Websites That Click – 10 Tips to Making Every Click Pay Off

SEO, PPC, RSS – is it just me or do we all need a translator these days to promote our websites? Have no fear. This newsletter offers Pay per Click tips that will address some of your burning online marketing questions.

1. Know the big players. Ever wondered which search engines get the most traffic? Well according to Hitwise research conducted in August of 2010, the traffic percentages were broken down as follows: Google 71.59%Yahoo 14.28%MSN 9.87%Ask 2.28% All other search engines 1%There are basically 3 major Pay per Click campaign locations: Google, MSN and Yahoo! Each has a network of engines that your ads will appear on if you choose. To get an idea of each go to their homepages and look for the words “Advertising Programs”, “Search Ads”, or “Advertise.”

2. Do some research and look at a keyword estimator. One website that I recommend that you look into for this is http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com a free keyword suggestion tool. If you type in a word it will give you the top-ranking related keywords.

3. Watch those restrictions. Google restrictions will keep you from using superlative words like “best” and “#1”. Review the guidelines on any search engine you use to avoid having your ad paused.

4. Understand how your money is spent. You can set a budget for the day, for a certain campaign, or for an ad group. One of your keywords may cost $4.00 per click and another $.50, you can get a lot more $.50 customers than $4.00 ones.

5. Aim for 3rd or 4th Place. You don’t necessarily want to be in position #1 because that may break the bank. Try position 3 or 4 for more bang for your buck. Your ad will still be visible, but cost you much less.

6. Track your campaigns. The competition changes frequently so you need to check your campaigns often and adjust them as your competition does.

7. Test, test, test. Use the ad variations feature to test different copy on different ads. You will find that your potential customers will click through on some ad headlines more than others. The only way to figure out which ones work best is to test them out and track the progress.

8. Don’t stress over the minutia. Yes some of your clicks will be wasted on your competitors clicking on your ads, or people who didn’t mean to click or people who are looking to start their own business. But, that happens in any form of advertising, its just that in this type you are able to view things on such a small level that you needlessly worry about it. Just write it off in your mind as “the cost of doing business” and work on growing your business.

9. Plan with a results-oriented budget. Online advertising is replacing yellow page advertising, and yeah because you have more choices and control over your spending. So when considering your budget, be sure to think in terms of how much profit on an annual basis does one new customer bring me. I use the number of $625 for an efficient cleaning service. That means for a $625/month ad campaign you need to only get one good recurring customer from that month to pay for the ad.

10. Skip the learning curve and outsource. Don’t speak much “online ad” lingo and can’t imagine the headache of navigating yet one more program? Hire someone like us to do it for you for a very minimal cost. We know the tricks (and the treats).