What are Pay Per Click Search Engines?
While true search engines rank results based on relevancy determined
by their search engine programs, Pay Per Click results go to highest
bidder.
For example, here are the results of a search for the term, "DVD
players" on Overture.com.
Next to each result is a price (eg. $0.40) which represents the
amount of money that website will be charged for every click through
to their site. The results are ranked by bid price.
To use a PPC service, you first determine what are the keywords
a potential visitor may type into a search engine when looking
for your site. This usually includes your company name and any
variations of that, along with likely industry terms in all possible
variations.
While it's easy to sit down and brainstorm 50-100 possible search
terms for your website, a professional web marketer can usually
deliver over 1000 relevant terms based on keyword combination
formulas.
You may have noticed that there are gaps in the bid prices in
the results posted. (eg. $0.40 to $0.36 or $0.33 to $0.25). This
means that website owners are overpaying for their search positioning.
Professional PPC management can save a website owner a lot of
money by closely managing their PPC campaigns.
Who should use Pay Per Click advertising?
Anyone who has taken the time to build a website should consider
using pay per click advertising. At the very minimum, it is a
great way to make sure your site appears at the top of almost
every major search engine for searches on your company name and
any common variations, misspellings, etc.
I've tried Pay Per Click advertising before
and it didn't work. Any Ideas?
Top ten reasons for a poor return on your PPC dollar:
1. Your site has poor usability causing your customers get frustrated
and leave.
2. Your site's copy is out of date or poorly written causing potential
customers to not take your business seriously.
3. You don't have a system to allow site visitors to subscribe
which could lead to a sale down the road.
4. You're selling a product or service that nobody is interested
in.
5. You're prices are too high or hard to understand.
6. Your site takes forever to load.
7. Your site doesn't work on AOL.
8. Your site doesn't work with Netscape.
9. You're overbidding for terms on Pay Per Click sites.
10. You're bidding on terms that are too general to create qualified
leads.
Can I run my own Pay Per Click web marketing
campaigns?
Pay Per Click search engine management firms like Haystack In
A Needle offer some value added services that will greatly improve
the return on investment for almost every business and website
owner.
1. As expert keyword and search term researchers, we will uncover
many search terms your potential customers and clients may be
searching for.
2. By discovering targeted search terms, we can lower your cost
per click and improve the quality of your PPC search traffic.
3. With professional PPC account management, you will have better
control over your monthly PPC ad spend by preventing overbids
and bid gaps.
If you are an entrepreneurial do it yourself type, Haystack In
A Needle offers a tool to help you cost effectively manage your
Google Adwords Select account. Click here for more information.
To set up your own campaigns, follow the following links:
Are LookSmart's Small Business Listings
Worth It?
Looksmart changed in early April 2002 from a Paid Inclusion
Directory to a Pay Per Click website.
After paying a $49 listing fee, you will be charged $0.15 cents
per click for traffic generated through the Looksmart network.
You can edit your listing's title, description, and assign up
to 10 keywords to your site to improve relevancy in searches.
Unfortunately, you can also end up paying for non-targeted traffic,
driving down your ROI.
As of January 2004, MSN will stop using LookSmart's search results
which severly cuts into the reach of LookSmart's results.
At this time, Haystack In A Needle is not recommending Looksmart
to clients as part of an online marketing strategy for consumers.
What can you tell me about Google Adwords
Select?
Google Adwords Select is a Pay Per click program that displays
ads based on search phrases on Google.com, AOL.com, Ask Jeeves,
groups.google.com, Earthlink.com, and Compuserve.com.
Adwords Select offers some advanced features beyond more traditional
Pay Per Click programs such as the option to filter by country
or language and bidding in a Wildcard fashion.
With Wildcard bidding you can bid to have your ad display every
time someone's search includes a keyword or phrase you want to
target. This is a powerful tool but is best used in conjunction
with a solid list of negative keywords to prevent your ad from
displaying for low-quality/relevancy searches.
The pricing on Adwords is much more complex than a traditional
Pay Per Click program. Google uses the relevancy of your ad based
on click through percentage to determining your cost per click.
So, one person could pay 19 cents per click with a 1% click through
rate for the #2 position while the #1 position is held by someone
else is paying 10 cents per click with a 2% click through rate.
Haystack In A Needle can help you design and run an effective
Adwords Select campaign. Contact
Us today for more information. OR, if you'd like to tackle
this yourself, we recommend dropping $19.74 on our negative
keyword list to help get you started. And, pick up a copy
of Page
Zero's Adwords Select special report. This will save you a
ton of cash and frustration through trial and error.
Here's a Google
Adwords case study from a recent client you may find interesting.
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