Pay Per Click StrategiesBetter Search Engine Marketing / Pay-Per-Click Results Start Here – We Guarantee It!

Google uses a number of measures to determine how much a pay per click advertiser pays for one click. One of these ways is called a Quality Score. One way to improve your Quality Score – and pay less per click – is by properly using header tags.

Without spamming, you can use header tags to your advantage in upping your quality score. Following are some tips for doing just that.

Frequency: Some pay per click marketing experts say that you should only use one H1 tag per page (eg, on your landing page).

Sequence: Other Google AdWords pay per click marketers advise not breaking the sequence, the hierarchy of the header tag. For example, don’t use an H1 tag, followed by an H3 tag. Keep the correct sequence of H1, H2, and H3.

Keywords: Your keyword should always be included in your header tags. And again, it shouldn’t be meaningless, keyword stuffed copy. But, copy that actually helps search engines – hence, searchers – to know what a given page is all about.

In order to help with this, use Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool to help find related (secondary) keyword phrases. By using this free tool, you will not only uncover many related keywords, but you won’t have to worry about whether or not Google thinks they’re related. This tool ensures that they are in Google’s eyes.

These tips not only help you improve your Google Quality Score; they bring down your pay per click costs as well – all the while driving more targeted prospects to your site.

Search engine optimization is mercurial. Things are constantly changing, which means that internet marketers must change with it in order to get the best returns from their PPC campaigns, for example. Following are two recently announced changes by search engine giant and ad network Google that every pay per click marketer needs to be aware of.

Site Speed Matters: When a user clicks through from you Google AdSense ad, your landing page had better load quickly. Why? Because Google is considering using site speed as a ranking factor. 

While the company has come right out and said emphatically that it plans to do this, the fact that it’s even a part of the conversation means that at some point they probably will. Also, they’ve rolled out tools webmasters can use to speed up their pages. Learn more about this at Google’s Site Speed site.

Personalized Search: This has caused a big hullabaloo lately. What exactly is it? It means that when you conduct a Google search, it returns results that are tailored to what the search engine thinks is most desired by the individual user as opposed to a more general relevancy for the average person who may be searching the web.

To explain by way of example, let’s say you conduct a lot of searches for home décor tips and click on results from HGTV.com often. Accordingly, Google might rank HGTV.com higher on the results pages it returns the next time you do a search for home décor ideas – simply because it sees that you go to this site often.

Why is this important to you as an online marketer? Think about it this way: if web users are getting more personalized results, it can fragment your target market more. This makes it harder for you to reach larger numbers of prospects.

While you can’t change what ad networks like Google do, you can stay abreast of the changes and adapt your SEO and pay per click marketing strategies to continually maximize your return on investment.

If you’re in a highly competitive PPC marketing niche, eg, credit, weight loss, insurance, and have a very small budget, there are going to be some keywords that you are never going to rank for. So, how do you put together a competitive Google AdWords pay per click marketing campaign? Following is one way to do it.

Taking the Long Road to Google AdWords PPC Marketing Success
You’re going to have to niche it to success – and be patient while doing it. To explain by way of example, let’s take credit repair.

If you ran a credit repair agency and wanted to rank high for strong keywords in this niche, good luck unless you have gobs of money. Keywords like credit repair, credit repair services and credit score repair are in the $5 to $10 per click range.

But, there are quite a few phrases in this niche that go for 5 cents per click, ie:
* New Credit Repair (260 monthly searches)
* DIY Repair (260 monthly searches)
* Credit Repair Experts (110 monthly searches)
* Sample Credit Repair (210 monthly searches)
* Good Credit Repair (140 monthly searches)

These keywords account for almost 1,000 searches per month and they cost pennies compared to higher traffic keywords like the ones mentioned above, which bring anywhere from right at 2,000 to over 90,000 searches per phrase, per month.

You may be able to find 20, 30 or 40 phrases or more like the low-cost ones just above. Combine your bid on these with a good organic marketing campaign (eg, writing and distributing SEO articles via free article directories) and over time, you will start to get steady traffic and sales.

Depending on the pricing of your services, you may not need to get hundreds or thousands of clicks to see a noticeable difference in your bottom line.

Just because you’re in a super-competitive niche does not mean you can’t put together a profitable Google AdWords pay per click campaign. It just means you have to be patient and take a different approach. You can learn more AdWords success tips from the experts during the AdWords Advantage Online Summit http://www.AdWordsAdvantage.com coming in March.

Click fraud is, unfortunately, part of advertising online. Major players like Google, MSN and Yahoo! take great pains to help advertisers prevent it. If you’re a pay per click marketer and you suspect click fraud, following are some actions you can take:

Identify the source: There are primarily three culprits when it comes to click fraud. They are listed below.

3 Types of Click Fraud Culprits

Your Competitors: By draining your account as quickly as possible, you are less competition for them. Except in the case of Google, this actually gives you a higher ranking (after all, if you’re getting a lot of clicks, your product must be good/popular, right? Google rewards this). While it may suck for your bank account, in the end it helps you.

Affiliates: Google AdSense affiliates make money every time someone clicks, so some are unscrupulous enough to click (or get someone else to click). 

Traffic Thieves: These are probably the most insidious of the bunch because it’s so hard to identify them. They can be a company that sells traffic to other sites, or an individual who is stealing traffic from you because they sell a similar product, or another type. 

4 Ways to Combat Click Fraud

Track Your Traffic: Knowing where your traffic is coming from is vital to preventing click fraud. You’ll have to provide this to Google anyway if you suspect it, so make it a habit to track it. You can find this out by looking at your web log referrer reports, or by using various tracking tools on the market.

Report Suspicious Activity to Google: Gather all of your evidence, eg, logs of the source of your traffic, normal activity report compared to a suspicious one (comparison click charts), region traffic is coming from, spike dates, etc. Give them everything you think they may need to do a proper, thorough investigation.

Contact the ISP. If the suspected click fraud is coming from an identifiable ISP, contact them to let them know. Do it in writing (email) and by phone.  If this doesn’t work, you can always resort to the following . . .

Retain an Attorney: They will be able to help you, for example, get a court order to release the name attached to the ISP from which the suspected click fraud originated, as well as several other options.

While this may not be cheap, it can literally cost you less if you spend thousands on pay per click marketing.

Marketing online via Google AdWords is one of the quickest ways to start generating sales and leads online. And, it’s so easy. Many pay per click marketers make it much more difficult than it needs to be.

To simplify the process, ask yourself the following three questions when preparing your AdWords campaign. If you can provide the answer, you are probably doing 75% more than your competition, which means more sales for you.

 Will my prospect use this keyword to find my product?

About 10 seconds after you decide to research how to run a successful Google AdWords campaign, you probably read that keywords are the foundation to your success.

And while terms like “keyword research”, “cost per click” and “return on investment” may be running through your head, what it all boils down to is this: “Would the person searching for my type of product/service use this keyword/keyword phrase as a search term?” If you think the answer is yes, then try it.

Remember, keyword research – and indeed, pay per click marketing itself – is not an exact science. If a keyword phrase turns out to be a dud, you can quickly change it. That’s the beauty of advertising via Google AdWords. Nothing is set in stone. You can change it at the drop of a dime.

What do I want them to do when they land on my site?

Okay, so you got’em to click through to your site. Don’t lose your prospect now! Tell them exactly what you want them to do – buy, subscribe, ask for more info, etc.

Have I done thorough keyword research?This is the mother lode. Spend time up front to do thorough keyword research. Build a master list and keep it handy. Google’s Keyword AdWord research tool makes it soooo easy.

You can use it to find keywords based on your site content; identify negative keywords; create separate ad groups; specify a language and/or location – and so much more.

If you ask – and answer – these three questions, you should have no problem running a successful Google AdWords pay per click campaign.

In pay per click marketing, keywords are the foundation of every successful campaign. But, your competition uses the same Google AdWords tools you do to discover profitable keywords. However, you can still beat them at this game. How?

By using noncompetitive keywords. Here are two ways to dig up some good keywords your competition may have overlooked.

Use Google Trends: Google Trends displays keywords web surfers are looking for on a daily basis. And, it’s updated throughout the day. It even shows “how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.” [Source: About Google Trends]

This is an excellent tool for digging up profitable keywords your competition may be overlooking. And, the best part about it – as these are “hot topic” items, your ads will probably get a higher CTR – and a higher ROI as it’s highly targeted to exactly what surfers are searching for.

Use Keyword Subsets: If you’re in a highly competitive niche or you don’t have the ad budge to compete with the big guys, use less competitive keywords – but choose them wisely.

For example, “make money online” is a very competitive keyword phrase. Good luck getting any good placement with that one. But, there are other phrases similar to this that are less competitive – and less expensive. Finding a lot of these can really add up – in traffic and sales.

 Some subsets of “make money online” — which is highly competitive at 246,000 monthly searches – are the following:

• Make money online today: 1,600
• Need to make money: 1,300
• Making extra money: 1,300

While the traffic doesn’t compare to “make money online”, by using various subsets, it can really add up. And, not for nothing, the longer a keyword phrase is (long-tail keywords), the more motivated the searcher is to buy because they are looking for something specific.

Keep this in mind the next time you do keyword research for your Google AdWords pay per click campaign. Monitor your results. You may never want to use same keywords everyone else is bidding on again.

New Google AdWords pay per click marketers can waste a lot of money if they don’t know how to property set an ad budget. There’s an art to it. Here are two things to keep in mind that will keep you from wasting money with this online marketing method.

Set Limits:  Figure out how much you can afford to spend monthly, then break it down by day. This will prevent you from going over budget.

For example, if your monthly PPC budget is $500, then your daily limit is $16.66.

Set Dollar Limits on Keywords: As in, set a maximum of how much you’re willing to pay for a click on a certain keyword. To do this, use Google’s Keyword AdWord Tool to see what the average spend is for a certain keyword.

Using this info, bid higher if you want to obtain a higher listing on a page. Or, bid lower if you want to be in a lower position. Nothing is set in stone; you can change these at any time if you want. Check your campaigns often, and if your current bids aren’t giving you the results you want, then change them.

Google AdWords Pay Per Click Campaign: Setting Your Bid Tip

Strive for the Top Spot: Often, this is not the most profitable spot to be in. Oftentimes, the number three, four or five position will get you better results. The reason is, a lot of curiosity seekers may click on the top spot. But, those who are “ready to buy” mode will often click three, four or five ads to comparison shop.

So in essence, the person in the top spot is paying for a customer who’s going to click on lower-placed ads anyway.

Keeping these tips in mind will not only keep you from overspending, they will increase your Google AdWords campaign ROI as well.

Placement-targeted Google AdWords campaigns are best suited to Pay Per Click marketers who want more control over how their ad is presented across Google’s content network.

Following are ways to maximize your ROI when creating a placement-targeted campaign.

1. Use Text & Image Ads: Placement-targeted Google AdWords campaigns allow you to create both types of ads. The advantage in doing so is that you can run split tests to see how each one performs.

As placement-targeted campaigns are only shown on content sites, it allows end users to respond to an ad in a format that is most suitable for them. Hence, if you discover that one type of ad is performing better, then you can focus creating more of those.

2. Use Placement Tool Effectively: The placement tool gives you three specific ways to indentify sites you may want your ads to appear on. They are: List URLs, Describe Topics, and Select Demographics.

Of course, this should be used to select which content sites you want your ads to show up on. But, just as importantly, use this tool to exclude websites you don’t want your ads to show up on.

When you click on “Select Demographics”, the tool will return a list of sites based on the info you’ve keyed in, eg, target market age, gender, household income, etc.

Try to be as thorough as possible when filling in this category for your Google AdWords ads. The more concrete information you have about your prospects, the more accurately you will be able to select sites for your ads to appear on across the Google Content Network. 

As it’s the holiday season and we know a lot of merchants make a large chunk of their revenue this time of year. And, many new marketers are trying
pay per click advertising with Google AdWords and other search engines for the very first time.

These are the reasons that why we’ve tried to give you as many pay per click “holiday” marketing tips as possible. And, we’re not done yet!

Following are three more PPC marketing tips that can bring in the business. This week, we focus on the really simple little things that many may overlook.

1. Singular/Plural – It Matters: Include singular and plural versions of keyword/keyword phrases in your pay per click campaigns.

As web surfers are human beings, there are as many ways to search for a product/service as there are surfers. So, do the basics and cover your bases as much as possible. This is one way to do it. 

2. Capitalize: This is another tiny change that can make a big difference. By capitalizing each word in your pay per click ad, you make them stand out more.

3. Direct Link to Product Page: Don’t make visitors slog through page after page on your site to find the offer promised in your PPC ad. Deep link directly to it.

Especially as the season wears on, shoppers are harried, tired and frustrated – even when shopping online. And, they are bombarded by so many messages that if they can’t find what’s been promised in the ad, they’ll likely click away to find it – perhaps at your competitor’s site.

These are three quick, easy tips even a new pay per click marketer can do to increase holiday sales.

It’s the holiday season and a lot of first-time pay per click marketers are running campaigns. PPC marketing is an excellent way to capitalize on the busy holiday season. But, as with every revenue generating system, it pays to be careful–particularly this time of year. To that end, following are two things you can do to guard against click fraud this season.

Conduct Data Analysis: You get a wealth of campaign reports when you run pay per click campaigns. Take some time to go through them and do some data analysis.

Where are your clicks coming from? Are they converting? Does the referral source seem suspicious? Is your account being drained of dollars very quickly?

You don’t have to be an internet marketing guru to understand these reports. They are provided to help increase your ROI, so use them.

Set Affordable Ad Budgets: This is probably the simplest way to guard against click fraud, and is one of the things that make pay per click marketing so attractive.

Following is the key thing to remember when setting your PPC ad budget . . . set it to get the most exposure for your ads, without breaking the bank. This can be a tricky balance as you have to figure out the most profitable keywords and phrases to bid on that will: (i) bring in the most business; (ii) this time of year; (iii) via this medium (ie, the internet).

Confused by PPC Marketing: Get the Training You Need
And, this is why it’s important to know what you’re doing when use pay per click marketing. It pays to get pay per click marketing training to run successful holiday campaigns – indeed, year-round PPC campaigns – from the beginning.