Pay-Per-Click Search Engines (PPCs) allow you to bid for specific keyword placement. They provide great opportunities for driving low-cost, supplemental traffic to your Web site.
However, PPCs are best investigated after you have a built a solid foundation of content based upon C
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If you rely entirely on the PPCs for your traffic, you never really own your business. Once you stop paying, your visitors stop coming. On top of that, your relationship with your visitors is purely commercial so these skeptical visitors convert into customers at a much lower rate.
Instead, build trust and credibility through content, and generate much better Conversion Rates.The answer doesn’t waver. Start your research after you have created 20-30 pages of great content, and are driving sustainable free traffic from the main SEs.
How do PPCs work?
Wow! Back to back good questions. Your best strategy is to work the niches. Let’s suppose one of your pages focuses on the topic of “fashion models.” You can bid for the #1 placement (or any other #) on the first page of search results or lower, but what’s the point of being on page two?
Boy, does that save time! But there’s a catch, of course. The most popular keywords have become quite expensive at Overture (now named Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions). And it has been adopting policies (i.e., MatchDriver and Click Index Score) that eliminate or severely hamper your ability to work the “keyword fringes.” By matching more esoteric, highly-focused terms with more general, competitive terms, they have effectively eliminated many keyword bargains.
Nonetheless, there are many worthwhile alternatives to Overture, and using them can be an extremely cost-effective way to build a big list of lifetime customers in a hurry.
Let’s quickly review the top 8 Pay-Per-Clicks. The grand-daddy of all the Pay-Per-Clicks is...Overture (Yahoo! Marketing Solutions)
Overture continues to drive traffic on a scale unmatched by any other PPC, largely because its paid listings appear on many major SEs like Yahoo! and MSN Search. However, due to intense competition and policy implementations discussed earlier, Overture has become too expensive for many small businesses.
Don’t dismiss Overture entirely though. If you have a great ROI, a phenomenal Conversion Rate, or a very unique or esoteric business theme or topic, it may still be worth investigating.
Overture is no longer accepting spreadsheet submissions from advertisers spending less than $1,000 per month.
One special point about Overture... Overture will try to “advise” you to bid in the Top 2 or 3 since so many of their major partners cherry-pick these and report them in or alongside their search results (ex., MSN, Yahoo!, etc.). But these are much more expensive and may generate lower Conversion Rates since they are perceived as ads.
For this reason, several respected SE experts have advised against bidding for top positions, recommending instead the less expensive top 5-10 positions. You will have to decide which position makes most financial sense in your situation.
Register for a bidding account with Overture at...https://secure.overture.com/s/dtc/center/
Overture is no longer my #1 choice to drive high-volume, affordable PPC traffic to small businesses, so let’s take a quick look at the other 7 Pay-Per-Clicks. (There are many others beyond these, but they do not generate enough traffic to be worth your time.) Our first recommendation is now FindWhat.
FindWhat
FindWhat’s distribution network will drive plenty of traffic at the cost of a nickel per click through. FindWhat's partners include Excite, WebCrawler, MetaCrawler, and DogPile.
FindWhat also powers Lycos’ InSite Adbuyer which provides right margin text advertising very similar to Google's AdWords. (Lycos’ ads also appear on HotBot). And here’s another handy feature. You can clone your existing FindWhat account over to Lycos.
Unfortunately, you will need to pay both deposits (i.e., set-up deposits for FindWhat and for Lycos) to get started. Not to worry though… you’ll receive click through credits for every penny.To register for a bidding account with FindWhat see…
http://www.findwhat.com/
Be careful. They may try to “brainstorm” and bid keywords for you. If they do, e-mail them to stop and tell them you will charge back on your credit card if they don’t refund you.
KanoodleKanoodle is a rapidly growing PPC that provides a quality service and is now our second choice. Register for a bidding account with them at...
https://safe.kanoodle.com/client_services/listings/index.cool
7Search.comRegister for a bidding account with them at...
http://7search.com/scripts/advertiser/submit_1.asp?option=Paying
Xuppa.comRegister for a bidding account with them at...
http://www.xuppa.com/cgi-local/adsign.cgi?status=newuser
Be careful. There have been a few recent reports about very low Conversion Rates. Use Tracking Links to be sure about this. (You will learn more about this in DAY 10.)
Enhance InteractiveRegister for a bidding account with them at…
http://www.ehance.com/
eSpottingA British-based PPC with a solid foothold on the European market, eSpotting is great choice for anyone wanting to gain exposure beyond the North American market. Register an account with them at...
http://www.espotting.com/advertisers/list_yoursite.asp
GoClickRegister an account with them at...
https://www.goclick.com/acct/register.mod
For more info on Pay-Per-Click engines, see...http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com/
Before you bid on anything, do your research first. To keep everything organized, create a BID-FOR-KEYWORD LIST. Label the first column “KEYWORD” (yes, the same KEYWORD as in your MASTER KEYWORD LIST. Now add 23 more columns to the right of KEYWORD.
Label the first two columns to the right of the KEYWORD column “Price I Should Bid” and “Buys #”. Leave these two columns empty for now.Ready for a test run? Use FindWhat to research each one of your HIGHPROFITABILITY keywords.
To the right of the column labeled “Buys #,” enter the number of sites that have bid at least a nickel for each keyword (ex., let’s say that you do a search for “fashion model” and you find that 15 sites bid at least one nickel for “fashion model” -- enter “15”).
Now, in the next 20 columns, enter the price for the “Top 20” search results spots (searchers are unlikely to scan any result past #20 so beyond #20 is a waste of time). Since your research shows that only 15 sites bid for “fashion model,” enter these bid prices in the first 15 columns. Leave the last 5 blank or enter 0.00.
Some Pay-Per-Click engines only show you 10 sites on the first page of search results. In that case, enter the bids only for these. Enter “0.00” for #11-20. No point to bid for a spot on Page 2!
Now, back to those first two columns to the right of your KEYWORD. Enter the best price you should bid in “Price I Should Bid.” And in the next column (“Buys #”), enter what spot in the search results that bid will yield.
If this seems like a lot of work, it’s really not. And with Site Build It!, PPC research and bidding are quick and easy! Your best strategy is to bid a penny higher than the highest site that seems to reach your target visitor. If the descriptions for the first three sites are clearly aimed at someone who is not your target, why outbid them?
Stay a penny higher than your competitors, as long as that bid makes financial sense. You do not want to be below your competition... the click through drops off quickly as you go down the page.
What makes financial sense? Whatever makes a profit!Suppose you are paying $0.10 per click for a keyword. That means 1,000 clicks costs you $100. Suppose you do a decent PREselling job and a total of 20% of your visitors click on at least one of the five in-context text links on your Keyword-Focused Content Page. That’s 200 people visiting your merchants.
Let’s say that your merchants average a 1.5% Conversion Rate, that’s 3 sales. With an average commission of $40, your $100 has returned $120. And if you’ve chosen good affiliate programs, ones that offer lifetime customer commissions, you’ve gained 3 lifetime customers which means ongoing income with no further expense!
Are you referring visitors to your own online store or sales page? Do similar profitability calculations.
With a Pay Per Click Search Engine, you basically want as few clicks as possible. Actually, let me rephrase that... you basically want only targeted clicks... people who understand exactly what your page is about and who click for that reason.
Why? Because you pay for each click!So, you don’t really want as few clicks as possible... you want as few off-target visitors as possible. Gear everything you do to maximizing on-target visitors for the least amount of money.
Bottom line strategies?...1) Bid for on-target keywords, especially the less-obvious ones. They will be quite cheap to buy. Obvious and popular keywords have become too expensive. There’s no way I’m paying $5 for popular keywords -- not unless I’m selling a product that has a profit of $500 and I have a 10% Conversion Rate!
2) Write your Title and Description so that only your target market clicks (remember, each click costs you). A Pay Per Click searcher who reads your Title and Description should clearly understand what she'll get if she clicks. If it does not interest her, she’ll give you a pass. Which is exactly what you want when it comes to Pay Per Clicks. Why pay for a click by someone who hits the back button as soon as she arrives?
Write your Title and Description so that they...
The Site Build It! provides a BID-FOR-KEYWORD LIST for every significant Pay-Per-Click engine. It researches the “# of bids” and the Top 20 bids for all of your KEYWORDS (as described above), at the simple click of a button! And it automates mass-submissions to the major Pay-Per-Clicks, too. (All Excel templates are available at Site Central, SBI!’s mission control. ) Now it takes only minutes to do what previously took days.
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
When that’s all done? Just one more click...Click the “Create File” button to create a file for FindWhat’s mass-submission template. E-mail these files to the Pay-Per-Clicks and...
Presto! Instant, cheap traffic visiting your site. And no hassle!
Pay-Per-Clicks are outstanding, cost-effective ways to build traffic to your site. It’s totally do-able. Unlike the free Search Engines, all you have to do is bid.
