By James Williams
Advertising your
services or products on the Internet
is both extremely effective and
extremely competitive. There are
several ways to go about attracting
traffic to your website;
Pay-Per-Click is one of the options
you can choose from, along with
developing an SEO, or search engine
optimization campaign.
Both
pay-per-click and SEO are targeted
to get your website placed as close
to the top of search engine results
as possible. One of the differences
is that it takes minutes to set up a
pay-per-click campaign versus months
for a good SEO campaign.
Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of
paid advertising that most search
engines, including some of the
largest ones, now offer. It requires
a bid for a "per-click" basis, which
translates to your company paying
the bid amount every time the search
engine directs a visitor to your
site. There is the added bonus that
when a per-click site sends your
website traffic, your site often
appears in the results of other
prevalent search engines.
As with all marketing campaigns,
there are advantages and
disadvantages. If you understand the
process and monitor your
pay-per-click campaign frequently,
it can be very effective. One of the
greatest advantages is that you
never have to tweak your web pages
to change your position in search
engine results, as you must do in a
typical SEO campaign. What you do
have to do in a pay-per-click
campaign is pay a fee.
Another advantage is the simplicity
of the pay-per-click process. You
just bid and you're up and running.
It doesn't demand any specific
technical knowledge, though the more
you know about search engines and
keywords, the easier - and more
effective - the process will be.
The downside is that pay-per-click
is essentially a bidding war. A
higher bid than yours will lower
your position on search engine
results. This means that you will
have to raise your bid to regain
your position - which can obviously
become quite expensive, especially
if you are bidding on a popular
keyword.
In order to determine if
pay-per-click is a cost effective
form of marketing for your business,
you must do some computing to figure
out how much each visitor to your
site is worth. You can compute this
value by dividing the profit you
make on your website over a given
period of time by the total number
of visitors for that same time
period. For example, if your site
made $5,000 in profits and there
were 2,5000 hits, each visitor would
be theoretically worth 50 cents. The
basic formula is profits divided by
visitors.
The figure of 50 cents per visitor
is the point at which your business
breaks even. The idea, of course, is
to show a profit, not to merely
cover your costs. Therefore, you are
aiming at a figure less than 50
cents per click.
Be aware that the most popular
keywords often cost considerably
more than 50 cents a click. The only
way around this is to bid less for
these phrases or you will be paying
too much for each individual hit.
The key (pun intended) to success is
to learn everything you can about
search engine keyword research. The
good news is there isn't a limit to
the amount of keywords you can add
to your bid because additional
keywords do not add additional cost.
This translates into a lot less
hassle for you because there is no
need to optimize your site to index
a particular set of keywords.
Obviously, some keywords are much
more effective than others are, but
they will not cost you anything
except time to set-up your account
in your pay-per-click bid. Of the
popular search engines that offer
pay-per-click, one called Overture
provides an online tool that will
give you the data on how often
particular keywords are entered into
their search engine. They also offer
suggestions for keywords after you
enter a description of your site.
In pay-per-click, this written
description is crucial. You must
understand that the object of your
description is not to generally
attract visitors, but to be as
specific as possible so that only
those visitors who are likely to buy
your service or product go to your
site.
You must use
expert marketing copy to guarantee
that your description is both
precise and enticing to attract the
most ideal candidates to your site.
This description is your most
powerful tool to insure that your
bid is profitable.
Another essential element of
pay-per-click advertising is that
you constantly monitor your bid. It
is very important that you bear in
mind that the results of the top
search engines providing
pay-per-click advertising, which are
Overture and Adwords Select, usually
appear on other popular search
engines. Because of this, the
competition for top ranking is
intense, and very often you will
find that the bidding price balloons
too high for pay-per-click to yield
a profit.
If this happens, it is advisable to
withdraw your bid on that particular
keyword and try another one.
Remember: when you pay too much per
click to make a profit, you are in
essence losing the bidding war.
Since losing is not acceptable, you
must have a plan in place to closely
track the effectiveness of your
keyword. It is advisable to
monitor your keywords on at least a
monthly basis.
Not only is careful monitoring
important, but the analysis of
visitor behavior can produce
invaluable knowledge about
consumer motivation, habits, and
trends. Expert monitoring and
consumer analysis is essential to
your overall business needs, and
will also insure that your
pay-per-click campaign is a success.
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