The PPC Ego Trap
Pay Per Click marketing is a great way to get results online and there are some definite advantages to PPC over organic search. For instance:
- With PPC you have greater control over your search listings
- You can get faster results with PPC whereas organic search can sometimes take months or years before solid results materialize
- More control over titles and descriptions in PPC ads
- It’s easier to track PPC results than organic search results
- PPC is a lot like traditional advertising so many organizations may feel more comfortable with this model
Despite the clear advantage to PPC advertising, there is one sure death trap for any advertiser who lets his competitive ego get in the way of good business sense. The desire to have the top ad can lead to a bidding war if two or more competitors start going head to head in order to win that top spot. In this scenario, no advertiser wins. The search engine wins and the advertisers just end up throwing good money away.
It is best to seek out the optimum ad placement for your keywords based on quality and wise keyword bidding. Don’t let your ego take over.
Why PPC Is Still The Internet’s Best Advertising
A few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, the forums were abuzz with discussions of whether display advertising or PPC advertising would win out in the hearts and minds of Internet advertisers. I guess we now know – PPC won.
But will it last?
I’m betting PPC will be around awhile, for a few very simple reasons:
- It allows advertisers the ability to control their spend. What other kind of advertising allows this? With PPC, you can set your own budget. Is it perfect? No. There are downsides, but even with the downsides, PPC still have this advantage over other forms of advertising.
- It provides a direct route from first impression to conversion. There is only one thing between the two – your landing page, or sales page. With other forms of advertising (TV, radio, etc.), there is something else that must take place – a drive, a phone call, or whatever. With PPC, it’s click, read and close.
- It’s keyword based. Yes, PPC ads can be optimized. That’s a good thing.
PPC advertising is a direct shot from first impression to conversion and the advertiser is total control. The consumer has a choice and gets to see what is being offered before committing. It provides the best win-win opportunity for all involved.
Why PPC Is A Good Place To Start
If you have a new website that you are trying to promote and believe that a targeted SEO or social media campaign is going to help you reach your desired ROI sooner then you are in for a disappointment. It’s not search engine optimization and social media campaigns don’t have value. They do. But they usually take a while before the value starts to show.
With an SEO campaign, it really depends on the competitive playing field. But if the competition is average then you are likely to wait a year before a hard-hitting SEO campaign really starts to pay off. You might get some results within that first year, but it takes a while before you achieve respectable rankings for competitive keywords. In some industries that one year becomes two or three.
With social media, it might not take that long or it might take longer. There are a lot of variable factors that can influence the success of your marketing campaigns. One of those is your choice of social media platforms. If you show up at the wrong place then you’ll find the wrong party. Plain and simple.
With PPC you have a lot more control over the outcome than you do with social media and you can achieve much quicker results than you can with SEO. The biggest problem for many advertisers is budget. But if you can get a handle on that, running a PPC campaign right out of the starting gate should get you a quicker ROI. Are you in a hurry?
Will Social Search Change Search Engine Marketing?
Search engine marketing has been going strong for a few years now. Social search is just getting off the ground. In fact, Google has made it a point to tackle social search and lead the charge. Only, there are some people who aren’t so impressed with how they’re doing it.
But let’s say that social search were a perfect animal – like organic search (I’m kidding, OK?).
At any rate, let’s just say that social search was at least as good as organic search has been when at its best. Would search engine marketing be any different? Would social search change the nature of search engine marketing? I’m betting it would.
Remember, there are two branches of SEM: Paid search and organic search. How would each of these change with social search? My guess is that each would change in a real sense, but not necessarily in a fundamental sense.
Here’s what I mean: PPC is based in large part on the principles of organic search. You do your keyword research, write a few targeted ads, and watch your rankings based on search engine ranking factors. Social search, however, isn’t anything like that. You still might do your keyword research, but you aren’t so much concerned with rankings. You are concerned with connections. So how will that change search engine marketing?
I think one very important way that search engine marketing will change when social search reaches full maturity is that brands will no longer need to feel threatened by lesser companies who are better at SEO. Brands can actually put more emphasis on their company culture and focus on the benefits of doing business. That’s as it should be.
How To Budget For PPC
If you’ve been advertising off line for some time then you are likely familiar with budgeting expenses. There are several strategies for setting advertising budgets. Which one you choose depends a lot on your business goals and your comfortability.
One way to budget for PPC is to take a percentage of your off line marketing budget and dedicate it to pay-per-click marketing. But how do you determine that percentage? You could just pick a number out of thin air, but I’d suggest that you take a number equal to an aggregate of marketing channels that are not working for you or that have not produced any positive results in a while.
Another way to budget for PPC, and this works well for fairly new businesses, is to take a percentage of your revenues and devote that to pay-per-click. Many companies use a 20% benchmark and adjust for their costs. You might be more comfortable with 15%. Pick a number and go with it.
Pay per click marketing should be seen as any other marketing channel. If it works for you, keep doing it. If it isn’t working, try to figure out why and change it. But do budget it.
PPC And Malware: Have You Been Hacked?
A call came in and it was a client asking why he wasn’t getting any sales. A quick look at his website revealed that it was flagged as a malware distributor. The client was spending hundreds of dollars a day on PPC ads. No wonder he wasn’t making sales.
If you’ve been hacked and the hacker has inserted a Javascript code or malicious malware onto your site, its files and folders, or on your server somewhere then it doesn’t matter how much money you spend on advertising or how well written your PPC ads, Google will flag it as a malware distributor. Visitors to your site wills see a big red interstitial ad notifying them of the danger. You’ll lose money so pause your PPC campaign immediately.
In order to clean up the site you need to take a look at all your files, particularly the index files in each folder, and see if there are any code insertions that don’t belong. If so, remove them.
After you have removed the malware or unwanted code, change your passwords – to your blog, your hosting account, and anywhere the hacker may have had access to. Make them difficult to crack. Then log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and request a site review. Google will crawl the site again and if the malware has been removed the flag will be removed. You can start your PPC ads again.
Search Engine Marketing Is More Than PPC
When a lot of people think about search engine marketing they immediately think about pay per click marketing (PPC). That is a part of it, but that’s not all there is to effective SEM. Search engine marketing is any type of marketing done through search engines, and that includes display advertising.
Of course, display advertising is probably the least effective of SEM strategies. Most small business owners are beginning to realize that now. But search engine optimization ranks as still one of the most effective search engine marketing strategies, and I suspect it always will be.
In some sense, social media marketing can be considered SEM. Real-time search is definitely search engine marketing. Video and image optimization are search engine marketing strategies too. As is mobile marketing when done the right way.
So you can that you have options beyond PPC. Search engine marketing is more than tossing money at keywords, it’s really about devising a strategy for drawing in new customers through the search engines.
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.
Is PPC A Substitute For SEO?
Pay per click advertising has its place. A good business with a good marketing plan can use PPC to do great things. But is it a substitute for SEO? Absolutely not.
First, you need to realize that 80% of all clicks from a search engine to a website are clicks on an organic search listing. So even if you manage a great PPC campaign you can expect to only get 20% of your clicks from PPC. That doesn’t mean you should just forget about it, however.
Still, PPC is not a substitute for SEO and it never will be. It should augment your SEO campaigns. You can target the same keywords in both your PPC campaigns and your SEO campaigns. In fact, you should. But at the end of the day, they are two different marketing tools and they are used for two different purposes – to reach two sets of the same market. You need both.
Competitive Intelligence Is As Good As Your Tools
When it comes to gathering competitive intelligence, the information you can obtain legally and ethically is only as good as the tools you use. One good tool for gathering information on your competition’s organic SEO campaigns and PPC campaigns is KeywordSpy.
KeywordSpy allows you to search for information in several ways – Domain, Keyword, Destination URL, and Ad Copies. You’ll probably use the Keyword search most often, but the others do come in handy.
When you search for a keyword at KeywordSpy you get a boat load of information on several competitors. You get keyword statistics on PPC competitors, including CPC and search volume. There is even a nice pretty graph to show you the history of your competition in PPC.
You also get an overview of related keywords, which is nice because it also shows you the CPC and search volume for each of those keywords. Then you get samples of PPC ads from your competition.
Another great benefit is an overview of your top competitors, comparing organic SEO information and PPC information on each one. You get a nice list of the keywords for each of those competitors and how many keywords they are using for PPC and SEO.
I would definitely recommend KeywordSpy for conducting competitive intelligence before embarking on any PPC or SEO campaign.
PPC: A Lesson In Exact Match
If you want to increase your quality score with Google Pay Per Click advertising, AdWords, there are several ways to do it, but I like this one best – use exact match.
Dave Davis gives you 10 ways to improve your quality score, but here’s what he says about matching options:
Our client was only using broad match for their keywords in their campaign. We added exact match and phrase match keywords to each ad group and chose which of the three had a better QS and lower minimum CPC and deleted the other two matching options. In the majority of cases, exact match won.
In our experience, exact match is almost always the way to go. Broad match keywords will show your ad for too many search queries that are irrelevant and you inevitably end up with bad clicks. That lowers your quality score and you have a downward spiral of effectiveness in your PPC campaign. With exact match, it is just the opposite. Fewer clicks, but a higher CTR, which results in a higher quality score and lower costs.
Don’t play around with PPC. Use exact match unless there is a real compelling reason to do otherwise.
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.
Should You Join The PPC Content Network?
Do you know what the PPC Content Network is? At Google, the group of websites that run AdSense ads and that get paid when someone clicks on them – those are the PPC content network websites. Should you advertise on them?
Yes, The Content Network can be lucrative, but it is risky. There are all kinds of ways to lose money there – click fraud, untargeted click-throughs, overbudgeting, just to name a few. But if you can manage a PPC campaign well then you can get highly targeted ads on the right websites and see massive click-through rates.
So how do you do it?
If you plan to advertise on The Content Network, make sure you keep these basic tips in mind:
- Establish a daily and a monthly budget
- Don’t use broad match, use exact match
- Target specific sites that you know are within your niche
- Establish a window of time where you know you’ll get the highest click through rate
- Bid the right amount for the right keywords
The Content Network is a good way to lose money on PPC. But it’s also a good way to make money. Plan your campaigns and manage them well and you’ll do fine.
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.
Google Is Not The Only PPC Gig In Town
Google is a great PPC provider. I wouldn’t knock ‘em. But they aren’t the only gig in town.
In fact, I’d say that there are some drawbacks to using Google alone. For starters, Google is expensive. It’s very competitive. And no matter what niche you are in you are likely to be paying good money for clicks. It will be targeted traffic, for sure. But you’ll pay.
Sometimes, small PPC providers can deliver targeted traffic for much, much less. You’ll get less traffic. But it will be good traffic. Where you’ll pay 50 cents for a keyword at Google, you might only pay a penny or a nickel at some of the other PPC providers, so it’s worth it to try to parlay those services into some cheap traffic.
The best way to win at PPC is to use a small PPC provider to test ads and landing pages where you can do it inexpensively then, when you find a combination that works, you migrate your ads to Google. You probably should also up your budget at the small PPC company. At any rate, don’t just stick with one provider. Google is good, but they’re not God.
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.
How Should You Set Your PPC Budget?
When it comes to pay per click advertising, if you don’t set certain controls in place then you could lose your shirt. And I mean fast.
I highly recommend using the automated budgeting tool within your PPC account. With that tool you can set your budget in one of two ways – and I recommend doing it both ways. You can set a daily budget and you can set a monthly budget.
Your daily budget tells your PPC provider not to exceed that amount in clicks for each day that your pay per click campaign is active. For instance, if you give a $5 per day budget then when your clicks drive your spending up to the $5 limit, your ads will not be displayed any more that day.
In addition to setting a daily budget, you can set a monthly budget. The monthly budget works like the daily budget but it is extended for the entire month. So if you set a $100 monthly budget then when you clicks drive your spend up to that amount your ads will be cut off and not displayed for the rest of the month.
I recommend setting both a daily and a monthly budget, but try to set your daily budget so that if you meet the budget each day you will still have dollars left in your monthly budget on the last day of the month. You don’t want your campaign cut off mid-month.
Should You Use The Content Network?
The Content Network is Google’s network of advertising websites on which they place ads. You can actually select your websites when running a PPC campaign by narrowing your Content Network focus to keyword-based, placement targeted, or both.
A keyword-targeted campaign on the Content Network is just as its name implies. You select the keywords that you want to target and Google will place your ads on web pages that are optimized for those keywords. There are advantages to doing this, but we don’t recommend this strategy for all customers across the board. Whether or not you wish to target by keyword depends on a number of factors and if you think that your targeted keyword could be used on a number of sites where your targeted visitors won’t traffic then it will just waste your time and money. That’s what you want to avoid.
With placement targeting you can choose the specific sites you want you ads to run on. For instance, if you sell cowboy boots then you’ll want your ads to run on sites that might sell cowboy hats or other western wear, or you may want your ads on sites that attract a large traffic base of country & western music listeners.
The Google Content Network offers many more opportunities for advertisers and can often lead to more conversions and more targeted traffic.
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.
Pay-Per-Click Basics
It occurred to me that a lot of the content on our blog assumes a lot about our readers. I’ve decided to skim the surface of Pay Per Click, or PPC, for those that are new to the concept. Whether an interested individual, PPC professional, or a potential client, the following is something we all should know. These are not the official definitions, necessarily, but rather a brief overview of the terms are commonly used in the world of Pay Per Click.
- Pay Per Click- A service provided by a number of search engines, but most predominantly by Google, Yahoo, MSN and many more, and even social media sites like Myspace and Facebook offer PPC services. Pay Per Click services are a more controlled environment than natural searches, which focus on page content and external linking structure, in which one can reach potential customers or clients using keywords and key phrases relavant to their business or service. These keywords are setup to display various ads based on search queries and are intended to connect users with results that match their searches.
- Return on Investment – This sums up the overall effectiveness of a given PPC campaign. The return on the investment put into PPC can depend on many factors, but a properly orchestrated campaign, as the sum of the elements of a well optimized campaign, is the best use of that investment.
- Cost Per Conversion - Conversions are commonly measured by sales on product oriented sites, leads on sites which provide services, and can be measured by a number of other “goals”, many of which can be assigned to a single account. With the use of tracking codes attached to various pages, links, etc., a given PPC campaign can track numerous values, which are then measured against spend.
- Spend – This is generally gauged monthly, and very simply put, it is how much money you spend on the sum of all ad clicks.
- Cost Per Click - This is how much you pay when a user clicks on one of your ads. This also sums up the basic concept behind PPC, where by you only pay when a user actually visits your site via an ad you design to appear for the user’s search query, and therefore giving you a lot of control over your spend. Cost per click, or CPC, will be different for every keyword in your campaign, and the price you pay depends on many things, but is highly dependant on the competition for that keyword. The more specific the keyword, the less competition there will be, and the less you will pay when users click your ad. For example, a click on your ad for the search “personal injury lawyers in Philadelphia” will cost much less than a click on an ad for the search “lawyers”.
- Clicks and Impressions – These numbers will more than likely be very far apart, as the number of people that actually click on your ads is bound to be far less than the number of people whos searched display your ad.
- Click-Through Rate – This number is simply the percentage of people who click on your ads, based on how many see your ads. This number will generally be quite low for keywords that are far too specific or not commonly searched for, and high for more common keywords for which your ads show up closer to the first position. Average click-through rates change often and are different for every niche, and depend greatly on the ads you choose to display for certain keywords. Ads that are more relavant to your keywords will generally have a higher click-through rate.
- Conversion Rate – This number sums up the success of your ads and their ability to attract customers that will buy your product or use your service. For a given number of people, this percentage converts – and remember that a conversion is predetermined to be a return on your investment. A higher conversion rate usually means that you are spending less on each conversion, but this is not always the case. Over-bidding can lead to unnecessary spend.
When it comes down to it, no one statistic will tell you how well your campaign is doing. It is the sum of all these values and the careful orchestration of your PPC campaign that will give yo the upper-hand on your competition. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they can run a PPC campaign themself, and end up wasting a whole lot of money doing so. Others find what they think is a great deal, but end up handing their online success over to amateurs that know little to nothing about PPC and have very little experience.
It is important to know your Internet marketing firm before you trust them with your business – ask questions, and get answers. At Reciprocal Consulting, we like to get our clients involved in their own campaigns, because you know your business and we know how to get results.
Optimizing Your Website’s Landing Page For Better Conversions
One can perform search, social media and pay per click optimization all day long, but without a properly designed and optimized landing page, your conversion rate will be far lower than your campaigns are working to achieve. Here are some tips for creating a good landing page for your site, and in turn, increasing your ROI.
- Create Multiple Landing Pages- This is often overlooked because most people simply assume that a user will take it upon them self to find what they’re looking for. Sure, a well constructed site will make it easier to browse a site, but for anyone searching for specific products, services or information, they more than likely will prefer to be taken straight to what they are looking for. If you’re running an SEO campaign, your title, header and body tags will assist the search engines in finding the appropriate page to return in the result. For a Pay-Per-Click campaign, however, it is up to you to determine which ad brings the user to which page. This is why it is important to optimize your entire site, so that each product or service page can act as a landing page for those keywords specific to the product / service.
- Call To Action- Informative ads are great, but a lot of times, ensuring your customer they can take action is a better way to get conversions. The difference between “Brand Name Toasters” and “Get Brand Name Toasters” can be great. Also, using more than one call to action within your site’s landing page can help your conversion rate. It is important as well to choose less abrasive calls to action, such as a “Try it Now” button instead of a simple “Buy” button.
- Make it Easy to Contact You- We’ve found that a lot of times, users want information before buying, and furthermore, they don’t want to read your entire website in order to get that information. For things like quotes, price comparisons, etc., it may be a good idea to have an easy to find form on your landing page, which will encourage the user to make their inquiry right then and there. Just be sure not to ask for too much personal information, since many users are careful about what they reveal about themselves online.
- Make Browsing an Enjoyable Experience – While the main goal is to take users directly to that for which they are searching, many times, they will want to see what else you have to offer. In this case, it is crucial to have a site that functions well, looks great and does not bombard the user with ads, flash movies and annoying images / sounds. Concerning sounds, there are very few reasons to ever play a sound on your website, and off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is to play music that the user is searching for, in which case there should be a fully functional player that can be stopped, or paused.
- User Control – Just as important as the enjoyability of browsing your site, for a user to be able to browse the way they prefer is a good way to ensure they will not become annoyed and leave. There should be nothing upon landing that prevents the user from clicking links, scrolling, or reading information – including load time. It is good to keep your site simple, but if you must offer a flashy presentation about your product, link the user from the landing page. Your landing page should offer only essential information and graphics, with a link to those interested in learning more or viewing more relavant images. Otherwise, the user may feel forced, leave your site, and never come back
- Thank You – This is key after the conversion. I’ve purchased products on sites that had no thank you message, and simply took me back to the product page after I purchased the item. This can confuse the user, and perhaps make them wonder if they even purchased the product. Additionally, saying thank you lets the user know you appreciate their business, and you can even add a polite call to action like “Please shop online again with us soon.” The key to the Thank You page is polite and, well, thankful.
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.