Part 2: 5 More Pay Per Click Tips

By Richard Baker
Posted Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Pay Per Click tips will help you target specific audiences, reaching over 85% of all Internet users in a cost effective and immediate way.

Over the last 3 years we have seen a growth in the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine model. This was initially fashioned by Overture, but has quickly been followed by a whole host of Pay Per Clicks.

The concept is extremely simple. You bid on words that surfers who would be interested in your website's content would use to search on. For example, if your website was about gardening...you may bid on the words "garden care" or "lawn care" etc. When someone searches on the words "garden care", the search results are returned in the order of the bids placed; so a website with a 60 cents bid would rank higher than one for 55 cents and so on.

Obviously, you will want to make sensible bids that your business can sustain. The best way to know what is affordable is to look at your website stats of visitors against your sales. If your profit last month was $1,000 and you had 400 unique visitors your profit per visitor (PPV) would be $2.50. If you had 20000 unique visitors your PPV would drop to $0.50. This is a rule of thumb as not all visitors are equal - some visitors are more qualified than others and visitors from PPC Search Engines are often the most qualified around. these Pay Per Click tips will help you.

PPC Search Engines are the best valuable advertising currently available. If you write a good website and expert title and descriptions with your listings, qualifying your visitors is a relatively direct task. How can you make the most of PPC search engines...great question and here are 5 more excellent tips!

1. Watch for Bidding Gaps
What's the point in bidding 25 cents for position 1 when 12 cents will do? Not a lot is the answer, but I see it every day. In fact the worse gap I saw was $11 when $1.03 would do. Make sure the bid you make is sensible by closing bidding gaps. You can save a considerable amount of money by closing those bidding gaps. In fact this can save (or stretch) your budget by up to 70%.

2. Premium Listing...as easy as 1,2,3
PPC Search Engines often engage in alliances with "free" search engines so results are displayed across a "family" of search engines. As of writing this, Overture had numerous alliances, including with Alta Vista, Ask and Yahoo!. The catch is you need to show up in the top 3 on Overture to be displayed on other search engines. You only pay for clicks directly with the Pay Per Clicks you go with, so all the other clicks from Yahoo! or Alta Vista etc. are free. Consider it a bonus.

3. Increasing Your Return On Investment ("ROI")
We have already said that writing relevant titles and descriptions will filter the qualified from the unqualified surfer. However, there is one other thing to consider. When searches are returned many surfer will instantly click the number one bid; it's a habit I suppose. Often the number one bid is not relevant to their needs or they wish to compare two or more web sites. The result for the webmaster of the top ranked web site, is a high number of clicks and a lower ROI compared to position two and three. Positions two and three can be a fraction of the price of the most popular term. Provided you bid on a lot of the slightly less popular terms, you usually can get just as much traffic, and sometimes more, as if you bid on the leading term - and for a lot less money too.

4. Landing Pages
Think about the keywords you are bidding on and give the surfer what they want. Don't just let them land on your home page. The surfer is less likely to get distracted when you give them what they want rather than leave them to their own devices. It you are promoting a particular product, make sure the surfer is taken straight to it. This is an important Pay Per Click help tip.

5. Don't Delay
The sooner you start Pay Per Click advertising, the sooner you'll start getting traffic. With most Pay Per Clicks, the bids are rising not falling. Again, with most Pay Per Clicks including Overture, when two or more bids tie, the first bidder is given priority. This is especially important if you plan on bidding on a lot of terms or when 3 or more bids are tied.

And there you have it. These 5 tips build of the first 5 tips from Part 1 of this article.

Happy bidding.

About the Author
Richard Baker is Director of Blue Fruit Ltd - a specialist Pay Per Click placement consultancy.

"...overdelivering solutions at affordable prices"

(http://www.bluefruit.com)

Richard is an expert in pay per click (ppc) management and optimization techniques. He overdelivers affordable solutions for clients.