Leverage Pay-Per Click Advertising
Pay-per click advertising helps you get more traffic from search engines through advertising in search engine results. You pick terms that people search on. You bid a price per click on your ad that you are willing to pay. You ad shows up when someone searches on that term, and, if you’re lucky, they click on your ad and come to your website.
So, pay-per click advertising really boils down to 4 components:
Picking keywords to advertise on (i.e. target keywords) – Picking keywords is all about knowing what terms your customers, clients, etc. would use when searching for your product or service. There are several tools to help you generate ideas. The best tools also check to see how many searches-per-month your target keywords receive. You typically want to find keywords that generate a lot of searches every month, but are focused enough for your business. For example, a company that sells Keen high-performance outdoor sandals probably would be best served bidding on “keen sandals” versus “sandals” which could include searches for the all-inclusive resort, Sandals.
Determining what to bid for those target keywords – Determining what to bid for your keywords can be a highly-scientific process, sometimes managed by complex software and several key metrics. To keep it simple, let a tool like Google Adwords Traffic Estimator recommend to you what to bid at first. Start there, and start small. Your best bet is to lock-in a low daily budget limit until you are comfortable with the impressions your ads are getting, the flow of traffic from the ads to your website, and what those people do once they get to your website.
Writing copy for the ads that show up when people search – Writing ad copy comes down to writing a headline that people will click on, and creating compelling copy below that headline/link that will get people to click. Headlines are best created by following what magazine covers do: focus on getting attention through eye-catching, short phrases. Using words like best (i.e. “Best Tips for a Summer Barbeque”), ultimate (i.e. “Ultimate National Park Vacations”) and number-based lists (i.e. “Top 5 Hybrid Cars for 2006″) have all been proven to work. Writing effective ad copy below the title/link is really about reinforcing the term(s) search for. This means using the keywords in the ad copy, and starting the copy with an action verb.
Tracking everything and continuously optimizing – how often is your ad shown? In what position in the search results? How often do people click? How often do they complete an action on your website? And, most importantly, how much revenue did you make for each dollar you spent on advertising? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can start testing new ideas at each step of this “funnel.” search engine marketing strategy
