February 20th, 2012 by WendySuto
If Google is your search engine of choice, (Chances are it is, as Google holds a 64% market share in search traffic) you may have noticed blue links along the side and above your query results. These are pay-per-click ads. Internet Marketers use pay-per-click ads on various search engines to supplement their organic SEO results.
Most SEO initiatives have about a 6-8 month lag time before you will ever see ranking results. A well-planned pay-per-click campaign can be a great catalyst to raise your organic rankings, or supplement your traffic when your organic Internet marketing initiatives start to plateau.
With any PPC provider, you bid for rank within the search results for any given keyword of your choosing. You are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad to go to your site. Contrast this with a PPI or pay-per-impression campaign where you pay a set amount every time your ad is shown in the results. You can bid as low as $.01 and there is no ceiling to how much you can bid for a keyword. Keep in mind however, that your ad’s ranking is directly correlated to the price you’re willing to pay per click.
To initiate a PPC campaign, sign up and register with a PPC provider. Google Adwords is likely the largest and most widely used, as referenced by the 64% market share… You will need to provide a credit card number, and in all likelihood a deposit into the account. Design your ads with a keyword-based title, body text and a link to the landing page of your site. Finally, set up your campaign and bid for clicks.
One important thing to remember is that Google’s Adwords algorithm assigns a “quality score” to the relevancy of your ad to the searched keyword. When designing your PPC campaign you may be able to further optimize by designing your ad around the most relevant keyword you can come up with.
Tags: googel adwords consulting, google adwords services, pay per click campaigns, ppc service provider
Posted in Paid Advertising Online | No Comments »
February 13th, 2012 by WendySuto
If you’re new to running a Google Adwords campaign you may have some initial trouble optimizing your ads, specifically raising their quality score. As I’ve discussed before Google Adwords ranks ads based on their relevancy to the query in what we’ll refer to as a ‘quality score.’ Google’s motivation for using this quality-based ranking algorithm is ultimately to serve the customer, the searcher. This is likely why they’re by far the biggest search engine in the market.
This has the added benefit of allowing advertisers to have effective search engine marketing campaigns regardless of budget. The key to optimizing your ad campaign, and achieving a higher quality score, is providing the most relevant and highest quality content, products, and services. Your Quality Score is made up of very many factors, but the four most important are:
Click Through Rate (CTR) – The number of times your ad is clicked divided by the number of times it’s seen (an impression). This ratio essentially measures how enticing your ad is, or the probability someone will click on it if they see it.
Max Cost Per Click (CPC) – This is the maximum bid you’re willing to pay for a click in the search results of any particular keyword.
Ad Text – The relevancy of the text in the ad to the keywords or phrase queried in the search engine.
Landing Page – This is how relevant the content on your landing page is to the keywords or phrases queried in the search engine.
Here’s an example of how this might stack up in an actual market:
| |
Max CPC |
CTR |
Quality Score |
Ad Position |
| Advertiser 1 |
0.60 |
5.9 |
3.20 |
1 |
| Advertiser 2 |
2.01 |
1.6 |
3.06 |
2 |
| Advertiser 3 |
3.80 |
0.7 |
2.28 |
3 |
| Advertiser 4 |
1.20 |
1.8 |
2.15 |
4 |
Notice how Advertiser 1 has the lowest maximum bids for clicks, but thanks to a high click-through rate is able to garner the number one spot. Even though Advertiser 3 is spending a fortune for clicks, his CTR is poor due to (most likely) poor quality or irrelevant content on his landing page.
So, it seems, Content is still king. When designing any Adwords campaign, it’s worth the investment in time to carefully word your advertisements and landing page content. If you’re not confident doing this yourself an experience copywriter can provide you with content that converts visitors and improves your Google Adwords Quality Score.
Tags: pay per click consulting, ppc marketing, ppc quality score
Posted in PPC management, Paid Advertising Online | No Comments »
February 7th, 2012 by admin
In the last post on this topic we covered possible searcher behaviors including alternating between searching and browsing, minimizing their results sets, and quickly reviewing result titles for specific information.
Without further ado, here are the next three searcher behavioral patterns.
4. Making snap judgments
Many users only scan the first few results to decide if their query was successful or not. If they don’t find what they are looking for, they’ll just resubmit the query with different search words or terms. For someone looking for a highly relevant result to a narrowly-defined piece of information, a search reasonably appears flawed if it doesn’t return an acceptable match within the first few listings.
Recommendations:
· Optimize results for the most commonly submitted queries related to your content. Try out all of the top queries, evaluate the results returned, and optimize your site’s content to improve their ranking.
5. Agonizing over the query\
Some users, especially those with low domain expertise, may have trouble putting into words what they’re looking for. They may rewrite the query several times before submitting or rapidly try query after query, briefly scanning the results to determine how ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ they are to their target content.
Recommendations:
· If the user has cookies enabled that can automate storage of previous queries and build a profile of that searcher it’s of great benefit, but this is largely outside of our control as marketers.
6. Pogo sticking
Similar to rapidly scanning search results, pogo sticking involves the searcher to quickly sample each result in succession before settling on the best candidate for his information needs. Many searchers believe they cannot determine the usefulness of a result by the result listing alone.
Recommendations:
· Again provide comprehensive, understandable, and brief titles and descriptions.
By understanding and catering to these behaviors, we can make our marketing and design much more effective in converting casual searchers to paying members.
Tags: search engine marketing trends, sem news, sem trends
Posted in Search Engine News | No Comments »
