will use to find the product. Simple ads sell better and they get more clicks. Like that way, simple landing pages with simple language convert more sales. Keep your landing page simple and appealing that it can touch your visitors' emotions. Result-more sales, more profit.

Labels: MSN adcenter, pay per click, yahoo search marketing

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How To Find Your Ad In The Search Engines

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:13 AM permanent link on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

What do you do to see your live ad in search engines? I know a simple search. Here are tips that make your search easy. Go to your adgroups or keywords. Find the maximum spending keywords from your list. Obviously those keywords are listing top in search results. See if your ad visible on the SERPs when you enter those keywords. Go further than page 1 because your ad may not always appear on the first page. Scroll down several pages till you find your pay per click AD.

After looking through your most expensive keywords, try searching for the most relevant keywords. Those are the keywords that are most often used on your landing page. Pick the top 5. Search for them as well. If you have chosen to show your ads only at certain time of a day, then perform a search during those times. Otherwise, try it several times during the day to see when your ads may be appearing in the SERPs

The following link also will help you search for the sponsored searches.

http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks

The result will look something like this.

Labels: Adwords, google adwords, pay per click, PPC management

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Important Things to Know About Landing Pages

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 11:19 PM permanent link on Thursday, August 7, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Landing pages are very important. Take the time to study how to do it correctly and your PPC campaign will be a big success. So you have to give much importance to your landing page design. Here are some suggestions.

1.Include a call to action - We have already discussed this topic. Let your visitors know what you want them to do and make them do it.

2.Polish your copy - The most important thing is your landing page content. That content should have a power in it to convert into a purchase. If it is not like that, do more and more work and make it like that.

3.Use simple and short paragraphs - Keep the paragraphs short and make it easy to scan. People can find something they like in it and they will stop and read.

4.Don't put much exiting page links in your landing page. If the visitors find a link much appealing they will go that way.

5.One important factor about PPC advertising and heavy traffic to your landing pages is detaining the contact information. You can close the sale any time later.

Labels: Adwords, MSN adcenter, pay per click, yahoo search marketing