Search Engine Marketing In 5 Easy Steps
When it comes to search engine marketing there are some dos and don’ts. But we tend to think in terms of principles. You can get started with search engine marketing in just a few simple steps and it’s not that hard. Be prepared, however. You will need to spend some money.
- Step 1: Make a tentative plan. Don’t just wing it. Search engine marketing involves planning and execution. Your first step should be to plan.
- Step 2: Research. Why is this step second? Because you really should know what general direction you are headed before you start your research. The research will guide you in a more specific direction. What kind of research? Competitive. Keyword. Opportunity.
- Step 3: Adjust your plan. This is where you hone the details. Take your research and make the best plan you can. Include a budget and be specific about your goals.
- Step 4: Open accounts. You’ll need accounts with pay per click companies. Set up your accounts based on your budget set in step 3.
- Step 5: Implement. Remember, it isn’t all about pay per click advertising. Search engine marketing also involves organic search. Make sure they work together.
Now that you know the steps to get started in search engine marketing, why waste time?
Where Does Your PPC Keyword List Come From?
New pay per click advertisers often wonder where they should get their keyword list. The obvious answer is from your initial keyword research – the same place you get the keyword list for your organic search campaigns. But that’s a little too pat. And the answer is not so cut and dry. There are other ways to get your keyword list.
- Borrow from the competition – Have you analyzed your competition’s PPC and organic search campaigns? If not then hop to it. It’s a great resource for your own keyowrd list.
- Your own referrer logs – Study your referrer logs from time to time to see what key phrases people are using to find your site. You can often find phrases that you haven’t targeted. If some of those phrases turn out to be popular phrases then you’ll have a few gems in the rough.
- Google Zeitgeist – This little known product from Google will show you what search queries have trended each day.
- Google Trends – Another product from Google. It allows you to look at trends over time, which can tell a story all its own.
- Twitter Trends – Twitter Trends tells you what is popular right now. This is real time data and if you hit your new keyword trends just right you might find a gold mine.
There is really is no right or wrong way to find new keywords for your pay per click campaigns, but if you think creatively then you can likely find your own.
Can Small Pay Per Click Search Engines Make You Money?
Can you make money with smaller pay-per-click companies? You know I’m not talking about Google, or Yahoo!, or Bing. Those are the majors. I’m talking about the small companies and search engines. Some of them you’ve probably never heard of, such as:
- Miva
- Looksmart
- 7Search
- Search123
- GoClick
- Kanoodle
- AdBrite
- Enhance
This is just a small list. There are plenty more.
Most pay per click advertisers stick with the big three, but they are missing opportunities with the small search engines. The advantage to using the small PPC companies is that your cost per click will be lower – much lower. In some cases, keywords that you’ll spend $1 or more at Google or Yahoo! will cost your mere pennies at one of the smaller companies. The downside is you won’t get anywhere near the traffic that you’ll get at Google, but if you get any traffic for a fraction of the cost then it’s worth it. Right?
Yes, right. So don’t discount the small pay per click companies. They could be very profitable.
Are Keywords Important With PPC?
If you are new to pay per click marketing, you might be wondering how important are keywords. In a word, they are very important. You can’t manage an effective PPC campaign without focusing on the right keywords for your campaign.
But how are keywords important?
Keywords in PPC are important in three ways:
- They ensure that your ad is shown for the right keyword queries in the search engines. Targeting. Plain and simple.
- Keywords are important for matching your ads with your landing pages. Your prospects will want to know that what they have queried is also what you are offering.
- Keywords are important for bidding and budgeting correctly. You’ll get to bid on your keywords, placing a value on each one. Consider this value carefully.
Don’t ignore the importance of keywords in PPC marketing. They are just as important as keywords for SEO.
The Integration Of Social Media And Search Engine Marketing
We’ve seen the integration of online marketing strategies and resources and they seem to be drawing closer together rather than further apart. Specifically, I’m talking about social media and search.
Facebook is the largest social media site online and many of its best features offer search engine benefits. Twitter is leading the way into a more robust and scalable social media environment online. Plus, each of the search engines is playing around with offering real-time search, a social media phenomenon. Social search is the next big thing.
But what about search engine marketing, or more specifically, pay per click marketing? Will PPC be integrated into that mix any time soon?
Strangely, fewer and fewer people are clicking on those ads. The search engines are actually looking for ways to increase click throughs. But the social networks do offer their own brands of pay per click marketing – Facebook and StumbleUpon have led the way in this regard though the results have been less than stellar. The world is still waiting to see what Twitter will do.
Nevertheless, we stand at a precipice. Social media and search engine marketing are coming together in a big way. There’s no telling where we will be in a couple of years.
Is There Is An Optimal Bid Price With PPC?
Does it matter how much you pay for clicks? Pay per click advertising allows you, the advertiser, to pick your price. You bid on your keywords and pay the price that you are willing to pay for a click. But is there an optimal method for determining what a good click bid is?
The short answer is No. There really is no ONE way to determine the optimal bid price in pay per click. The primary reason is because there are many factors that can influence the market at any given time.
One such variable that is difficult to predict, particularly for new campaigns, is seasonality. If you’re in retail then chances are good that Christmas – or the three or four months prior to Christmas – will result in higher click prices for you. But other businesses might do well at other times of year. The travel industry, for instance, sees its peak in the spring and summer.
Aside from seasonality, however, other factors are important to consider as well. Obviously, you must consider the price of your product. Is it a low-cost item? Don’t spend too much on PPC or you won’t profit. How about click through rates and conversion rates? Those are important too.
Bottom line, PPC management involves constant tweaking and readjusting. You will likely not start off with the right bid price on any of your keywords. But by paying attention to what the market is doing and your own campaign performance you can adjust your aim and arrive at a bid price that is profitable and comfortable for you.
Does Your Pay Per Click Inform Your SEO?
One of the best and most effective SEO strategies involves using PPC, or pay per click advertising, to find new keywords and optimize web pages. It really isn’t anything new. Webmasters have been using pay per click to inform their SEO for many years. It works like this.
You pick a few keyword phrases that you haven’t targeted on your website just yet and bid on those. Write your ads. Point the URLs in your ads to the most relevant page on your website. See which ads get clicked on the most for the keywords that you are targeting. When you find a keyword that attracts a lot of click throughs then you know you’ve found a good keyword for your niche.
But what should you do with that keyword? Well, you can build a new static web page for your website or your can write a blog post. You can also write articles for your article marketing efforts. Whatever you can do in the way of content development that requires keyword optimization. And it starts with a simple pay per click campaign.
What Is Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing is generally broken into two different types of marketing. On the one side is search engine optimization. On the other side is pay per click advertising, or paid search. The primary component of search engine marketing, of course, is the practice of increasing the visibility of a website in the search engines. That could technically include more than SEO and PPC.
Many industry insiders think of SEM as primarily paid search advertising, or contextual advertising. I think there could be a case that SEM includes social media advertising in some cases.
If the intent of advertising is to influence search rankings then I’d argue that should be included in the broad definition of search engine marketing. In that case, buying links – though frowned upon by search engines – could be considered a part of search engine marketing.
However you define search engine marketing, there is one thing that all marketers online can agree on. You can’t build a web business today without it. Search engine marketing is as essential to business today as sunlight.
SEM Leads To Sales
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a powerful method of making money. Unique to online marketing, it consists of more than building a website and watching them come. SEM involves testing, driving traffic, and closing sales by generating leads through pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, and paid inclusion forms of search engine marketing.
SEM is not new. Even before Google and pay per click advertising, online marketers were using search engines to build their businesses. But SEM has become more sophisticated. It is a science as much as an art.
At its most effective, SEM can build your business in a splash, but most businesses see their revenues climb steadily. The first step to effective SEM is to build a well optimized website with a good clean design and ready to convert traffic to sales. If your website isn’t ready to convert then it doesn’t matter how much traffic you drive to it. It will all be lost opportunities.
When it comes to SEM, the best place to start is with a plan. And if you have trouble coming up with a plan on your own, you might want to consider an SEM consultant.
What Makes Pay Per Click So Special?
Pay per click marketing isn’t so new any more. A lot of people are doing it. Some are more successful than others. Some people swear by it. Others swear at it. But no matter your view on pay per click advertising, there is one thing for sure. It is unique among advertising models and there is one thing in particular that makes it a special kind of advertising.
Pay per click advertising provides one benefit that no other form of advertising offers. Quality, targeted traffic.
You know that traffic is important to any web business. Get no site visitors and you can’t get any business. But even better than loads of traffic is moderate targeted traffic. I’d rather get 1,000 good quality leads than 100,000 paint pellets on a wall. Pay per click offers targeted traffic. If one does it right.
What that means is, if you do your keyword research well and you define your market followed by a well-written ad targeted toward your ideal audience and that uses a strong call to action, you should do well with pay per click. The size of your budget doesn’t matter. What does matter is the quality of your advertising.
Test Your Pay Per Click Strategy Before Full Implementation
For most companies, a well-crafted and managed pay per click campaign can build real significant results into their online marketing plans. This is an area of online business that requires some critical thought. You don’t want to just jump in with both feet and a big budget and nonchalantly start tossing money away. There is a strategy to consider.
When you first start your pay-per-click campaign, do so lightly. Run a test. Initially, you want to test your keywords and landing pages. No sense in throwing thousands of dollars into a marketing campaign for a website that isn’t ready to close sales. So run a moderate test to see what kind of results you can get before you go all out with your marketing campaign.
When you run your initial test, you are looking for three things:
- Is your landing page optimized well enough to receive traffic and close sales?
- Are your keywords the right keywords for reaching your target market?
- Is your ad content written well enough to attract click throughs?
If you can answer yes to those three questions then you are ready to start your pay per click campaign. If your answer to any of these questions after you run your test is “no” then you need to tweak and retest.
How Not To Exceed Your PPC Budget
The surest way to ensure you do not exceed your budget on your pay-per-click advertising is to set both a monthly and a daily budget. The key is to keep your PPC ads running during peak times without going over your monthly ad spend or using all of your ad spend before the end of the month.
Let’s say your monthly budget is $1,000. If you just set your budget limit at that amount and set your ads to run then you could spend your entire budget before the end of the month. Advertisers have found their budget depleted by the 15th and their ads won’t run any more until the first of the next month. That means your ads won’t run for half the month, leaving you with wasted time and wasted money.
To prevent that from happening, set a daily budget that is lower than or equal to the prorated amount for your monthly budget. In other words, divide $1,000 by 30 days and you get $33.33. You don’t want your daily budget to exceed that amount. Set it slighly lower, say to $30, and day that you hit that amount your ads will stop running. But they’ll pick up again on the next day allowing you to run your advertising throughout the entire month without exceeding your $1,000 monthly budget.
Another way to control your PPC spend is to find out when your ads are clicked on the most and run your ads only during those times. If you find that 75% of your clicks are between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday then you can set your PPC account to display your ads only during those times. That will cut out a portion of the time when clicks are low and save your budget.
Search Engine Marketing Is More Holistic Than PPC
There’s more to search engine marketing than merely a full force pay-per-click campaign. We strongly believe that search engine marketing should be a comprehensive and holistic marketing endeavor involving various methods of marketing online. Pay per click is just one method, albeit an important one.
The advantage to using pay per click marketing in your search engine marketing plan is that you have more control over your budget and your message. You can also drive targeted traffic to your website much more quickly with PPC than you can other methods. But I’d never use PPC as the only marketing method online.
Natural SEO is still very important and you want your natural SEO efforts to compliment your PPC efforts, and vice-versa. But you might also incorporate other methods of marketing into your search marketing plan.
Usually, companies don’t think of social media marketing as a part of SEM. But it can be. If you engage your prospects in such a way that it affects your SEO and overall SEM efforts then it can be an integral part of your overall search engine marketing strategy. The key is to keep it all consistent.
How You Are Judged In PPC
Many would-be Internet marketers are a little confused about pay-per-click marketing. It is assumed that because it is keyword-based like SEO then the rules are the same. That’s actually not the case.
With search engine optimization, you are judged by how well your website is optimized by both on-page and off-page factors. You are judged by things that are both in your control and outside of your control. With PPC, you are judged entirely by things that are within your control. However, your placement on the page is judged by things outside of your control.
Let me explain.
A good PPC campaign begins with a list of keywords. You first have to build a landing page that is optimized for your keywords. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them. Next, you write an ad that is designed to drive traffic to that landing page. You set a budget and bid on keywords and let your ad go live. The search engine will give your ad a quality score. That quality score is based on how well your ad and landing page work together AND whether or not visitors to your landing page stick around – your bounce rate.
You might say, wait a minute, I can’t control what my visitors do. But before you say that, consider that your visitors are reacting to your copywriting skills. If they leave your site because it is poorly designed or doesn’t meet their expectations then it’s because of what you did. You have control over that.
But even if you do everything right and you get the best quality score, your placement within the search engines is dependent upon the search engines. You may be placed high on the list due to your quality score, but if someone else achieves a higher quality score, which you can’t control, then they may actually achieve a better positioning than you.
So your ad is judged by what you do, but your placement is judged by a combination of what you do and what your competition do. Those are some things to keep in mind when planning your next PPC campaign.
Pay Per Click: The Misunderstood Science
Pay per click advertising is the misunderstood science. Too many Internet marketers and small business entrepreneurs are under the impression that it can cost a lot of money to run a PPC campaign and get a small return. While it can get expensive, the bright side is you control the budget. So you can set your spend limit and your ads will stop running once you hit your limit.
But advertising spend is the least of your worries when running a pay-per-click campaign. A good PPC campaign is only as good as the keywords upon which it is based. And that means you have to spend the proper time doing research.
It isn’t enough to just pick a handful of keywords out of thin air. You’ve also got to group them well and pair them up with the right ad content. A well-written and optimized landing page ready to convert sales is perhaps your best asset. Drive all the traffic you want to your website, but if you aren’t ready to close them then it won’t matter. Your landing page has to be ready, or you’re not.
A successful pay-per-click campaign requires research, patience, and a good attitude. You can win if you run a good campaign and watch your budget.
The New BING On The Block
While Microsoft’s BING search engine isn’t exactly news, I thought I’d share my initial thoughts concerning it’s appearance on the scene.
Bing has brought a traffic increase to Microsoft. Exciting news for them, but don’t get excited yet! Whether you are in the business of Internet marketing or simply looking into your options for hiring an internet marketing firm, consider the following:
- Making the Switch- before everyone rushes over to BING for their marketing needs, be it Pay Per Click or not, there are a lot of facets to each engine. While Yahoo! has been at bay in the number 2 spot under Google for a long time, there are many campaigns that don’t work on Google and do work on Yahoo! Just because a site is bigger does not make it better, and while jumping on any given bandwagon may seem like a good plan, there is no rush. Should BING continue in its success, it will only further establish the engine, and thus, it will still be there later on. Still, if you’re one of the people that can’t wait to dive into a new channel and truly believes that a new engine is the way to go, there are other things to consider first.
- Duplicate Content- On a Google search, as a primary example, you will find multiple links to the same site. Between all links to the same domain, there will be home page links, interior links, and potentially file links, like .pdf files and the like. BING, however, is a different story. As of recently, the BING algorithm is designed to remove duplicate content, for the purpose of only showing the most relevant page on a given site matching the search query. This may or may not be a good thing for your site. Many sites might have many similar products or services listed on the home page or on interior pages, in which case a direct link to one product might not be optimal. For eCommerce sites, this could improve ROI since, assuming the product or service page is most relevant to the search terms, such a user would be inspired to buy the product or sign up right then and there. For some businesses, however, browsing is all part of the purchase process, so taking users directly to a product page may very well give them the impression that this is the only option they have. However, even under this circumstances, site optimization will play a role in the success of your online marketing efforts.
- Site Optimization – Another thing to consider is the layout and organization of your site. Suppose users land on interior pages but do not find what they are looking for – are they easily able to access the home page, other similar products or services, and category pages from all corners of the site? It’s often difficult to find a perfect balance between enough options and too many options – and a website can become quite cluttered with too many links and poor layout / design, so a smart plan of action is to have a professional website, designed by an experience firm that not only understands design concepts and techniques, but it familiar also with Internet marketing strategies that must be implemented on-site. Whether you BING or not, be sure you or your hired marketing firm understands how the search engine being utilized works, and optimizes the site for such engines to return the best results.
- Content- Thus far, it is rumored that BING weighs on-site content over all. This means that a site featuring picture galleries without ample description, sites lacking company’s information, and sites without rich context may be penalized for it. This doesn’t denote a negative effect on rank – just the absence of a positive one. Be sure there is rich on-site content to accompany all the beautiful pictures of your products, staff, facilities, etc. A site should read well in your language, because this is what search engines look for.
- Complaints - Despite its swift jump to #2, BING has still received many complaints about how the engine ranks sites. For example, with giving equal weight to interior and home pages on a site, it may find a lower-ranking interior page to be more relevant, and therefore return that page lower in search results, where as a search engine like Google, which displays both interior and home pages, factors in the home page rank as well when considering the position of results. Another problem that many might find with BING, although not quite an official outcry from users, is the weight it gives to interior links compared to the weight it gives to external links. In recent years, it’s always been understood that while on-site SEO is important, it should not factor into rank as much as relevance. On BING, however, it seems that proper linking structure within a site will do more for your rank and relevance than it will on Google, which is known for giving much more weight to exterior links for both rank and relevance. This might be a problem, or it might be good for those with well-optimized websites.
- Pay Per Clickon BING – As I mentioned above, BING’s algorithm is quite unique compared to Google and Yahoo, so for anyone planning to experiment with a PPC campaign on BING, approach with caution. I would not recommend ending a PPC campaign on Google or Yahoo just to replace it with one on BING. I’ve always said that exploring the options is a good way to feel things out and find what works for each business, so I would encourage delegating some budget, or even better, increasing a budget to see what BING can actually do for your company – just don’t put all of your eggs into this basket because it’s fresh and new.
All in all, I’m impressed with BING, but I can’t say I’m surprised at all. Microsoft has been around for a long time and they obviously know their way around IT. I’d say that a gradual transition is best, but even better when managed by an experienced Internet marketing firm.
Search Engine Marketing As A Team, Not Separate Players
Search Engine Marketing may not be a science, but it can be viewed as the sum of it’s contributors, and their effect on your online marketing success. Too often, people view all of the separate Internet Marketing efforts in their own light, and fail to bring all factors into one whole focus. When it comes to maximizing your ROI, it may be tricky to determine whether a paid search campaign would benefit over a one geared towards natural search, or whether it would be better to analyze the competition than it would be to focus on expanding your own network. Whatever the case may be, the answer will likely be to test all the water.
It’s no secret that a Pay Per Click campaign can have an effect on of of natural search, and such an effect might benefit or hurt the other, but more than likely, your business will see better oportunities when its Internet Marketing efforts branch out.
The Social Media offers a network of users, and therefore potential customers or clients, that have already presented information about themselves and their interests that traditional advertisors would pay big money for. Targeting users on the Internet is easier than ever – which only means that more people are doing it – and it is therefore that much more important to expand efforts into all online marketing areas.
However, this does necessarily mean it will do you much good to pick 3 of these areas and run with them. Marketing your business online is as much about prior knowledge as it is about gathered information, which means that slow and steady will often win the race.
Let’s compare two businesses like the tortoise and the hare.
The first business wraps its efforts around a search and content driven PPC campaign, a natural search effort, the Social Media spectrum, and safeguards itself with reputation management, all the while gathering information about it’s top competitors. After a few months, they will see which effort is paying off the most, and focus primarily on that. However, they can utilize the others to support their main campaign, and during this time, they can see how various strategies affect eachother, and optimize accordingly. Additionally, their presence in the Social Media has established a brand for them, so when users see their ads, or their name in natural search results, they are more likely to visit their site.
The second business decides to pour its budget into a PPC campaign, and gathers information about their competitors. Seeing how their competition bids has given them the advantage to take that number one spot on sponsored search results, but they lack the online presence. Their click-through rate on ads is decent, but once on the site, users will generally decide to check out the other results before making a decision. Their bounce rate is high and visitor loyalty is rather low, since more than often, users will find the first business and recognize their name.
This model is just one scenario, but it illustrates the need to exapand efforts. The tortoise and the hare is a well-known story for a good reason – there is truth to the concept of taking one’s time, thinking things through, and making informed decisions.
Search Engine Optimization Basics
In the Internet marketing world, we manage a lot of clients, but every client is different and each account requires specific techniques in order to maximize their ROI. In many cases, this means running a number of campaigns using methods in Pay Per Click, Search Engine and Social Media Optimization, Competitive Intelligence, and so on. Still, for some clients (and their budget),  just an SEO campaign can greatly increase their presence on the Internet, and is perhaps one of the strongest ways to market a website.
It is reported that Google changed their algorithm once a day on average during the past year. There are a lot of reasons for each of those changes, but all of those changes were made (and will continue to be made) for one reason – to match search queries with the most relevant content. While the history of SEO has had its dark moments, and its share of misconceptions and rumors, the current state of SEO is always changing and therefore, the methods we use to improve a websites visibility in search results must adapt. Search Engine Optimization is both a science and an art, and although it has become a bigger challenge over the years, the goal for everyone is to provide users with the best content for their searches.
The general idea behind SEO is not to “trick” search engines into believing your site is better than others, and it’s not necessary about getting that number one spot at the top of search results. And SEO’s aim should never be general rank, but appropriate on-site optimization and a network of relevant links. There is a difference between link building and SEO, and I must clarify that although proper link building can be an invaluable part of SEO, simply linking to a website from wherever can not only be useless, but get your site penalized. SEO has not only evolved, it has developed a sense of right and wrong, and you do not want to get on its bad side.
It is always better to play it safe with your on-site structure, which is what search engines will look at when they follow those links to your site. Keyword stuffing, metatags, and link farms are a thing of the past, and can only do your website harm. SEO is not about presenting your site as something it is not, it’s about giving the search engines what they want, to which your site will be rewarded with targeted traffic.
Remember, focusing on pagerank is a pitfall for many. A lot of people assume that a page with a rank of 7 will be given priority over a page with a rank of 5, but this is not always the case. The algorithms that search engines use to determine ranking are based on a nearly infinite number of factors, including onsite content, external linking, keyword ranking, etc. Each factor has its own factors, and those factors have factors as well. At the end of the day, no one Internet Marketing firm can guarantee specific results because no one knows exactly how search engines will read them each day.
One thing we all know for sure is that these search engines are all aiming for the same goal – to provide relevant returns for the keywords that users are searching on, so the one method that we know will always be consistant is to keep things clean, manage a good site, and to never stop improving.
When Pay Per Click Steals Your Natural Search Results
For many of our clients, it is very benificial to run campaigns for both paid and natural search rankings, but sometimes, this can cause issues. While an experienced Internet marketing firm such as Reciprocal Consulting can resolve these issues, or prevent them from occuring in the first place with careful planning, many people may not even realize that they are wasting money when Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimization conflict in the same results.
The main problem occurs in a scenario where your site ranks well for both the natural search and your sponsored search. If a user clicks your PPC ad instead of the heading for your site in the natural search list, then you pay for the click, where if they followed the link via natural search, it costs you nothing. Depending on which PPC ad is displayed and which page of your site shows for the natural search, however, it may not be a concern.
Since a Pay per Click campaign gives you much more (immediate) control over your keywords and the information that users will see when they perform searches, it is easier to reel in conversions via PPC ads than by visits to your site via natural searches. The advantage of PPC is that you choose what the user will see when they search for certain keywords. When it comes to natural search, there is really no way of knowing what the user will see when your site shows up in the results, or which page they will be led to.
However, there are many methods within the SEO strategy that increase the relavance of the information that is presented to users in natural search. Proper on-site optimization is key to control over that information much like Pay Per Click. Utilizing title, header and meta tags are known to not neccessarily improve your rankings in SEO, but for the purpose of acheiving a higher click-through rate or better conversions for natural leads coming to your site, it is absolutely crucial to use these tags properly.
Another way to avoid competition between natural and paid search results is to lower bids on keywords that rank well in natural searches. This way, should a user search for this keyword, they will be first presented with the natural result, then if they happen to skip over it and move on to a second page of results, they still have the opportunity to find your site through the PPC ad, and in such a case, it is well worth it to drive that targeted traffic to your site.
There are many more methods for co-optimization of both PPC and SEO campaigns, so it is important to find an Internet marketing firm that knows how to use the tools and will not keep you in the dark when it comes to how they run your campaign.
Onsite SEO and How it Compares to Pay Per Click Ads
A lot of time and effort goes into Search Engine Optimization, so it would be a real shame if after all that hard work, a user skips over your ranking result – even in the number one position, this is possible. While many would consider it unlikely for someone to skip over any results in the top ten, since the general idea is that these first results are the most relavant to their search, consider what the user is reading in that result.
When writing a Pay Per Click ad, you have full control over what the user sees for various searches. You choose the title, description, display URL and destination URL. This makes it easy to target specific users based on their search. However, when it comes to SEO, no one writes an ad to show up for searches – that information is automatically generated based on how the search engines view the page, and a well optimized site for search results can be just as important as a site well-optimized for ranking results.
Remaining consistant with the idea of comparing natural search results with Pay Per Click ads, consider the title of a PPC ad to be the title of your site, or that which lies between the title tags. This is the first thing the user generally see, since it is at the top of your result, plus it is highlighted and underlined as the link to your site. For this reason, it is important to on-site optimization for the name of each page to be relavant to your keywords, as well as the page they label.
The description of a Pay Per Click ad is comparable to text that shows up under the clickable link to your site in natural results. You might notice that some sites have a description that runs into “…” at the end of the second line. This would be like a Pay Per Click ad with it’s two description lines, but the second is incomplete. While less taxing than would be on the effectiveness of the PPC ad, for the natural search, these two lines are still important to your click through rate on natural searches. This short summary of your site is entirely up to you, however, as what is displayed here is what you choose to place between the meta description tags in your html, so choose wisely! The same principles of PPC can be applied here, as it may prove effective to include a call to action, or something that entices users to click on your site result first, regardless of its ranking position.
I’ve done plenty of searches where I don’t find what I’m looking for in that first result because I read these descriptions, and if I see one that sounds more accurate to that which I am searching, that will be the first one I click. Internet marketing is the sum of a lot of knowledge, a pinch of gut instincts and a lot of common sense, time and effort. It would be a shame to have all these things but suffer a much lower return on your investment because of a few facts overlooked.
To discuss the success of your online business with an experienced firm that knows the in’s and out’s of the Internet marketing world, please feel free to contact Reciprocal Consulting. You probably have questions, and we definitely have answers.
Common Pay Per Click Mistakes
Google Adwords is set up to be easy to use, easy to navigate, and with the option to edit campaigns and settings offline, with their Adwords Editor, Google has made it easy to make bulk changes, while still maintaining the same level of detail that allows an account to function well. However, many newcomers to the concept of Pay-Per-Click make the mistake of thinking that PPC itself is easy.
The most common mistake a PPC beginner can make is misuse of match types. While it may be more likely that their keywords are set to the default broad match type only, a lot of times, users can be too specific with match types on certain keywords. This is due to the user not fully understanding the premise of each match type. Many users simply choose broad match to cover a wider range of searches, but for future optimization, this can cause problems, since broad match keyword data is less precise. Generally speaking, when setting up a new campaign, it is a good idea to test all three match types, unless a very tight budget is the issue.
Another issue that may prove counter-productive later on is the structuring of the campaigns and adgroups. While some may have a tendancy to throw too many keywords into a single adgroup with a non-specific ad, others may be shooting themself in the foot by abusing tools like the keyword grouper and ending up with far too many adgroups, each with only a few keywords contained within. What it comes down to is that no one managing a pay-per-click campaign should cut any corners. You can think of building a PPC campaign like building a house – if you use too much material, chances are you’re using the wrong type, and it will cost you far more to build it than it should; and if you use too little material, well, your structure will be unstable and, chances are, your repair costs will be high. Furthermore, the structure and layout for your ads will either result in a high Click Through Rate with few conversions if the ads contain too much on fluff, and maintain a low CTR if you don’t give users a reason to click your ads (ie. ads that are relavant to their searches). This is another reason why match types can make a big difference.
Another big problem in campaigns created by inexperienced managers is the misuse, or lack, of negative keywords. There is a reason for negative keywords, and it’s rare that a campaign will preform better with no negative keywords in place. The beauty of broad and phrase match types with your “positive” keywords is the ability to possibly show up for a larger variety of searches. The beauty of being able to couple this range with a “filter” of sorts (aka negative keywords) is like paying nothing extra to have a bouncer at the front door of your website. For PPC ads, you only pay the cost-per-click (at least, it is recommend that you pay-per-click, and not by impression), much like a club-goer only needs to pay to get through the door. Negative keywords basically check all search terms and if the phrase for which the user searched does not meet the “dress code”, the bouncer tells them to take a hike, and you don’t have to pay for that click.
As you can see, there is much to learn when it comes to pay-per-click, so it is usually best to leave it to an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting.
Several Misconceptions Concerning Google Adwords
Most people know that Adwords is a valuable marketing tool, but some are still concerned about using it, based solely on misconceptions of how it works, or what it actually does. Here are some of the more common misconceptions concerning Google Adwords.
Believe it or not, many people think that Adwords is an auction, and that top bids get top spots. This would mean that only the top businesses in each niche would have a change to make an impression, let alone a sale. This line of thinking would be sure to scare away small businesses, but lucky for them, Google Adwords cares more about providing relevant search results than awarding higher bids. Sure, most cases will require you to bid a bit higher on more competitive keywords, but there is more factored in to the price you pay per click. The relevance of the keyword to your ad and the destination page, to name a few. The key here is to focus on you keyword list, and worry about adjusting bids later. There is no need to create a massive list of keywords just to direct a large amount of traffic to your site – this will actually lower your quality score and force you to pay more per click on these keywords, most of which will not render any sales.
We’ve had a lot of clients that ask us to bid whatever is necessary to keep them in the #1 spot, and some times, this is the best strategy. However, you may be surprised at how often #2 or #3 spots will render more conversions than #1. This will be true more often for eCommerce sites, or sites in niches within which people will tend to shop around. If your target audience is the type to visit a few websites before settling on a purchase, being the 3rd or 4th result may be to your advantage, and chances are, you are paying much less for clicks, and therefore paying a lower cost per conversion.
Smaller businesses tend to shy away from Google Adwords, in particular, because the research they have done has shown that they cannot afford the cost per click of Adwords, versus competing PPC services. Usually, this is not the case, but there is a possibility that your niche would not benefit as well from PPC as it would from SEO or traditional marketing. The main things to consider are the average conversion rate within your niche, your maximum cost per conversion and your monthly budget. Sometimes, certain niches will prove to be a pointless investment, but consider this: Even if your research shows that you will break even, your campaign will generally improve, and it may be possible to achieve your desired ROI. The problem with most Adwords PPC campaigns that do not improve are those that are managed by the inexperienced.
This leads me to the final misconception, that most people think Adwords is easy to use. In all honesty, the interface and the concept are a piece of cake, but when it comes down to micro-management, bid adjustments, split-ad-testing, and so on, the best result will normally come from hiring an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting to do manage the campaign for you. Unfortunately, many find out too late that Adwords is not a cakewalk.
For more information on an Internet Marketing Firm that can provide your Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click services, please visit ReciprocalConsulting.com.
Search Engine Optimization is Not a Science
When people ask me what I do for a living, the inevitable followup questions will generally lead to long explainations that leave the inquery unsatisfied. Basically, my first response is “Internet Marking”, which leads they that inquire to further do so with a question along the lines of:
“What does that entail?”, to which I respond, “Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization and SEO.” To this they ask, “What is SEO?” and I tell them “Search Engine Optimization.”
Even to someone who is computer and Internet savvy, when I try to explain the specifics, they will usually just nod and smile, but everything goes right over their head. This isn’t because they aren’t intelligent or able to grasp the concept of quality link building, but more due to the fact that SEO can’t really be taught to someone in a college course or a weekend seminar, let alone within the twenty minutes on average that these conversations will tend to last.
Like many Search Engine Optimizers, I was given direction during the course of my training, and the rest was self-learned. Sure, the advice of learned others will always benifit those that learn, and instruction can provide foundation, but SEO is always changing, because the “rules by which we must play” are always changing. SEO is not so much a science, but more a type of branding.
Just as a brand is an idea communicated to the target market which associates a name, slogan or idea with your company (and hopefully results in leads, conversions and sales), SEO is the branding of search engines. We use creatively implemented tools to leave an impression on bots that crawl the web, and encourage them to tell the rest of the world about our client’s product or service when they search for related terms.
So yes, while the results of Search Engine Optimization are the sum of links pointing to a site, as well as the quality, quantity and variance of those links, the idea is not so simple in practice. To do this job right, an SEO must be an architect of the Web, constructing a functional, yet appealing structure that serves a purpose and leaves an impression on our target audience, via search engines.
To learn more about branding your company name using highly effective SEO practices, please consult an Internet Marketing Firm like Reciprocal Consulting.
Blogs Can Be Your Savior Or Your Demise
I’ve discussed before how a relatively well-ranking blog can destroy your reputation by showing up in searches for your company’s name, but consider the alternative – a network of bloggers that increases your targeted traffic by 300% in one day. I wasn’t so sure this was possible, but I experienced this first-hand.
While comparing an eCommerce or strictly informational site to a personal one may not be the most suitable example, the principles are the same. As far as Social media Optimization and SEOÂ are concerned, quality, varied, and extensive links can build your rank for certain keywords, and your page rank overall. As usual, I have to offer my disclaimer for the use of the term “page rank” as I am not referring to the little green bar that appears in your Google toolbar, or the number assigned by various spy sites. This is the number which you will never really know the value of unless you have a very good friend who works in the right office at Google. Don’t worry about it – Search Engine Marketing is based upon the focus on generating keyword links, not a popularity contest.
However, when it comes to onsite content, and well targetted keywords in the right niche, one post or update can win over an entire blogging community, as was the case for me just a few days ago. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – it is a good idea to setup a blog for your company (or have an Internet marketing firm like Reciprocal Consulting do it for you). This is why…
I decided to embark on a project a little bit different from my usual pixel-based bead art. Don’t laugh, it’s perfectly normal for a 27-year-old man to make real-life pixel art using kid’s craft beads. Moving on, this new project of mine was a musical album, or rather a preview of an album in progress. For 6 or so months now, I’ve been posting to my own personal, self-hosted, Wordpress blog. During that time, I’ve done quite a bit of SMO for the domain, and I’ve managed to rank in the top ten for most of my keywords, number one for many of them. Still, I’ve never seen more than a few dozen views in a given day. In fact, just last week, I topped out at 79 visits. I suppose I thought this was decent for a personal blog.
Leave it to a guy who blogs for Wired.com, and in one day I managed to get over 1,800 visits to my site that day. Basically, I posted the links to my free album preview on December 2nd, the day that I got my 79 views, and the next day, this guy saw it, posted about it at Midnight on the 4th, and referred to me 75% of my views that day. But that’s not the end.
For the next few days, I received anywhere between 182 and 437 visits, which climbed to over 3,600 on the fourth day. Apparently, the word was spreading.
The day after that, my servers were overloaded and I didn’t know why. My bandwidth was well under the limit. 20,714 views, in one day…that’s how. I couldn’t even post to my blog, there were so many people visiting – who puts their personal blog on a dedicated server? I didn’t, and I sure didn’t think I had to, either.
The point of all this is that many companies overlook the value of the Social Media as a tool to their advantage. Most of the time, an investment in Internet Marketing can be a calculated effort, which results in relatively expected results – not that there is nothing wrong with this. However, I believe that many businesses could benefit from investing in Social Media. An average campaign for Pay Per Click Optimization for one of our clients will drive a few thousand hits a day to their site, but receiving two weeks worth of targetted traffic in one day (without paying two weeks worth of clicks) can do wonders for your ROI. I wouldn’t by any means recommend giving up the PPC campaign, but using as many channels as possible is the best way to make the most out of marketing on the Internet.
Pay Per Click Versus Search Engine Optimization
Most of our clients have asked us to setup both PPC and SEO for their businesses because it is preferable to utilize more resources in order to get their website maximum visibility on the internet, but one thing that we certainly understand here at Reciprocal Consulting, is budget. While setting up both PPC and SEO campaigns may be optimal for most businesses, there are cases which may warrant one or the other to a greater extent, as various aspects of each type may hold more relevance to the site for which the optimization is being performed.
It is imperative to be well-informed of the differences between PPC and SEO, and which can be more beneficial to your particular business needs. This depends on a number of factors, but generally your niche is key, followed by what type of business it is, how grand a scale you intend to market to, and who your target audience is. These factors all determine which keywords will convert best, and are the backbone to any campaign, PPC or SEO.
With Pay Per Click, we utilize Google Adwords, as well as similar PPC services on Yahoo and MSN. A maximum budget can be set for such a campaign, and within that budget, we strategically bid on your keywords, targeting geographically and categorically, displaying custom ads based on the search terms entered. These ads appear on the right-hand side of the browser, under the sponsored ads of the Google search page. How it works is you only pay when a user clicks on your ad. The price you pay for the click depends on your bid, quality score, particular position of the keyword(s) in the results, as well as other factors. Ads may also be shown on the Google Content Network, featuring your ads on sites within the network, which contain content relevant to your site. These ads may also be filtered depending on which lead to more conversions and better costs per conversion.
With Search Engine Optimization, we use your niche to build links to your site, build actual page rank, and get your site to show up higher on natural search results for your best performing keywords. We also have writers on staff who utilize various article and press release sites to spread the word about your site, new products and services, as well as other pieces of newsworthy information pertaining to your business. It should be noted that there are many factors that determine page rank, and the Google toolbar does not necessarily accurately represent your actual page rank. The focus of any SEO campaign is relevant link building on a wide scale.
The differences between PPC and SEO are vast, even though the purpose of both are the same. Online visibility can be achieved in many ways by utilizing a lot of different resources, but it is important that you choose the correct methods for your particular business and its needs.