pay per click
How SEO And PPC Complement Each Other
Pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) are extensively used for search engine marketing, but are mostly performed in isolation to one another. The cross utilization of data is rarely seen, which if done, could potentially create far better results.
PPC is a form of advertising that brings traffic to a website through visitors clicking on an advert; every time the advert is clicked a charge is made to the advertiser. The advertiser bids on definite keywords to bring only relevant traffic to their website. Through this process they can manage the total level of their advertising budget.
SEO is a number of different factors connecting to a website can be distorted to make it materialize higher in search engine rankings and therefore attract more visitors. The factors that can be changed comprise the site content, the definite coding of a site and the external links which point to it.
This post tells you how best PPC can be used to gain useful insights, which when implemented in search engine optimization can help us derive improved results. Mentioned below are few tasks that can be performed better by using PPC to ‘test the waters’.
Keyword selection: There is no shortage of free and paid keyword research tools but the data accessible by them is not always precise. Many of us would have learnt this fact the ‘hard way’ – by optimizing for keywords that don’t convey targeted traffic, or for that matter any traffic at all. It is a costly error both in terms of time and money.
PPC can be used to resolve the ‘traffic generation capacity’ of keywords by mining raw data such as number of impressions for that meticulous keyword. This data can be extrapolated to predict the traffic yielding capacity of keywords. Optimizing the website for such keywords would consequently drive more traffic to the website.
Building a wider keyword portfolio: Every website has a set of core terms it wants to rank for, in addition to additional semantically similar key phrases. High rankings for core terms will deliver maximum targeted traffic, but at the same time the significance of ranking for secondary terms cannot discounted.
By running a PPC campaign for core terms on broad match, we can recognize keywords other than the core terms that trigger the ad. This will not only assist in building a database of relevant keywords that are searched for, but also assist in ascertaining keywords that Google considers pertinent to the core terms. Tapping these keywords along with the primary keywords would consequently channel more visitors to the website.
Judging keyword efficacy: As everything else in search engine marketing, not all keywords are made identical. It is a well established fact that some keywords change better than others, but the only certain way of perceptive keywords that convert better is to test.
PPC is a fast and efficient way to check the ‘conversion potential’ of both the primary and secondary key phrases. Optimizing your website for keywords that drive conversion is a sure shot way of generating more revenue.
Writing compelling descriptions: Meta description may have lost its significance as a ranking factor but plays a vital role in enhancing ‘click through rate’ for organic listing. In short, it is the ‘ad copy’ for organic listing.
PPC can be used to test diverse versions of ad copies and their consequent click through rate. The best performing ad copies, based on their click through rate, can then be improvised to expand Meta descriptions that are likely to attract more clicks.
Testing landing pages: A website that does not have the potential to convert visitors into customers is no good.
In order to make a landing page that facilitates conversions it will need to be tested, modified, and tested in an iterative manner. Since PPC has the tendency to deliver quality traffic quickly, testing can be performed without waiting for organic rankings and the resulting traffic.
The whole exercise of leveraging PPC to build a high performing SEO campaign has an added bonus attached to it – you get the ‘best of both worlds’ and here’s how.
It is a well recognized fact that an online marketing campaign produces top results when search engine optimization and PPC are implemented in tandem, and complement each other.
After initial spillage and fine tuning, the PPC campaign that is being used to roil data will start to deliver positive return on investment. Synergizing the PPC campaign with your search engine optimization campaign will effect in a holistic search engine marketing campaign. This is bound to distribute best results. And our idea is – why settle for less when you can get the best.
Seven Common Mistakes In PPC That Make Web Marketers Fail
Bidding Broad
When setting up your campaign you need to be very careful and need to be fast. Every industry has their huge list of keywords that drive them with the most traffic but there is many more distinction of keywords that are being searched when you focus on “long tail keywords”, the less you’re going to pay per click. Furthermore, your ads will be ranking higher if the keyword is closely matched. Expand your keyword list by just looking at your own web statistics for exact keyword variations people use to search for your product.
Avoiding Geo-targeting
Geo-targeting within a PPC search engine means that you are limiting the range of your advertising reach to a specific physical location. The search engines recognize each searcher’s IP address and can then deliver ads designated for their location. It’s just a psychological thing. .Google and other search engines permit you to geo-target your PPC ads by state. PPC geo-targeting lets you target two types of searchers first the searcher who is within a given location looking for a general keyword and then the searcher who is searching with a geographic location integrated in the search query.
You will certainly get a higher click through rate (CTR) and thus a lower CPC. Furthermore from the beginning, your visitor will know that you “recognize” their location.
Losing Relevance on Landing Page
Effective landing pages are the means to converting customers through paid search. Generally the structure of your landing page should match up with that of the banner, the ad or the link they clicked on to get them on that point. For example, if your pay-per-click ad is targeting PPC articles, your landing page needs to talk about exactly that.
Using Telephone Numbers
Using a telephone number within your PPC ad is an eye catcher and nothing more than that. Many people will want to look at your services on a website, not phone you about them straight away so be sure that the majority of your users will not call instead of clicking. You’re wasting valuable ad space that could instead be used to draw customers in. Even if you do manage to get people to phone you and not click on your ad then you will lower the CTR on those ads causing a lower quality score and worse positions at a higher cost
Avoiding Brand Name Keywords
Buying your name as keywords in PPC will give you an immediate presence in search results for these words, and will give your company valuable exposure. You may also be trailing out to direct competitors who are purchasing your name as a keyword, and are building up their own brands as a result of this strategy. Competitors may be bidding on your brand name and stealing your traffic.
Paying for Negative Keywords
It’s most significant to the customer however that the traffic you drive to their site is qualified, and not people who are just browsing. Driving more eligible traffic should decrease your spend and your cost per conversion while increasing your ROI. Negative keywords can help weed out unwanted or expensive traffic that aren’t yet ready to convert. Be sure to use that “negative keyword folder” to get rid of these insignificant clicks.
Not Using Keywords in Ad Text
Your ad text is one of the most significant aspects of your PPC account. A big mistake is when people focus more on their keyword bids than their ad text of an ad group. Be sure to incorporate one or more of your keywords within your ad text and include a call-to-action. A good call-to-action will guide the client in the right direction once they enter your site.
Pay Per Click Blog Back Again
Welcome back to our pay per click blog. Our blog has been dead for a while now and we have a reason for it. Blogger has stopped FTP publishing for blogs and we were using them to publish our blogs. This blogger change affected about 7 blogs on our own site and about 100 blogs we own and operate for our company / clients. Due to this we stopped temporarily posting contents to our blogs, we are resuming our content posting from now and hope to be regular from now on. We assure we will post at least once a week to our blog.
PPC Tool suggestions
We are inviting people to give us some suggestions on the type of tool they want for PPC. We have one of the most extensive free tools in internet. Almost all the tools on our website are free to use without any paid ads or paid links.
http://www.searchenginegenie.com/seo-tools.htm
We are now in process of developing tools for our PPC section. We know people out there require simple but effective tools to manage their PPC campaigns. Already there are many tools available in internet but most of them are just paid tools.
We are willing to provide free tools and we want suggestions. If you want any tool to be created just let us know and we are willing to program it.
http://www.searchenginegenie.com/contact-us.htm
Remember we are not interested any more for tools that query search engines. Already we have tools that query search engines and we are guilty of it. We don’t want to trouble the search engines anymore. If you want a tool that doesn’t query the search engines let us know.
PPC Vs SEO
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.
Do you decorate your ads ?
Making your ad look better and getting appeal from people is an excellent way to get more clicks. But with the rules of Google how will you decorate your ads. Well if you are using text only ads use few bold text, ampersands, capitalization , exclamation, commas etc. Even simple text ads if well formatted will attract people to click your website. I have seen some excellent ads which looks very simple but gives great visual appeal.
Check these samples
If you are doing picture ads or animated ads your options are open. You can do lot of things with animated ads or picture ads. A picture is worth 1000 words. Good graphic designers can bring great look to ads so the problem is only with text ads. Same as picture ads flash animation / regular animation ads can also bring great visual appear. Some ads I have seen on sites really made me click on it. Look at these samples of some simple but great ads for conversion.
If your ads allow special characters and the search engine PPC algorithm understands and approves it I am sure you can use it to your advantage in text ads. Special characters bring great visual appeal to them. For instance once we tested a special character on the title of our homepage and we suddenly got 20% more clicks to our homepage. I assume people came just to see what the text we used to bring the special character on the title. So we make people adventurous. People are naturally eager and regular internet users will click your ads if you use allowed special characters.
2009 sees significant drop in click fraud
Click forensics a leading companies that monitors PPC clicks have reported significant drop in click fraud in 2009 compared to 2008. http://www.clickforensics.com/resources/click-fraud-index.html According to the above URL click fraud originates mostly from Russia, UK etc. I am personally surprised by the number of botnet spammers in UK. I feel the regulations in UK is too easy to exploit. Spammers take advantage of the lenient laws in UK to spam with botnet. Lots of online spam and online fraud originate from UK. There had been reports of increased phishing activities by UK nationals. Some of them have agents in Nigeria to hide their original identity.
Compared to 1st and 2nd quarter there has been an increase in 3rd quarter it’s probably because of the start of holiday season, botnet spammers are taking advantage of the holidays to earn money running botnet.
Click forensics claim their data is most accurate because it is done by an independent detective agency which specializes in click fraud. They seem to monitor over 300 ad networks and 1000s of advertiser’s own websites.
Google does it again now badder and stronger slap
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.
Four important strategies for pay per click
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
Tips to get more traffic with long tail keywords that convert in to sales
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.