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All you need to know about Pay Per Click
Search Engines.
By Merle
Pay Per Click Search Engines (aka PPC) are all the rage these
days and for very good reasons. They are an inexpensive way of
achieving targeted traffic. If you're not familiar with them let's
go over the basics.
With PPC search engines, you bid on keywords/phrases and when
someone searches for those keywords, your site will appear on
the search results page. If someone clicks on your site, you're
charged the amount you have bid. If they don't
click, your account is not charged.
Overture was the very first PPC S.E. in existence and it's still
the largest and most effective. Their success is mostly due to
the extensive relationships they have in place with many of the
major search engines. When bidding with Overture, the top three
bid positions will also appear on some of the majors like Altavista,
Yahoo and others. These listings generally show up under the heading
of "sponsored links."
Thanks to Overture's success, many other engines have appeared
on the Net, all vying for the PPC dollars. But you need to be
careful here, as many of them are not worth your time or advertising
dollars. We'll discuss these in more depth in Part 2 of this series.
Remember, visitors who come to your site via a search engine are
already targeted leads, and once they get there it's up to you
to convert them into buyers. No PPC S.E. will make the sale for
you; that is always determined by the strength of your ad copy.
Your site must convert visitors into buyers, and the only way
to do that is with strong ad copy that convinces them to take
action.
The biggest task in signing up with PPC's is choosing the keywords/phrases
you wish to bid on. You don't want to be too broad and bid on
one word; you'll do better by being more specific and coming up
with or 2 or 3 word combinations to bid on. You don't want to
pay for untargeted traffic, and if your keyphrases aren't relevant
to your site, that's exactly what you'll be doing.
For example, let's say your site sells model trains. Don't bid
on the word "trains" alone but use "model trains."
That way you're targeting those who are specifically searching
for model trains and not those who may be looking to take a trip
on trains. Are you following me here? Again, you don't want to
pay for untargeted traffic.
There are many tools you can use online that will help you in
choosing just the right keywords. You'll have your best luck bidding
on as many keyword combinations as you can think of. If you only
choose a handful of keywords your results won't be as good, so
you'll need to come up with quite a few.
Some of the best are:
Overture's Keyword Generator
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
"Jim Tools" also has a nice selection
http://www.JimTools.com
Keyword Miner- Free Software
http://engineready.com/freeware/keywordminer/index.html
Word Tracker
http://www.WordTracker.com
You'll be amazed at the number of keyword combinations you can
come up with by using one of the above tools. They really make
it easy to come up with the best phrases for your PPC campaign.
For more information on PPC search engines, you may want to investigate
these:
http://www.PayPerClickGuide.com
http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
http://www.PayPerClickAnalyst.com
http://www.PPC-Directory.com
http://www.searchenginepayperclick.com
Adding pay per click search engines to your website promotional
strategy is a smart move. The trick is to bid on enough keywords
and keep your bids at the bare minimum. The results will be highly
targeted traffic that won't cost you a fortune or break the bank.
In Part 2 of this series we'll examine some of PPC's major players
more closely.
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Merle - http://www.EzineAdAuction.com
"Where some of the BEST Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made"
Buy & Sell Ezine Ads in a live auction setting! Publishers
sell off your excess inventory and Buyers pick up some Fantastic
bargains. Free E-book on how to write "glowing" ezine
ads.
Download Now :http://www.ezineadauction.com/ebooks/greatezineads.pdf
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