Pay Per Click StrategiesBetter Pay-Per-Click Results Start Here – We Guarantee It!

If you’re a Google AdWords pay per click marketer, you know how important it is to rank high for the right keywords. However, many PPC marketers pay too much – unintentionally. Following is one way they do so, and how to avoid it.

Are Your Organic Listings Robbing You of Valuable Pay Per Click Dollars?

In the 8/24/09 post here entitled, Get FREE Traffic with Pay Per Click Marketing, we stated:

Once you start to get traffic [via paid search methods like pay per click], search engines notice. Once search engines notice, they rank your site higher – which means it gets even more traffic. This last part is significant because it means you start showing up higher in organic (emphasis added) traffic results – ie, getting free traffic.

The point is, traffic brought via pay per click ads can result in higher organic listings. So for example, if your site is ranking in the top 3 in organic listings, check to see if you can adjust your bid(s) to be in the fourth or fifth position.

As you already hold spots in the top 3 organically, there’s no need to spend more pay per click dollars to rank in those positions.

How to Get Double the Bank for Your Buck Using Google Pay Per Click Advertising

To further capitalize on this, make your Google AdWords pay per click marketing dollars do double duty. How? When you’re doing your keyword research for your AdWords campaigns, optimize your pages so that they rank high for these same keywords organically.

When used in this manner, Google pay per click marketing makes an excellent “tester” for your search engine optimization efforts, for it measures the possible success/failure of keywords before you go through the time-intensive process of optimizing your pages using them.

If you want to learn important strategies for AdWords success, then sign on and listen to the expert led sessions during the AdWords Advantage Online Summit going on now through March 25th!

AdWords or any other type of pay per click marketing, one of the best ways to increase your ROI is to learn how to write headlines that get clicked. You don’t only want headlines that get clicked through; you want headlines that get clicked and lead to sales (or gets the prospect to take some type of action, eg, subscribe, call, etc.).

Following is a simple formula used by successful SEO copywriters that you can use. Even if your writing skills are marginal, if you use this formula, you are practically guaranteed to increase your ROI (return on investment).

Marry a benefit with your main keyword phrase.

That’s it; it’s that simple. The benefit should be one that is unique to your brand AND one that your market research has shown is extremely important to your customers. This part is important because it’s easy to parrot your competitor’s ads, touting the same benefits they do. But, if your benefit is unique to your company/your brand, then it sets you apart.

You become “an industry leader,” or a “world apart.” For example, let’s say you sell ethnic candles – made from soy. You can tout the benefits of your ethnic soy candles, eg, how clean they burn, which makes them green” (eg, safe for the environment) and good for your health.

While there may be quite a few manufacturers of ethnic candles, you can set yourself apart by touting this unique benefit of your ethnic candles in every headline you write.

Your headline must “speak” to web surfers. And, if it speaks their language – and addresses the classic marketing idiom “what’s in it for me (WIIF),” you’ll be well on your way to Google AdWords pay per click marketing success. To learn more on how to fast-track your AdWords success, attend the AdWords Advantage free preview call to learn money-making tips from the experts!

Search engine optimization is mercurial. Things are constantly changing, which means that internet marketers must change with it in order to get the best returns from their PPC campaigns, for example. Following are two recently announced changes by search engine giant and ad network Google that every pay per click marketer needs to be aware of.

Site Speed Matters: When a user clicks through from you Google AdSense ad, your landing page had better load quickly. Why? Because Google is considering using site speed as a ranking factor. 

While the company has come right out and said emphatically that it plans to do this, the fact that it’s even a part of the conversation means that at some point they probably will. Also, they’ve rolled out tools webmasters can use to speed up their pages. Learn more about this at Google’s Site Speed site.

Personalized Search: This has caused a big hullabaloo lately. What exactly is it? It means that when you conduct a Google search, it returns results that are tailored to what the search engine thinks is most desired by the individual user as opposed to a more general relevancy for the average person who may be searching the web.

To explain by way of example, let’s say you conduct a lot of searches for home décor tips and click on results from HGTV.com often. Accordingly, Google might rank HGTV.com higher on the results pages it returns the next time you do a search for home décor ideas – simply because it sees that you go to this site often.

Why is this important to you as an online marketer? Think about it this way: if web users are getting more personalized results, it can fragment your target market more. This makes it harder for you to reach larger numbers of prospects.

While you can’t change what ad networks like Google do, you can stay abreast of the changes and adapt your SEO and pay per click marketing strategies to continually maximize your return on investment.

It’s not hard to make money with Google AdWords, but many fail to do so because they make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Keep it simple by doing the following:

Decide On Your Offer: Putting together a successful AdWords campaign starts NOT with keywords, but with your offer. Why? Because you have to be very clear about this before you move on to selecting your keywords.

For example, if you operated an online bookstore, do you want to send readers to the romance section, the science fiction section or the history section? “But,” you may be thinking, “I don’t care what they buy, as long as they buy something.”

We counter with, in order to get browsers to “buy something,” you have to first get them interested in “buying what interests them.” And, this is where you get specific.

Think of it like a local bookstore they may wander into. A reader may pop in to buy a specific book, but once there, they start to browse and come out with two, three or four things.

The bottom line here is – web surfers don’t care about making a purchase from you. What they do care about is getting that book that their friend, mother, aunt, etc. recommended.

If your specific pay per click ad landed them in your online store, you have a chance of making that sale.
Use Keywords Effectively: Once you have tightly focused your offer, now you can move on to doing effective keyword research. Here again, be specific. When choosing keywords remember, it’s not about how much traffic a keyword will bring, but how much “qualified” traffic it will bring.

Rock the Landing Page! Round out your campaign by having a clear, concise, professional landing page that gets prospects where they want to be. Don’t make them surf to find what your ad promised. Land them there directly.

If you do these three things, you will be well on your way to Google AdWords campaign success.

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About the Author
Want to out perform your Google AdWords competitors? Attend the AdWords Advantage Online Summit (Dec. 1-17) and learn how to fast-track your pay per click marketing profits. Register now and save 40% at http://www.AdWordsAdvantage.com.

Even novices to pay per click marketing know that the profit – or loss – is in the keyword selection. To learn more about keyword selection, read, [How to] Classify Your Keywords for Better Pay Per Click Results. Building on the lessons in this article is another piece of the keyword selection puzzle, ie, long tail keywords.

In case you don’t know, long tail keywords are simply multi-phrase search queries web surfers type in to find stuff, eg, “antique car parts mercedes” is a phrase someone who is restoring an old Mercedes might type in to find parts.

Following is the number one reason to spend time ferreting out long-tail keywords.
Long Tail Keywords Signal Serious BuyersThis may be the most important reason to focus on long-tail keywords. It makes sense when you think about how web surfers search for and make purchasing decisions on the web. The more serious a web surfer is about buying, the more focused their search gets.

In the long-tail keyword phrase above, a non-serious surfer might have typed in simply “antique car parts.” But, this surfer qualified it with a car make. To get more specific, they may type in something like “antique car parts mercedes” and “1956 carburetor”.

See how specificity tends to mean the buyer is serious. They’re looking for specific information for a reason – they have a problem they need solved.

So, the next time you sit down to do keyword research for your pay per click campaign, don’t forget that the long-tail is a very profitable keyword center. Don’t ignore it. 

A successful pay per click campaign begins and ends with effective copy. After all, it’s the words that drive prospects to click, or not. To get high click thru rates however, you need more than good writing, you need effective search engine optimized (SEO) copy. Following are three SEO copywriting tips that will help to increase your pay per click campaign results.

Headlines: Some internet marketing experts say that headlines are the most important part of your PPC campaign. It’s usually the headline that gets noticed first. Your headline should always, always, always contain keywords. Add to it an effective qualifier, eg, free, discount, cheap, easy, etc., and you are well on your way to increasing your click thru rates.

Landing Page: An effective headline will get your prospect through to your real workhorse; your landing page. Your landing page should also include keyword phrases sprinkled throughout the copy.

The best places to put your keywords on your landing page are in the headings and subheadings. Other SEO copywriting tips for your landing page are to:

• Leave lots of white space on the page
• Use bullet points and numbered lists of points; and
• Use your main keyword phrase in the last paragraph of the page.

The running thread through all of these tips is that keyword placement on the page is as important as the keywords themselves.

Use Google AdWord Keyword Tool: When it comes to keywords, you shouldn’t repeat the exact same keyword phrase or you could get banned by the search engines for spamming. This is why learning to use Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool is important. It will give you alternate phrases you can use in place of your main keyword phrase.

These SEO copywriting tips should be employed in all of your pay per click campaigns; in fact, in all of your internet marketing efforts – to get maximum results.

Seven Do’s and Don’ts For Google Adwords Campaign Success:

#1 Make sure your unique selling proposition distinguishes your product or service from the competition - try to incorporate benefits into your ad.

#2 Conduct market research - understand the search habits of your target audience and analyze your audience demographics.

#3 Set budget limits for your campaign costs (daily, weekly or monthly) - don’t spend more than 10 percent of your average sales amount.

#4 Bid on keywords that your target audience uses - don’t make the mistake of bidding too high for popular terms. 

#5 Build extensive keyword lists – review where/how your target audience searches, analyze your website traffic and study your competition. Use online keyword generation tools to save time.

#6 Give viewers a reason to click on your ad – copy should include a ‘call to action’ and create a sense of urgency to move the viewer. Use your search terms in the headline and/or ad text and make sure to test multiple ad variations. Incorporate product/brand names, discounts and free trials into your ad message when possible.  

#7 Create optimized custom landing pages – make sure your ad copy is relevant to the keywords on the destination page. 

And remember to always monitor and analyze your ad results - check the conversions/click through rates of your ads and keywords often. 

We hope 2009 is off to a great start for you! In 2009 we look forward to bringing PPC Summit, the premier Search Engine Marketing educational conference, to Chicago: April 22-23, New York: June 16-17 and Los Angeles: Sept. 23-24. During two-days of comprehensive training, PPC Summit offers laser-focused educational sessions to help online advertisers increase their ROI and maximize their Pay Per Click marketing dollars.

Experts from Microsoft, Google, and others lead hands-on workshops, panel discussions, training sessions and more. Sessions cover keyword development, customer conversions, bidding strategies, web site analytics and tracking, quality score & site rank, search engine copywriting tactics, B2B & B2C ad techniques, web site & landing page development and deployment and more!

Here’s what past attendees are saying…“My sales are up 350% and cost-per-sale is down 48.3% after applying the PPC Summit expert strategies.” David Wagner, PPC Summit Los Angeles attendee.

PRE-REGISTER NOW and SAVE $400 for PPC Summit:
>Chicago: April 22-23
>New York: June 16-17
>Los Angeles: Sept. 23-24

For more info visit, www.ppcsummit.com or email marketing@ppcsummit.com
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