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Search Marketing Special Report |
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Get the Most for Your PPC DollarManaging an effective pay per click (PPC) campaign isn't easy. There are several challenges to get the results you want – an increase in revenue, efficient cost management, and an overall return on investment. In this article learn about keyword research, how to chose a PPC search engine, avoiding click fraud and maximizing your overall ROI. Keyword ResearchAll PPC advertising requires a list of keyword phrases. Identify which terms you predict your audience will use to search for your products or services. Since you already have a web site, it’s often helpful to use your web site statistics, found in your log files, to identify the search terms currently being used to locate your site. You can also use the many online tools to help with keyword research. Two free services are Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services, Inc.). Wordtracker is also a good service to help with keyword research, although they charge for their service. HitWise can help with keyword research and, like Wordtracker, is also a paid service. Once you come up with an initial keyword list, you need to choose a PPC search engine, set up the account(s), write ad copy, decide on a daily and monthly budget, and set up landing pages for your ads. Keyword search trends are constantly changing and evolving. Over time, your potential customers will use different keyword phrases to search for your products or services; dependent on industry trends, the time of year, changes in the economy, and other factors. It’s a good practice to review and analyze all of your keywords, on a consistent basis. As you watch your web site statistics and sales activity, adjustments will inevitably need to be made, depending on which keyword phrases are returning the greatest ROI. Choosing a Pay Per Click Search EngineThere are more than 15 major PPC search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN generally have the most traffic, but new PPC advertising opportunities become available all the time? Each industry has unique PPC opportunities—there are comparison shopping search engines that charge on a cost per click (CPC) basis which is good for companies that sell consumer products. There are even business-to-business search engines that specialize in specific industrial products. Choosing the right PPC advertising opportunity is key to your overall marketing campaign’s success. If you’re selling a consumer product, you might consider listing your products in the following shopping search engines:
Pay Per Click Analyst is a web site that reviews all of the PPC search engines. Each PPC search engines has a unique backend system. It’s necessary to keep up with the latest techniques to efficiently utilize each system. Unfortunately, only time and experience with using each PPC search engine will enable a person to become more efficient at setting up and managing campaigns. Click FraudWhat is click fraud? According to a recent article by Duncan Parry about click fraud at PPCA, "Click fraud occurs when a pay per click advertising link is clicked on for a malicious reason – in other words, by somebody (or a piece of software) that isn’t interested in the products, services or content on the advertiser’s web site." There are several types of click fraud, including affiliate fraud, competitor fraud, and unintentional “fraud.” Each PPC search engine generally has a dedicated team of employees that are constantly watching for fraud in their system. However, that doesn’t mean that every PPC search engine will catch every instance of click fraud. If you regularly use your web site statistics to analyze your web site traffic, you should be able to identify inconsistencies when they arise. In the event you do identify click fraud, there are several companies that deal directly with click fraud issues, and work with you to recover money from the PPC search engines when fraudulent clicks exist.
Maximizing Your Overall ROITo maximize your return on investment for a comprehensive PPC campaign, you need to:
Managing a PPC advertising campaign is a time-consuming task, especially if you’re not well-versed in all of the techniques and all of the paid advertising opportunities available. If you have a limited budget and a small number of keywords in your list, setting up and managing a PPC campaign might be something that you can handle yourself. However, as you add more keyword phrases and you compete with an increasing amount of competitors, a PPC campaign can easily become unmanageable, requiring the need for an expert pay per click consultant or search engine marketing firm. |
In This Issue
Increase Visibility in a Selected LocationDid you know that if you run pay per click ad campaigns you can target searchers located in a specific location? In addition to keyword phrase criteria to determine when an ad is displayed, you can also use geotargeting to display ads based on the country, state, or city level. |
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