Whats Pay Per Click? In simple terms, you pay the search engine to advertise your site based on certain keywords, phrases and locations which you choose....
When it comes to performance advertising, one of the most valuable tools a new business owner can master is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. In simple terms, you pay the search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN to drive targeted traffic to your site through various advertising campaigns. These campaigns use keywords or phrases which you choose to create the little ads you see on the side of your search results or on webpage’s. PPC campaigns can seem a little daunting at first when you set them up but there anything but. Every PPC search engine has two separate tools which can be very useful when creating your first campaign. These tools are the Keyword Tool which allows you to input a series of keywords relevant to your site and a Traffic Estimator which allows you to input your daily and/or monthly spending limit and then provides you with an estimate of clicks per day and cost.
Let’s have a look at how Google Adwords indexes its PPC campaigns. Let’s say your new website advertises rental cars in Los Angeles. One phrase you bid on could be "rental vehicles in Los Angeles" which has an estimated 2000 searches per day. When you look at the maximum CPC (Cost per click) you see it’s $1.50. Where a lot of newbie’s to the world of PPC get caught out is that they think they need to spend $1.55 in order to have their ads show. This could not be further from the truth. If you bid a maximum of 50 cents per click (CPC) and Google gives you an ad position of 4-6 on the search results then your ad will show on the front page of that search result. Positions 1-3 are usually reserved for those ads in Yellow at the top before the webpage links to the left.
Bidding less is not always a bad thing; in fact it can save you a lot of money yet still generate a lot of traffic. Just remember though, you pay for people who click on your add and are directed to your site. If 30 people click on your PPC campaign then your charged the average CPC. This can sometimes be less than the maximum CPC you initially bid on. A lot of my campaigns where I’ve bid 50 cents to start off with are now charging a maximum of 20-30 cents per click. That’s because the amount of clicks my ads produce is creating revenue for Google. Remember it’s not the highest bidder than make the gets most clicks, is the ad campaign created. So what could have cost me $15 per day at 50 cents is now costing me between 6-9 dollars per day.
Another suggestion to keep in mind is to target only your key audience. You wouldn’t use a keyword which has nothing to with your add or website. Going back to our original example of rental car companies in LA, you wouldn’t use a keyword which dealt with rental car companies in New York. You could even go so far as to say you wouldn’t want to bid on “rental cars” as it’s to general a keyword UNLESS your add specifically lets the viewer see that it is a rental car company in the LA area.
But why use PPC when I'm trying to make money not spend it?
How many times have you searched on the Internet with a keyword or phrase and find that maybe only 2 of the 10 results on the first page are what you’re looking for? Now let’s say you want to buy a particular item. How many times have you searched through websites and junk online catalogues looking for a particular product or service and just given up through frustration? Now the flip side to that example is that your website has a product that person wants to buy but they can't find it because of other top ranking sites. What this means is that you can go for months without having one hit or sale from your site, you’re putting money into a business that’s a long time without seeing and returns. In fact a lot of people who have done this exact thing have given up on their business and it’s either closed down due to lack of funds or some just let it go and leave it in cyber space never updating it and never making any money.
PPC can deliver quality targeted traffic to your website and any business owner will testify that targeting the right market and person is what can ultimately turn a visitor into a customer. When using Googles Adwords service with the Keyword Tool you’ll find two options. One option is to use keywords or phrases the second is to use a Website URL. To find what keywords your competitions using, copy and paste your competitor’s website URL into the search box. Google will then return the keyword results and the amount of searches per day. This is a great way to find optimum keywords quickly.
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