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Two of the most popular PPC’s are Google
Ad words http://www.google.com which are featured prominently on many
websites on the net and Overture http://www.overture.com which list
sites in search engine results like Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN, etc, across
the net. However, there are literally thousands of PPC search engines on
the web today to choose from.
PPC ads offer a way to attract
relatively cheap targeted traffic to your website and product or
service. Here is how PPC ads work.
You bid on specific keywords or
key-phrases to have your search engine listing or short ad come up when
people search for that specific keyword. For example, if you are selling
Golf accessories, you would bid to have your site ad come up when a
person searches for "Golf Clubs". If the person sees your ad and is
interested and they click on it and you simply pay your bid amount. That
is targeted traffic.
You may bid $1 to get listed at the top
of the search result, but your competitor could then bid 1.05 and outbid
and move ahead of you. This does happen unless you are able to bid on
less popular search terms that your competitors do not and still many
people use.
Bids for the top positions vary from
pennies to a few dollars, but most PPC search engines have keyword
suggestion tools to help you find keywords and their search results to
suit your budget. You may bid on as many keywords as your budget can
handle. A general rule of thumb would be to aim for one of the top two
positions for keywords with low bid searches and aim for top 5 for
keywords with higher volume searches.
You must be careful though to bid
within your means! PPC’s are all about conversion rates. For example, if
your conversion rate is 2 visitors per 100, and you make $10 per sale.
Your maximum bid would be the following: conversion rate x profit per
sale. In this example, it would be .02 X $10= 20 cents You should bid 20
cents or less to be profitable. This is something you must figure out on
your own if you are using PPC’s for the first time in order to be
successful.
Finally, your ad should follow certain
guidelines. You want to describe your product or service in your ad as
precise as possible. Remember you are not looking for “tire kickers”
because you are paying for their click whether they buy something or
not! Link the ad to the specific product or service you are selling
instead of sending prospects to your home page so the prospect does not
have navigate to find what they clicked on originally. Try to include
the keyword in the title or description. Statistics have shown this
method to produce higher clicks. Good Luck!
Copyright 2004 Dirk Wagner
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