"Other Fine Sites"

AdWords Optimization Introduction

The advantages of Pay Per Click (PPC) paid advertising with the search engines compared with conventional advertising is simply this: almost all conventional techniques are broadcast methods to people who have shown next to no interest in buying your product. Think TV ads etc. They are all broadcast adverts. Sure there some focused than others, if you are selling marketing services to businesses, you put adverts in a marketing magazine, but that's a crude process these days.

Search Yahoo for "marketing" and on the right hand side, you'll see adverts by websites who are paying them to have their link and site listed there on the first page of results. This is Paid Advertising on the Search Engines and this is why Google now rules the search engines!

Compare that to someone searching Yahoo for " online advertising for solicitors"? That's a potential customer that right at that moment in time is interested in learning a very specific piece of information. If you expect to produce a product that can help, you'd better hope that you're on the first page of Google or other. What is it worth to you to have that person visit your webpage within 3 seconds of typing that into Yahoo?

Sure, you might search engine optimize your website to make sure you have Higher Search Engine Placement for your keywords, but it takes time and effort and a significant investment in cash. This is where Pay Per Click marketing really starts to shine, and is under used in my opinion. Your site could be on the first page of your chosen Search Engine the same day for that search term for a relatively low budget. In a few days you'd have some idea of the quantity of people that will definitly look for that term, visit your website, and buy your product. This is up to date, market research for a tiny budget that is impossible to get any other way.

Let's say that you are paying 20p per click, and 500 people click your link making a total spend of 100. And say your conversion rate is a reasonable 1%, so you've got five new orders and more importantly five additional customers that you can now sell to again. All for 100 outlay! What is your typical consumer worth to you? Doesn't this look like something you should be getting into?

One important thing to understand is how Google ranks the sponsored PPC marketing ads. Basically it's an auction in real time. The top bidder wins. If you bid 20p and some other company bids 25p, they will rank higher than yours. Actually it's a lot more in depth than that: if you have a top quality PPC advertising, it is likely for you to rank above the 25p ad because the search engine will give boosts to better performing Pay Per Click Adverts. The point is that if your Pay Per Click Services Company knows what they're doing with PPC bid management, it's possible to achieve higher rankings (read more traffic) for less cash. So your important online internet marketing budget is stretched and you save budget. Alternatively, if your Pay Per Click ad campaign is managed by someone who has no idea what they are doing, it will cost you real money.

Some of the things a competent Google Advertising Professional should perform (Eg Intrinsic-Marketing.co.uk who also do Website Optimization Analysis) whilst managing your campaign, and if yours isn't, we strongly propose you get a review of your Pay Per Click campaign immediately:

Bid or Don't Bother - The key factor of Pay Per Click bid administration is to get on the absolute first page of your MSN etc quickly. However, where there is in excess of eight (in normal conditions) even Pay Per Click ads can drop to the 2nd page. Where there is competition like this, there is absolutely no point doing a Pay Per Click marketing campaign if you are not on the first page, so either boost your Cost Per Click (CPC) settings, or there is no point.

Better Website Return on Investment(ROI) through Tracking Conversions - This is innovative marketing, this is not conventional marketing, so you can use that to your advantage. The technology exists to track every sale and from where it comes. You will know definitely which advert converts to sales and which don't. It's one thing to get lots of traffic, it's another to have lots of sales. What would you rather have for PPC paid advertising: an ad that generates 1,000 clicks and 1% sales, or one that generates a hundred leads but ten% sales? For both you get identical sales, but the first costs you ten times the price in Pay Per Click advertising budget.

Landing Page Matching - A very common issue is not matching the webpage that potential customers land on when they click your advert, to the content of your advert; which should be targeted at what the person searched for. This just means that when the potential customer clicks your Ad, they see what they want to. Internet users are lazy! Did you know that 1/2 of all internet consumers exit a website in under 8 seconds just because they don't find what they expected! This is more important than Improved Website ROI

Split Testing Your Adverts - This is good Pay Per Click technique and simply involves having more than one ad and testing which one performs best. Here is one example, we had two ads which were identical in every way except the beginning of the top title. One started "Learn to Prevent . . ." and the other began with "Stop . . ." Split testing determined that five percent of the potential customers who saw the "Learn to Prevent . . ." clicked it. BUT 8 percent of the potential customers who saw the "Stop . . ." advert clicked that one. Guess what, we abandoned the first ad and got a better quality advert which eventually Google promoted to the top advertising slot on the page, for the same Price Per Click!

Many Ad Groups - The first rookie failing is to group every keyword together to supply a single advert. This is typically bad. Keywords should be split up into separate groups with Ad text that accurately show the keywords searched for.

Exact Matching/Phrase/Broad - Google AdWords allow 3 different ways to match search terms to your keywords, but many online marketers just go for the basic matching option. You could significantly increase your Click Through Rate from intelligent use of the other options which many careless Google Advertising Professionals don't bother with.