Google, Yahoo, MSN search and Overture... Understanding pay per click advertising.

Google, Yahoo, MSN search and Overture... Understanding pay per click advertising.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to share what I consider the best tips for running a successful pay-per-click search engine campaign. I consider a 'successful' campaign one that generates destination page visitors that are likely to respond to your ad offer and visitors whose clicks don't cost you more money than you have in your bank account :-)

Unless you have very deep pockets, or you're completely nuts, or you have a solid money-making conversion rate, paying big bucks for clicks that don't pan out is business suicide .

So how might you structure your PPC campaign to assure results without losing your shirt? What follows here and over the next few weeks are my tried and true techniques that can perhaps put your pay per click campaign on solid footing.

Search engine campaign tips:

1. Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
2. Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
3. Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
4. "In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.

Keep in mind that if you run any PPC search engine ad campaign over a few weeks and you get zip for sales or sign-up results, the problem is most likely NOT the traffic you're generating from your ad, rather it is your site, your landing page, your product, your service, your price or some factor other than your PPC generated traffic . The first thing I'd look at (if results are low ) is your landing page. Your landing page needs to work like a high-performance race car. Dogs don't chase parked cars.

For additional help with your pay per click ad campaign check out the articles linked in my previous post.

Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...

Best of Luck with EcoQuest !