How To Make Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work For You

Nov 2
08:54

2007

Bernie Rosellen

Bernie Rosellen

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How you can create an internet revenue stream using pay-per-click advertising on search engines

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How To Make Pay-Per-ClickAdvertising Work For You

You can reap great rewards withthis online advertising strategy

When Google created the pay-per-click (ppc) advertising program on their search engine,How To Make Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work For You Articles the online marketing playing field had finally been leveled. For the first time, small businesses and individuals could compete with corporate giants for the attention of online consumers. In fact, the small website operators fared much better with their ability to get consumers to take action than the business behemoths.

There is, however, a grave danger to jumping blindly into the ppc waters. To make the ppc concept work, there are a number of systematic steps and strategies that must be employed to be successful. Without a carefully planned ppc marketing strategy, you can break the bank in the blink of an eye. How do you think I know that? I learned the hard way.

If you are unfamiliar with pay-per-click, it is simply a process where you are charged a certain amount of money, that you establish, every time someone clicks on one of your ads on the search engine’s first page. These are the ads that usually appear at the very top of the page in three’s in shaded areas and also all the ads that run along the right side of the search page.

Once you understand the intricacies of the pay-per-click technique and can set a well-planned strategy into place, you can create a virtual faucet of leads, sales, or whoever you are fishing for. You can actually control the flow of prospects and customers with the use of ppc advertising.

There is quite a bit involved in using ppc to generate revenues, but it is a simple, systematic process that works. It isn’t easy, but it is simple once you know how it all works. I have outlined below the key areas that need to be perfected in order for ppc to work at it’s optimum.

Keywords are key:Your starting point involves using the right keywords. You need to determine what keywords your prospects or customers would type into a search engine to find your product or service. There are free online services that will provide you with a list of all the words and phrases people type to find what they are looking for. Just go to Google and type in keywords and go from there.

Once you have identified the keywords you are going to use (make sure that these words and phrases appear throughout your website pages), group them into like categories. Then you go to the search engines and sign-up for a ppc account, which takes no time at all, and you can then follow the instructions to get your keyword groupings set-up.

Pay-Per-Click bidding is tricky:Bidding on your keywords is critically important and will take some experimentation, monitoring, and time to perfect. The search engines offer a suggested bid price for each keyword phrase, but you don’t have to accept it. Just pick the daily budget that you can afford for now and a low bid amount to test the waters.

Yahoo! shows you the five current highest bids so that you always know who’s paying what to be in that position. If you want to be higher, just bid more. Google does not show you the other bids, but they offer a table that gives you an expected page position based on the amount that you entered.

Test your ads regularly:One great feature of the search engines’ ppc programs is the ability to run more than one ad. Google, for instance, will alternately run two ads for a period of time or three or more. This allows you to test two or three different ads and track their performance over a specified period. The poor performing ad or ads can then be replaced with new ads while the best performing ad continues to run until it is replaced by a new ad that performs better.

This is one of the best strategies and the most important in the whole ppc campaign. The ability to run two ads and see which performs better maximizes your ad costs because you learn what works and what does not in a short period of time. This way you always have your best foot forward and enjoy better results from your advertising dollars.

Track your resultsIn order to determine which of your keywords people are clicking on and what ads are performing, you need to track the actions taking place behind the scenes. The search engines have tracking options for you that allow you to monitor keyword performance.

Just like ads, keywords need to be tested and tracked to see what makes visitors respond. After awhile, it will be easy to see what is working and what needs to be replaced or eliminated and what needs to be continued and increased.

Taking these four areas into consideration as the backbone of prudent pay-per-click advertising planning, you can enjoy a highly profitable revenue stream where your return on investment can exceed anything that you have experienced before with your business or profession. Taking one step at a time through this systematic process will almost guarantee your success in online marketing.

Do remember, however, that your successful ppc campaign is only going to be a money pit if your website cannot get your visitors to take the action that you want them to, be it to fill out a form to capture an email address or to make a sale. A website that keeps visitors and lets them find what they are looking for easily is the second part of the equation for a fruitful online marketing strategy.

If your website doesn’t do that, you are wasting all your ppc money. Your ppc success is useless if your website doesn’t do it’s job. Here, again, you can find help online. One of my favorite, no baloney websites is http://www.RichmondWebPro.com where you will find helpful information on marketing on the internet. You will find, by the way, this site to be a good example of a website that is good at keeping and getting visitors to take action.

Take the plunge and learn about the value of pay-per-click or hire an expert and get your website out in front of the millions of people and companies looking for your products or services online. It will be money and time well-spent. How do you think I know that?

Ciao for now,Bernie Rosellen, Your Web Marketing Probrosellen@earthlink.net