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

How would you like to have less competition, and at the same time lower the cost of your Google pay per click campaigns?

Google Pay Per Click Marketing: The Old Way

If you follow what everyone else is doing (eg, bidding on the same keywords), you will most likely get the same results. But, it may cost you more and if you can’t afford it, then you have to drop out of the game.

Google Pay Per Click Marketing: The New Way

In order to get different (ie, better) results – without breaking the bank – it’s time to try something new. Following is a plan for getting better results.

1. Go for Long-Tail Keywords: Instead of bidding on the same keywords as everyone else, bid on long tail keywords. You’ll most likely have less competition for these keywords, which mean they cost less. But, the brilliance in bidding on these keywords is that they can convert better than shorter, more popular phrases that all of your competitors are bidding on.

The reason is, when web surfers are serious about purchasing, they tend to get very specific (ie, use more words) to find what they’re looking for.

2. Optimize Landing Page with Original Keywords: Optimize your landing page using the shorter, competitive keywords everyone else is bidding on.

By “double dipping” in the long-tail and short-tail keyword waters like this, you gain traffic from organic searches, as well as higher-converting, lower-cost traffic from your Google PPC marketing efforts.

Google uses a number of measures to determine how much a pay per click advertiser pays for one click. One of these ways is called a Quality Score. One way to improve your Quality Score – and pay less per click – is by properly using header tags.

Without spamming, you can use header tags to your advantage in upping your quality score. Following are some tips for doing just that.

Frequency: Some pay per click marketing experts say that you should only use one H1 tag per page (eg, on your landing page).

Sequence: Other Google AdWords pay per click marketers advise not breaking the sequence, the hierarchy of the header tag. For example, don’t use an H1 tag, followed by an H3 tag. Keep the correct sequence of H1, H2, and H3.

Keywords: Your keyword should always be included in your header tags. And again, it shouldn’t be meaningless, keyword stuffed copy. But, copy that actually helps search engines – hence, searchers – to know what a given page is all about.

In order to help with this, use Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool to help find related (secondary) keyword phrases. By using this free tool, you will not only uncover many related keywords, but you won’t have to worry about whether or not Google thinks they’re related. This tool ensures that they are in Google’s eyes.

These tips not only help you improve your Google Quality Score; they bring down your pay per click costs as well – all the while driving more targeted prospects to your site.

If you’re in a highly competitive PPC marketing niche, eg, credit, weight loss, insurance, and have a very small budget, there are going to be some keywords that you are never going to rank for. So, how do you put together a competitive Google AdWords pay per click marketing campaign? Following is one way to do it.

Taking the Long Road to Google AdWords PPC Marketing Success
You’re going to have to niche it to success – and be patient while doing it. To explain by way of example, let’s take credit repair.

If you ran a credit repair agency and wanted to rank high for strong keywords in this niche, good luck unless you have gobs of money. Keywords like credit repair, credit repair services and credit score repair are in the $5 to $10 per click range.

But, there are quite a few phrases in this niche that go for 5 cents per click, ie:
* New Credit Repair (260 monthly searches)
* DIY Repair (260 monthly searches)
* Credit Repair Experts (110 monthly searches)
* Sample Credit Repair (210 monthly searches)
* Good Credit Repair (140 monthly searches)

These keywords account for almost 1,000 searches per month and they cost pennies compared to higher traffic keywords like the ones mentioned above, which bring anywhere from right at 2,000 to over 90,000 searches per phrase, per month.

You may be able to find 20, 30 or 40 phrases or more like the low-cost ones just above. Combine your bid on these with a good organic marketing campaign (eg, writing and distributing SEO articles via free article directories) and over time, you will start to get steady traffic and sales.

Depending on the pricing of your services, you may not need to get hundreds or thousands of clicks to see a noticeable difference in your bottom line.

Just because you’re in a super-competitive niche does not mean you can’t put together a profitable Google AdWords pay per click campaign. It just means you have to be patient and take a different approach. You can learn more AdWords success tips from the experts during the AdWords Advantage Online Summit http://www.AdWordsAdvantage.com coming in March.

Click fraud is, unfortunately, part of advertising online. Major players like Google, MSN and Yahoo! take great pains to help advertisers prevent it. If you’re a pay per click marketer and you suspect click fraud, following are some actions you can take:

Identify the source: There are primarily three culprits when it comes to click fraud. They are listed below.

3 Types of Click Fraud Culprits

Your Competitors: By draining your account as quickly as possible, you are less competition for them. Except in the case of Google, this actually gives you a higher ranking (after all, if you’re getting a lot of clicks, your product must be good/popular, right? Google rewards this). While it may suck for your bank account, in the end it helps you.

Affiliates: Google AdSense affiliates make money every time someone clicks, so some are unscrupulous enough to click (or get someone else to click). 

Traffic Thieves: These are probably the most insidious of the bunch because it’s so hard to identify them. They can be a company that sells traffic to other sites, or an individual who is stealing traffic from you because they sell a similar product, or another type. 

4 Ways to Combat Click Fraud

Track Your Traffic: Knowing where your traffic is coming from is vital to preventing click fraud. You’ll have to provide this to Google anyway if you suspect it, so make it a habit to track it. You can find this out by looking at your web log referrer reports, or by using various tracking tools on the market.

Report Suspicious Activity to Google: Gather all of your evidence, eg, logs of the source of your traffic, normal activity report compared to a suspicious one (comparison click charts), region traffic is coming from, spike dates, etc. Give them everything you think they may need to do a proper, thorough investigation.

Contact the ISP. If the suspected click fraud is coming from an identifiable ISP, contact them to let them know. Do it in writing (email) and by phone.  If this doesn’t work, you can always resort to the following . . .

Retain an Attorney: They will be able to help you, for example, get a court order to release the name attached to the ISP from which the suspected click fraud originated, as well as several other options.

While this may not be cheap, it can literally cost you less if you spend thousands on pay per click marketing.

Many new to internet marketing shy away from pay per click marketing because they don’t fully understand what it’s all about. It’s actually quite simple though and offers some immediate benefits for new online marketers. Following are three.

Quantifiable Results: PPC marketing offers results you can see – in black and white. With real-time tracking and performance data in front of you, you can see how your marketing dollars are working. You can view such tangibles as impressions, click-thrus, actual sales, visitors to specific pages, etc.

“Cheap” Testing: Because you can view results of pay per click marketing in real time, it’s relatively easy to run test campaigns for new products/services and/or to measure the viability of old products and services.

With this information at your fingertips, you can prune and/or expand your product and service offerings down to the most profitable ones. This can save thousands in unnecessary inventory, equipment and/or labor investment.

Immediate Bang for Your Buck: Pay per click marketing can bring in quick sales. You can literally have a campaign up and running in minutes, with the right know how. You don’t have to wait for a TV ad to run, a Sunday paper to be distributed, or a radio spot to air.

Simply click, input your ad and your product/service offering is distributed to millions of potential customers.

It’s summer now, when most aren’t giving too much thought to new marketing campaigns. If pay per click marketing has not been on your agenda, revisit this. It can be just the competitive edge you need heading into the busy fall and holiday seasons. 

There are quite a few pay per click pricing models. The one that might be best for cash-strapped small business owners though is the “hourly consultation” model. Following are three reasons why.

3 Reasons Why the Hourly Consultation Works Great for Small Businesses with Limited Budgets

1. No Long-Term Commitment: This is the most obvious reason. No long-term commitments means there’s no danger of overspending. You’re not locked into a contract that you may be able to afford today, but not tomorrow.

2. Knowledge on a Dime: What we mean by this is, you may already have knowledge about pay per click marketing. But, you’re a little fuzzy about one or two areas and want to get some help to better understand them.

So, you hire a PPC marketing consultant or go to a pay per click training workshop to fill in the blanks, so to speak. This can pay huge dividends because just one or two tweaks learned at an informative seminar or pointed out by a pay per click expert can vastly improve your ROI, and lower your costs to boot.

You can literally save thousands with the right knowledge.

3. Learn and Implement as You Go: When you use this PPC pricing model, it can really help you to become a better pay per click marketer. How?

When you pay for knowledge, it’s because you really want to know something. With this level of passion, you tend to implement what you learn as quickly as possible. And, it’s in the very doing that you learn what works, what doesn’t why, what needs to be changed, what else can be tried, etc.

As these three reasons highlight, if you’re a small business owner with a limited pay per click marketing budget, it can actually be a blessing. For, it forces you to use the resources you have much more wisely – and this is a lesson that you can’t fit in a “pricing model.”

When most internet marketers think of pay per click marketing, they think of quick sales. And, while this form of search engine marketing is good for that, there’s another – just as good – reason to use it. What are we referring to? Branding.

Using PPC Marketing to Brand Your Business
In good economic times and bad, businesses need to brand their business. To digress for just a second, one of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is to stop advertising when times are tough or when they have too much business. Pay per click campaigns should be an ongoing marketing strategy.

Following are two reasons it’s a good idea to use PPC to brand your business:
(i) It draws motivated consumers: If you’ve done your homework and conducted the right keyword research, your search marketing campaigns will bring consumers who are highly motivated to buy. These are not tire kickers; they are ready for a solution to their problem (eg, to buy your product/service) if it fulfills the promise in the ad.

 (ii) It builds consumer awareness: Getting and staying in front of consumers is key to building brand awareness. Remember, pay per click marketing – by its nature if done correctly – draws highly focused consumers. They have a particular problem/need and are looking for a particular solution/product.

Staying top of mind with these types of customers is perhaps the number one reason to brand your business using pay per click marketing.