How To Set Up A Pay Per Click Advertising Campaign
Here is a basic 5-step guide to setting up your pay per click advertising campaign.
Step 1: Determine your advertising budget and the level of risk you are willing to take.
- Larger search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo) are less risky as they already have excellent market coverage and typically offer excellent customer service.
- On the other hand, the larger search engines cost more to achieve a top ranking.
Step 2: Decide which search engines you wish to advertise on.
- Find out which search engines your competition is advertising on.
- Do your homework – research each option carefully. Read more
Introduction To Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for web publishers to generate revenue by displaying relevant Google ads on their site.
AdSense will deliver relevant ads that are precisely targeted, on a page-by-page basis, to the content on your site. For example, if you have a page that about fishing, Google will send you ads pertaining to pet stores, fish food, fish bowls, aquariums, etc.
If you can also add a Google search box to your site and AdSense will deliver relevant ads targeted to the Google search results pages that your visitors’ search request generated.
And when your visitors click on the ads, Google pays you. It’s that simple. Read more
Search Engine Optimization Basics: How Search Engines Work
To succeed in search engine optimization, you have to understand how search engines work.
A search engine is an information retrieval system which is designed to find information stored on any kind of computer system, whether it be an office network or the World Wide Web.
A search engine allows the user to ask for desired information by specifying a word or phrase and retrieves a list of all items in its database that contain the specific word or phrase. Usually, the results list is arranged with respect to relevancy to the original search. Search engines regularly update their databases and retrieve desired information quickly and efficiently. Read more
Introduction To Affiliate Marketing
How would you like complimentary businesses to recommend and promote your products and you only pay them if a sale or lead is generated?
That’s what affiliate marketing is all about.
It is a marketing method whereby you reward third parties (known as affiliates) for every visitor, subscriber, customer and/or sale that they send to your website.
The types of compensation available:
- Pay per sale: The affiliate gets a percentage of the sale.
- Pay per click: The affiliate gets paid for every click on your ad.
- Pay per lead: The affiliate gets paid a specific amount per lead generated. Read more
Introduction To Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay per click advertising (also know as PPC advertising) is a form of advertisement where you only pay if your prospects click on it.
That’s right. If your prospects see your ad but do NOT click on it, you don’t pay.
These ads can usually be seen on search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. The ads are called “Sponsored links” or “Sponsored ads” depending on which search engine you are using. They will appear next to or above the results of the original search.
Obviously, the higher the ad’s placement on the results page, the higher the chances of it being seen and clicked on.
So, to determine the ranking of the ads, advertisers have to bid on the “keywords” that they think their prospects would type in search engines when they are looking for a specific product or service.
There are currently more than 500 pay per click search engines. However, the top ten search engines produce over 85% of pay per click searches. Bidding for ad space on these search engines is extremely competitive resulting in higher advertising costs. The top three pay per click search engines that you should focus on are:
Types Of Pay Per Click Advertising
There are several types of pay per click advertising.
1. The most popular form of PPC advertising is keyword advertising. The keywords that are bid on can be words, phrases, or even model numbers. The advertisements will appear in the order of the bid amount, from highest to lowest.
2. Product pay per click advertising lets advertisers provide “feeds” of their product databases to search engines. When users search for a product, advertisers’ links will appear with the highest bidder appearing most prominently. The user is able to sort by price and then click on a feed to make a purchase. BizRate.com, Shopzilla.com, Nextag, Pricegrabber.com and Shopping.com are popular product comparison engines, also known as price comparison engines.
3. Service pay per click advertising is very similar to product PPC ads. “Service engines”, such as Nextag, SideStep and TripAdvisor, offer advertisers the opportunity to provide feeds of their service databases which will appear when users search for that particular service. As usual, advertisers who pay more are given better ad placement. However, users can sort their results by price or other methods.
4. Pay per call advertising is similar to pay per click advertising. Ads are listed in search engines and directories. Publishers charge local advertisers for each call they receive as a result of their listing. This form of advertising is not just limited to local advertisers as many of the pay per call search engines allow nationwide companies to create advertisements with local telephone numbers.
Advantages Of PPC Advertising
- Pay per click can generate traffic immediately.
- Pay per click ads can be adjusted within hours or days in response to market behavior.
- Pay per click advertising can be a bargain if you choose your keywords wisely.
- Pay per click can guarantee ad placement for a relatively small portion of your marketing budget.
Disadvantages Of PPC Advertising
- It is very easy to get caught up in a bidding war over keywords and spend way more than you could ever recoup.
- The return on your investment can be very hard to measure. Some PPC search engines provide customers with measurement tools but they aren’t always accurate. Most of the smaller PPC companies don’t even provide tracking methods.
- You can spend advertising dollars just to generate junk traffic. PPC services distribute some of their results to other search engines allowing your listing to show up in the nether regions of the Internet.
- PPC advertising requires you to pay more money when more traffic is generated. On the other hand, natural search engine optimization allows you to invest a set amount of time and money to achieve a better rank and your cost will go down as you attract more traffic.