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When most business stick their toes in the search engine marketing waters, one of the first things they hear about is search engine optimization (SEO), as it relates to content. Not a lot of talk revolves around images; but it should for, everything on your site (eg, videos, photos, etc.) can help it rank well in search engines. And, this is what search engine marketing is all about.

The first thing you should know is that search engine bots (ie, spiders) can only read (search) text. And this is why things like Flash should be kept to a minimum, or not used at all unless it’s really, really necessary to your industry (eg, you’re a web developer, animator, movie maker, etc.).

Following is a mini tutorial on how to name your site’s images so that it ranks higher in search results.

Name Images Using Keywords: For example, instead of naming a photo photo.jpg1, name it pay-per-marketing-tips.jpg (if PPC marketing is what your firm specializes in).

Use the “ALT” Tag in Your Coding: Piggybacking on the last point, add the ALT tag when you name images. This tag explains what an image file is. A completed coded image with this tag may look like this:
<img src=”images/pay-per-click-services.jpg”width=”250″ height=”135″
ALT=”ABC Firm pay per click marketing services”>

Text Surrounding Images: The text that immediately surrounds your site’s images is valuable real estate from an SEO standpoint. Hence, you should do things like put captions on all of them and use keyworded text (ie, SEO content) in this space.

If you do these three things, your images (just like your site’s content) will increase the effectiveness of your search engine marketing efforts.

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
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Many pay per click marketing consultants speak of keywords as a monolithic group. They’re not. Here, we discuss two types and why you should know about them: branded and non-branded keywords.

What are Branded Keywords? Branded keywords are those keywords associated with a particular brand, eg, Nike, Gatorade.

What You Should Know about Branded Keywords to Improve Your Pay Per Click Results

While branded keywords are most often used towards the latter part of the buying cycle, how and when you use them will depend heavily on your business model.

These are usually the highest converting keywords – and have the highest value.

Note: Don’t use branded keywords just for the sake of pulling in traffic. You could be wasting money if they don’t convert. So, make sure that it fits within your marketing model.

What are Non-Branded Keywords? Quite simply, these are keywords not associated with a brand. They are industry-specific. For example, if your company produced a well-known electric car, say the GreenMobile I, then some non-branded keywords for that would be “electric car” or “energy efficient car.”

What You Should Know about Non-Branded Keywords Increase Your PPC ROI

Non-branded keywords are an excellent way to bring in “inquiring minds,” or potentially first-time customers. They allow you to build your brand. This is because if someone doesn’t know your brand specifically, by using non-branded keywords, they can find you via terms that relate to your industry.
If you’re not using non-branded keywords, you’re missing out on a lot of traffic.

Non-branding Keyword Research Tip: To find the best ones, research the language that your target audience uses when conducting searches. Knowing this will allow you to choose high-traffic, high-converting keywords.

The bottom line: Branded and non-branded keywords are important to your pay per click marketing efforts. Knowing when to use which can significantly increase your PPC results.

Choosing the right keywords is vital to success as a pay per click marketer, as we discussed in the post, Create Pay Per Click Keywords that Get Results. The advice dispensed in this post gives you everything you need to think about when putting together a keyword list.

Here, we want to add one more thing to this list – how to choose “buyer” keywords.

What Are “Buyer” Keywords?
Our definition of these is keywords where prospects are looking to buy (NOT investigate, compare or anything else).

“But,” you may be thinking, “how do I know what these are?”

It’s relatively easy. In last week’s post, Classify Your Keywords for Better Pay Per Click Results, we discussed categorizing keyword phrases according to where they should be used during the sales process.

Use Google’s Keyword AdWord Tool to Choose Buyer Keywords
Almost all pay per click marketers use Google’s Keyword AdWord Tool to find the best keywords for their PPC campaigns. But you should take it a step further and choose actions over objects. Let’s explain further using an example.

For example, let’s say that you ran a pay per click campaign for your company, which offers bike tours through Central Park in New York City. You’ve done your keyword research and see that “bike tours NYC” is a popular keyword phrase.

But, this is a noun (“object”). A more effective keyword phrase may be “book bike tours NYC”. A person looking to who types in the keyword phrase “bike tours NYC” is more likely to be interested buying now that a person who types in “bike tours NYC”.

See the difference?

And, this is what we mean by choosing “buyer” keywords for your pay per click marketing campaigns.
 

It seems that everyone has their own method or tactics to get ranked higher in the search engines or to promote their products. But, the truth is, it all comes down to common sense. Pay Per Click advertisers — especially those new to the game — are prone to making mistakes that not only waste time, but a significant amount of money. 

Following are a few common mistakes many make when running Pay Per Click programs. Are you guilty of any of these? 

Using Untargeted Keywords

Avoid the keyword craze when setting up your campaign.  It’s not the quantity of keywords you choose, but the quality of them.  It is important that you use keywords specifically related to your niche, so that you attract targeted traffic.  More means less when it comes to untargeted keywords – as in – less money you can make.

Not Adding Keywords

When creating copy, it is critical that you include keywords in your title and within the body of your copy.  You want your ads to be direct and to the point, so your visitors will know exactly what they are getting without all the fluff. Remember, web surfers are primarily looking for information. Give it to them.

Directing Visitors to Your Homepage

Many online businesses don’t give a second thought to directing visitors to their home page.  If a visitor has read about an incredible product and they want to purchase it, direct them to that page on your site – not the generic home page. They may not take the time to try to locate the info for themselves.  

A few minor changes can go a long way to converting clicks – which is the goal of every pay per click campaign. Avoid these common mistakes to increase your profit potential.

Did you know the PPC Summit search engine marketing experts are coming to New York on May 13-14? Learn more here www.ppcsummit.com