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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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New Keyword Research Tool from MSN adCenter

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 12:01 AM permanent link on Monday, August 25, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

It seems all the search engines are competiting to deliver new services to the customers. The latest one in the queue is MSN adCenter's New Keyword Research Tool. Whether they hope they can possess some search engine shares that Google is enjoying now? I donno. Anyway these are the unique features they are offering-

1) Audience Insights - this tool will help you get a little more detail about certain demographics that you are planning to target with your PPC campaigns. Sounds good no? But you can use it only if you are running ppc in MSN and opt for this service.

2) this tool is a beta add-in for Excel. Unlike Google's keyword research tool (that is purely an online tool), you can install this MSN tool. If you are using Excel to analyze your keyword lists, then it may surely make sense for you. Some people download the CSV list even on Google AdWords. Having the MSN adCenter keyword research tool will make it easier for you to analyze the difference between Google adWords keywords and MSN adCenter keywords. We can't say that the tool is a worthy one now. You use and find out.

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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??

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

https://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.

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Why Not Your Ads Are Getting Clicked On?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 1:00 AM permanent link on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

You have spent very much time on keyword and market research. You have given pretty good biddings also. Still your ads are not getting clicked. You might have faced this problem. The best way to get clicked on your ads is to write ads that demand a click through. The language and content of ad copy need the prime attention. If you are sure that you are targeting the right keywords only, then go behind your adcopies. Try to write better copies. Always write more than one adcopy for each adgroup. The success of your ad is determined by quality score of your ads. Be sure you pay care to the quality score and keep checking and experimenting those ads until you get them right.


What you have to do?

* Make your ads compelling and clear
* Compare your ad variations
* Use keywords in your titles and descriptions
* Target keywords to correct landing pages
* Separate ads into ad groups
* Try to get good quality scores (you can check quality score of your ads in adwords)

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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.

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How Many Keywords are Enough for a PPC Campaign?

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 10:03 PM permanent link on Thursday, August 14, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

This doubt is a very common among PPC professionals and beginners. The most important aspect of any pay per click campaign is the keyword research and that I have already told it here many times. We have to spend significant time on keyword research. The success of your PPC campaign directly depends on how effective you could choose the right keywords based on search engine statistics and relevancy to your business. I don't want to explain about the keyword research again. I don't want you to feel bored.

I have only one thing to tell you. 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. Otherwise your pocket will be empty very soon. How many keywords is enough for your campaign id depends on you niche. In a narrow niche you have to limit your keywords. But my advice is to use as many keywords as you can without worrying about your niche concept. But I am telling you one-thing again. Don't go for too generic keywords. Take relevant keywords only. Start your campaigning with an effective keyword research. Success is certainly your way.

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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.

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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.

https://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks

The result will look something like this.


Google Sponsored Search Results

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The Unquestionable Relationship between Ad Copy and its Landing Page

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

Your ad copy and landing pages are very closely attached. If your landing page and ad copy work perfectly together, you'll have a successful and happy pay per click campaign.

Ad Copy

Ad copy is very important. Your ad copy is the first thing which is giving idea about your product or service to your targeted searchers. In sponsored search and in content network, the following things draw attention of visitors.
In your ad-copy, try to use credible and reliable data. Your adcopy should impose interest and curiosity on your visitors. There should be a call to action. Be honest and target right audience.

Landing Page

Conversion happens in your landing page. It can be an existing page in the web site or you can design 1 for PPC conversion purpose. But that page should have a power to retain your visitor in that page itself. Avoid other attractive links from your custom landing page. Landing page also should contain credible and reliable content. List the most important features of your service. It should be close to the sale. 10 more steps to purchase a product will make visitors feel bored and they will stop the attempt and go to your competitor's website.

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PPC Success Begins With Research

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 11:59 PM permanent link on Saturday, August 9, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

The beginning of pay per click is depends purely on research. There are mainly two types of research in PPC. Keyword research and competitor research. Market research will come under keyword research only. What you think? Which research is more important? Keyword research or competitor research? I think they have the equal importance in PPC management. You have to do some prior research before you start your first campaign.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is simply the selection of best performing keywords which can bring visitors to your website. You may have wasted thousands of dollars on page ranking and conversions if the right keyword phrases are not targeted. Keywords are the back bone of both PPC and SEO. Even if you attain high search engine rankings, you may not get appropriate traffic if the selected keywords are not right.
You can see more about keyword research in my blog post here.

https://www.searchenginegenie.com/pay-per-click/2008/06/importance-of-keyword-research.html

Google's external keyword tool is the best tool to check the keywords and their average search volumes. Filter 10-20 keywords which you feel most relevant to your business.

Competitive Research

Now make a search for each of those keywords using both broad match and exact phrase match. See what your competitors are targeting and advertising for. Do organic searches to find that. Check who is ranked high in the organic search listings and still paying for top placement with their paid search ad. Those are your most competitive competitors. You can go to their websites and do more research. Please don't click on any sponsored search ads. As you don't want people who are not interest in your sales/service to click on your ads, give the same importance and respect to your competitors also.

After completing these stages, you can go for a deeper and comprehensive research.

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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.

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Try a Call to Action - Your Ads do convert

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 10:37 PM permanent link on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Simply writing ads are not enough in PPC. There should be some power in the ad that forces the viewers to click on it. That means there should be a call to action in your adtext. The viewers feel that the ad can lead them to the service or product what they have searched for. The call to action can create urgency to the demand. Some examples are -

- Apply now
- Order today
- Download here
- Free quote
- Free shipping
- Request a quote
- Free estimate
- ---% discount

This is an easy way to increase conversion. Try it today itself and feel the difference. But something you always have to remember. Your landing page should be informative and include "free" and "% of discount" only if those are available in your website.

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New Features Added To MSN adCenter Analytics Interface

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 9:35 PM permanent link on Monday, August 4, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

On 29th of July, MSN adCenter announced that they have updated their analytics (formerly known as "Project Gatineau") interface and added new features.

Here are various features added to adCenter Analytics.

Dashboard Changes - New changes to the dashboard at MSN adCenter Analytics include a fresh new look highlighting the following default views:

- Top pages
- Top keywords
- Top referring websites
- Traffic summary
- Page views
- Visits

Path Reports - This feature allows you to find how visitors come to a particular page in your website. That means, what link path they take to arrive at Page Y if they started with Page X.

Top Entry & Exit Pages - This feature allows you to get details about the top entry and exit pages of your website.

Treemap Tracking - This feature allows you to see who is using your website from an age and gender viewpoint.

It is nice to see MSN adCenter making useful changes to its analytics product.

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Be Familiar with These PPC Terms

Written by Jinu Sunil @ 8:41 PM permanent link on Sunday, August 3, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

After 1 week training, my PPC trainee asked me what is CTR, what is CPC and Quality Score. Then only I remembered that I forgot to explain her these terms. Ok. Here I am explaining some of the common acronyms associated with pay per click advertising. Before starting your PPC advertising, you should understand these terms thoroughly. Otherwise, you might make a conclusion based on an incorrect guess.

CTR - Click Through Rate. This is the number of times that viewers of your ad click to go through to your website. We can calculate CTR by this formula-

CTR=Clicks/Impressions * 100

CPC - Cost Per Click. This is how much you are paying for clicks on your ads. It is usually expressed as an average because most of the time you will not be paying the same amount. The actual cost per click varies depending on many factors like competition and some other factors, but it is always within the range of your pre-set values.

CPC= Costs/Clicks

CPM - Cost-per-thousand Impressions - This is how much you are paying for each 1000 impressions of your ads. That means, for every 1000 views of your ads, you have to set a budget and pay that.

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