Pay-Per-Click Your Way To Success

Terrific Pay Per Click (PPC) article written by Gauher Chaudhry at Web Pro News. This is a must read for any new to the online marketing world or those about to get started. Paid search is great not only as a way to generate traffic but it also is the perfect tool for real time market research. Fully leveraging your PPC campaigns are vital to a successful online presence.

You have heard about them. You have seen them popping up everywhere. Pay-per-click search engines are becoming one of the most popular methods to bring targeted traffic to your web site. Typical search engines such as Infoseek, Altavista, Excite, etc... send a robot to spider your website and rank it according to its relevancy. It can be a very daunting task to get your website into the top ten listings for certain keywords on these search engines.

Pay-per-click search engines basically work by having people bid against each other for certain keywords. For example, if you outbid anyone for the keyword "money", your website will appear first whenever a user types in the word "money" into the search engine's search form.

The reason why listing your sites on these pay-per-click search engines can be very beneficial is because you can target the type of visitors that you want to visit your web site. You simply bid for the keywords you feel the ideal visitor for your website will type into a search form.

When deciding how you want to get listed, you need to decide on the keywords that will bring that targeted visitors to your site. Since you are paying for each time someone clicks on your link, you will want to make sure that you do not attract the wrong type of visitors.

You can easily find out what the highest bids are for your keywords by doing a search using these keywords on a pay per-click search engine. You will notice dollar amounts at the end of each URL listed which will tell you how much they have bid to secure that ranking. Obviously the higher bidder will have the highest ranking. If there are no dollar amounts, these means that no one has bid for those keywords.

For example, if you have a website selling bridal gowns, the keywords you might choose are:

Wedding Bride dress Bridal dress Bridal Gown Bridemaid dresses Wedding dress Wedding Gown etc...

Choose the words that are most relevant to your website. Sit back and think about your ideal customer and the words they would typically use to find your site. Only bid on relevant terms. Irrelevant terms could bring thousands of visitors to your web site, but if they are not interested in your website's content, then you will be wasting your time and your money. A lot of pay-per-click search engines will not let you bid for irrelevant search terms because this will diminish the reputation of their searchs and frustrate their users if irrelevant websites continually pop up.

Create a title and description so that the user knows what to expect when they click on your link. Statistics also indicate that including the search term in your title or description can dramatically increase your click-thru ratio. This way you are bringing pre-qualified traffic to your site and your unique hits to sales ratio will dramatically increase. Remember that you are paying for every click, so every penny counts.

The price you bid depends very much on the profit margin of you product and your inquiry-to-sales ratio. For example, let's pretend that you have a product that has a profit margin of $10 and your inquiry-to-sales ratio is 30:1, this means that for every 30 visitors, you make one sale. The maximum you should bid to break even is:

$10.00/30 = 33 cents

Anything more than this and you will be losing money. In some cases, your bid may be well below the break even point which means that you could profit nicely from all the targeted traffic.

Most of the pay-per-click search engines are easy to sign up with. You can set up an account online with a minimum of deposit of about $25.00. A good pay-per-click search engine should provide good reporting features so you can analyze the traffic coming to your website and with which keywords.

Here are a few of the popular Pay-Per-Click Search Engines.

Goto.com 

Findwhat.com 

Searchhound.com 

Sprinks.com 

Rocketlinks.com

The pay-per-click search engines that I have used to list my sites provide daily reports so that I can analyze my traffic and results.

Pay-per-click search engines provide one of the best opportunities to drive traffic to your website without all the headaches and frustrations of trying to get listed on the traditional search engines. Seriously consider this marketing tool and propel your business to greater heights!

Gauher Chaudhry is editor of Cool Cash Ezine. You can subscribe by sending an email to subscribe@freecoolcash.com with "sub-art" in the subject.

Bing Sees Big Growth In Paid Search - Google continues to lead

Here is a good and quick read on the current search engine landscape from Mike Sachoff at Web Pro News. As you can see there is still Google and "everything else". However ignore "everything else" at your own risk. With Bing in the process of absorbing Yahoo search, it will soon be nearly 20% of the search market in the US. While 20% is far from Google's dominate 80% share, it is definitely too big to ignore! Also keep in mind the behavioral differences between the search engine users of each platform... what converts on one platform doesn't always convert on the other and vice versa.

 

The U.S. paid search market saw spending increase 5.8 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, with July growing 4.9 percent, August 5.8 percent and September 6.7 percent, according to a new report from SearchIgnite.

 Bing saw the most spend growth, up 21 percent year-over-year, with market share gains of 6.4 percent in Q3 (up from 6.2% in Q2).  Yahoo saw a 10 percent decline in search ad spend over Q3, with market share falling to 13.4 percent from 15.4 percent in Q2. The report says the drop, along with gain in Bing, is partially due to testing occurring on the combined Yahoo/Bing search alliance.

Google continued to lead with 80.2 percent of U.S. search spend, up nearly 2 percentage points from Q2, and representing 7.9 percent year-over-year growth. This is the largest market share by Google since SearchIgnite began tracking search engine market share data in Q1 2007. The jump in size marks the largest quarter-over-quarter increase for Google since Q1 2009.

“Google continued to increase its dominance in the paid search market in the third quarter,” said Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite.

“However, the Bing/Yahoo! alliance is performing well for advertisers thus far, and marketers want to see a viable competitor to Google in the market. We feel that there is a real opportunity for Bing to capture significant market share in the near term if these early results continue to play out in the fourth quarter.”

Does Your Website Need a Makeover? How to know when it does.

Here is a great article from Abby Johnson at SmallBusinessNews.com and a companion video below. The biggest take away from this article is if your web site is not satisfying your current needs and meeting your current goals then it is time for an update or better yet a complete revamp! Remember your web site IS the face of your company. If it is time for an update visit kexconsulting.com



How do you respond to change? Is it a like or dislike? With change, there isn't usually a middle ground, because most people either love it or hate it.

Interestingly, there are obstacles to both sides of the change spectrum. For instance, if you implement too many changes to your business, consumers will not be able to keep up. On the other hand, if you shy away from change, consumers will think you are out of date.


Although finding a balance is an important task, today we're going to focus on businesses that need to implement change. As seen in the above video, there are multiple indicators that businesses need to watch for to see if they should make changes to their website.

The first sign is when your site doesn't meet its current goals. This issue could be the result of several developers writing bad code on top of bad code over and over again. Instead of trying to correct a mounting problem, businesses are better off just starting from scratch if this occurs.

Secondly, if your website was built with tables, then it is time for an update. This format is both hard to read and hard for search engines to break down.

A third sign that your website is "behind the times" is if visitors are welcomed with a Flash intro. Experts always disapprove of this practice since it causes slow load times and compatibility issues, among other problems.

Another indication that your website needs a makeover is if you are not involved with social media. Now, some people will quickly object and say that social media doesn't play a role in their industry. However, consumers are talking about everything from plumbing to retail on social media networks. Consumers like the connection and personalization that Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms give them.

Fifthly, if your website is not mobile-ready, then it could quickly cause your business to fall behind. Consumers want the ability to access everything from their mobile devices. Websites that do not offer this capability could lose business.

Also, if you need a web designer to make even the slightest change to your website, you probably need to make some adjustments. Experts highly recommend content management systems for convenience and usability.

Lastly, when the call to action is not clear or effective, changes need to be made. Visitors need a simplistic process that doesn't require them to create an account or to search for something. If it's not easy, it reduces the visitor's chances of taking action.

So, are ready to take these signs seriously and make some changes?

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Your Web Site Function

A web presence is an essential building block for any business. Many times your web site is your company's first impression to prospective clients. It is imperative your web site delivers a memorable and positive first impression. As with any project you must determine your specific needs and goals as they pertain to your web site and to your overall business. An end user-focused web site that delivers the best possible experience to your customers while meeting your needs should always be the goal. If you provide your clients a positive web experience they will be loyal customers and frequent your site.