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Incremental and Demographic Bidding

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.

How Many Keywords are Enough for a PPC Campaign?

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.

How Simple your PPC Campaigning is?

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.

The Unquestionable Relationship between Ad Copy and its Landing Page

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.

PPC Success Begins With Research

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.

http://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.

Important Things to Know About Landing Pages

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.

Try a Call to Action – Your Ads do convert

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.

Be Familiar with These PPC Terms

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.

Misspelled and Competitor Adgroups

Include misspelled and competitor adgroups in your campaign. If you are waiting for people correctly knowing the spelling of the keywords or people searching for your company only, your ad is not going to work well in search engines. Try to include maximum misspelled keywords in your misspelled adgroup and top competitors in your competitor adgroup. If someone searching for your competitor gets attracted by your adcopy and apply for your service. Why should we spoil one lead? Suppose your company ad is coming in local radio and someone hearing this ad trying to locate your website. It is not sure that whether he knows the spelling of your company or the product he’s searching for. Our wristband campaign is getting many clicks and conversions for “ristbands”, “wristbands”, “wristbands” etc. So bidding on misspellings is an intelligent way to increase the efficiency of your PPC advertising. Try this now itself if you haven’t experiment this before.

Yahoo Search Marketing

I always forget that yahoo’s ppc service is no more overture and it is Yahoo Search Marketing only. Leave that. When you are writing ads for yahoo search marketing, create 2 ad descriptions. 1 short ad description and one long ad description. If you have the option to add both these, why should we skip it. If you are adding only a long ad description, in some search engines, search results with descriptions longer than 70 characters will be cut off. So try to create unique long and short ad descriptions. Your 190-character long ad description is supported by yahoo’s many distribution partners’ sites. So use this chance to give maximum important points about your product and service.

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