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Ever heard of hash tags? They can be your secret weapon to getting more traffic from every tweet you send out.  Here’s how and why.

The Language of Social Media Marketing: What are Hashtags & How They Help You Get Traffic

Hashtags are words on Twitter that are preceded by the # symbol. This symbol lets searchers know that there’s a topic (group) around this subject. For example, if you send out a tweet about social media marketing, your tweet might include a hashtag that looks like this: #socialmedia.

Hashtags turn up in search engines like Google much like keywords. Hence, it’s wise to use them in your tweets as often as possible.

Another reason to use them is that if other Twitter users are searching for something on a topic that you’ve tweeted about and it includes a hashtag, it’s much easier for them to find it – and possibly retweet it.

Retweets are akin to backlinks in search engine optimization (SEO) lingo. So the more of them you have, the more likely your results are to show up higher in search engine results – and the more traffic you’ll receive — all from just using one little symbol.

Tip: As tweets can contain only 140 characters, if the message you want to tweet or RT is already close this limit and the phrase you want to put a hashtag in front of is already included, just put the # in front of it. It won’t affect your tweet at all – other than to possibly give it more traction.

The bottom line is, don’t tweet blindly. Remember, there’s an art to tweeting effectively. And, if you use social media marketing sites like Twitter with search marketing tips like this in mind, you’ll be seamlessly increasing your traffic in no time.

How would you like to have less competition, and at the same time lower the cost of your Google pay per click campaigns?

Google Pay Per Click Marketing: The Old Way

If you follow what everyone else is doing (eg, bidding on the same keywords), you will most likely get the same results. But, it may cost you more and if you can’t afford it, then you have to drop out of the game.

Google Pay Per Click Marketing: The New Way

In order to get different (ie, better) results – without breaking the bank – it’s time to try something new. Following is a plan for getting better results.

1. Go for Long-Tail Keywords: Instead of bidding on the same keywords as everyone else, bid on long tail keywords. You’ll most likely have less competition for these keywords, which mean they cost less. But, the brilliance in bidding on these keywords is that they can convert better than shorter, more popular phrases that all of your competitors are bidding on.

The reason is, when web surfers are serious about purchasing, they tend to get very specific (ie, use more words) to find what they’re looking for.

2. Optimize Landing Page with Original Keywords: Optimize your landing page using the shorter, competitive keywords everyone else is bidding on.

By “double dipping” in the long-tail and short-tail keyword waters like this, you gain traffic from organic searches, as well as higher-converting, lower-cost traffic from your Google PPC marketing efforts.

Last week here, we explained how video ads work. Now that you know that, this week we wanted to give you two specific tips for making them work for you.

Memorable Image: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Many pay per click marketers who use video advertising forget this. They get so caught up in the medium that they forget that the medium should serve an end purpose – ie, convert the viewer.

Your image should immediately capture your viewers in some way – intrigue them, amuse them, enlighten them.

How can you make an image memorable? A lot of what you do will depend on your type of business, but following are two quick ideas:

(i) Use Bright Colors: This is particularly effective if you use a black background in your ad.
(ii) Sparse Text: Many PPC marketers try to cram too much text into their ad. But sparsely worded ads can be very powerful. In fact, one famous copywriter used just two words in a headline once (Free. Money.) No explanation, no details, nothing. It was very effective.

Once you have their attention, you can . . .
Make Them Act: This is where a call-to-action statement comes into play. Just because it’s video does not mean you abandon some tried-and-true marketing practices. Do you want them to sign up to your newsletter, request more information, make an immediate purchase, call you, etc.? Whatever it is, let them know.

If you do these two things – at a minimum – you will be well on your way to creating very successful pay per click video ads. Want to learn more? Don’t miss Pay Per Click Summit coming to the Double Tree Hotel in Chicago, IL on November 4-5, 2009.

Even novices to pay per click marketing know that the profit – or loss – is in the keyword selection. To learn more about keyword selection, read, [How to] Classify Your Keywords for Better Pay Per Click Results. Building on the lessons in this article is another piece of the keyword selection puzzle, ie, long tail keywords.

In case you don’t know, long tail keywords are simply multi-phrase search queries web surfers type in to find stuff, eg, “antique car parts mercedes” is a phrase someone who is restoring an old Mercedes might type in to find parts.

Following is the number one reason to spend time ferreting out long-tail keywords.
Long Tail Keywords Signal Serious BuyersThis may be the most important reason to focus on long-tail keywords. It makes sense when you think about how web surfers search for and make purchasing decisions on the web. The more serious a web surfer is about buying, the more focused their search gets.

In the long-tail keyword phrase above, a non-serious surfer might have typed in simply “antique car parts.” But, this surfer qualified it with a car make. To get more specific, they may type in something like “antique car parts mercedes” and “1956 carburetor”.

See how specificity tends to mean the buyer is serious. They’re looking for specific information for a reason – they have a problem they need solved.

So, the next time you sit down to do keyword research for your pay per click campaign, don’t forget that the long-tail is a very profitable keyword center. Don’t ignore it. 

In the post, Pay Per Click Advertising: 3 Things for the Busy Fall Season, we discussed some areas to assess to improve your pay per click marketing results when the fall season rolls around. And, although it’s technically still summer, the busy fall season IS here (after Labor Day is when things tend to kick off).

Now that it is, you may be wondering, “What specifically do I need to do to increase sales with my PPC campaign?” Rather than give you a list of tips – which you may or may not get around to following – we thought it best to share with you three traits we’ve identified that almost every successful pay per click marketer has – or should develop.

Diligence: The hardest part of success is the monotony of doing what it takes – day in and day out – to succeed. This means doing your keyword research, setting up different landing pages, tweaking your website, etc. In short, doing what’s necessary to succeed as a PPC marketer.

Patience: This trait is closely tied to diligence, for you have to test, test and retest pay per click advertising to know what’s working, what’s not working, what may work, what did not work, why, etc. Nothing about pay per click marketing is “set it and forget it.”

It is hands on, which makes it exciting – and frustrating – at the same time.

Knowledge Seeker: As pay per click marketing is a form of internet marketing, it constantly changes. This means staying abreast of emerging technologies, PPC marketing rules, search engine guidelines, etc.

If you have – or can develop – these three traits, then pair it with some basic pay per click marketing knowledge, you will be well on your way to succeeding as an online marketer.

Learn more pay per click marketing by attending the next PPC Summit coming to Los Angeles Sept. 23-24 and Chicago Nov. 4-5. Check out the excting new session topics and agenda at www.ppcsummit/agenda. Register by Sept. 15th and SAVE 35% with code LI.

Pay Per Click marketing is fundamentally paying for search engine positioning. And, one of the ways Google – the leading search engine – determines where to return your site in results is based on what they call a Quality Score.

Pay Per Click Marketing: What is Quality Score?

A quality score is simply a measuring tool used by Google to determine how relevant your keyword(s) are to your ad text and to a user’s search query.

Following are three quick, easy ways to improve this all-important score.

1. Create Smaller Ad Groups: Having too many keywords in your ad group can negatively impact your Quality Score, even if they are related.

This is because they may not be related enough to what’s on a particular landing page in order to be ranked highly by Google. So it’s better to create smaller, more tightly focused ad groups. One of the cardinal rules of internet marketing – especially in PPC – is niche, niche, niche. The more relevant your keywords and the landing page, the higher Google will rank it.

2. Landing Page Title: The title of your landing page should include your keyword(s).

3. Introduce Keywords Quickly: Piggybacking on the point just above, according to accepted internet marketing wisdom, your keyword(s) should be mentioned on the first quarter of your page. This is because when search engines spider/index your page, they’re looking for relevancy.

If your landing page is relevant to your PPC ad, it makes sense that the keyword would be mentioned as soon as possible, right? If they’re not, the search engines may read it as irrelevant/not too relevant.

There are many, many factors that affect a Quality Score. It’s one of the reasons that you should closely monitor — and forever test — your pay per click marketing campaigns.

In the post, How to “Spy” to Boost Your Pay Per Click Advertising Results, we discussed the competitive advantages of spying on the competition and how to do it using SpyFu.

Here, we’ll discuss another advantage of using spy tools beyond simple competitor espionage, ie, protecting your brand.

In pay per click marketing, it’s not uncommon for dishonest marketers to use trademarked names and search terms in their ads. But, it happens all the time. And, although all search engines have a policy against this, it’s up to you to take the strongest action when/if it occurs because search engines will rarely take the lead.

For example, Google’s Trademark Policy states:

As a provider of space for advertisements, Google is not in a position to arbitrate trademark disputes between [pay per click] advertisers and trademark owners. As stated in our Terms and Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad text that they choose to use. Accordingly, Google encourages trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with the advertiser, particularly because the advertiser may have similar ads on other sites.

Pay Per Click Marketing: Why It’s Important to Protect Your Brand/Image Online

The most obvious reason is that you invest years building a brand, which means you’ve undoubtedly spent tens of thousands of dollars – or more – to become recognizable to the marketplace.

Beyond time and money though, one of the best reasons to protect your brand online is that it is so easy for it to be “confiscated” by someone else.

Pay per click marketing spy tools can help you to avoid this. 

In the post, Pay Per Click: How to Use Google Trends to Capitalize on the Slow Summer Months, we alluded to how and why things slow down during the summer months. So right now, sales may be a little sluggish.

But, the busy season is right around the corner. As many pay per click marketers set their pay per click campaigns and forget them, now’s the time to give your site a pre-season tune up. Following are three areas to assess to.

1. Does my site load quickly enough? When was the last time you checked this? It would suck to spend money on a fantastic PPC campaign, only to have visitors clicking away because your site loads too slowly.

2. Can browsers easily find what they want on my site? Prospects should have to click no more than two or three times to find the product/service they’re interested in. If it’s more, you need to simplify your site.

Beyond this, a rule of thumb to live by in pay per click marketing is to direct prospects to what you promised them in the ad.

For example, let’s say you owned an online clothing boutique. You carry apparel for every member of the family. If a surfer clicks on a “cheap children’s shoes” ad, then that’s the page they should land on, not a generic home page with your.

3. Keyword Research: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is mercurial; not static. When was the last time you evaluated your keyword choices. Are they still the best keywords for pay per click campaign? Do you need to add more local keywords to the mix to gain more of this traffic?

By paying attention to areas like these, you can significantly increase your pay per click results with little or no further investment. 

Many pay per click marketers see a definite dip in sales during the summer. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Kids are out of school so parents have more responsibility; there are family vacations and many spend much more time outdoors.

Recognize it for what it is – a seasonal cycle that is largely out of your control. But, that does not mean that you should not market. Marketing is all about consistency. And, there is a nifty little tool that can help you run your pay per click marketing campaigns more effectively – no matter what the season is.

Google Trends: The Seasonal Equalizer in Pay Per Click Marketing
What is Google Trends? Google Trends is “. . . a public web facility of Google Inc., about Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.” [Source: Wikipedia]

So how do you use it in your pay per click campaigns? By knowing what people are searching for on the web, you can use it to help you choose keywords better; tie your product or service into a popular event; and/or build entire campaigns around a newsworthy/popular time, place, person or event.

As we’ve said many times here on this blog, many internet marketers fail to increase their results because they “set it and forget it” when it comes to pay per click marketing.
Using tools like Google Trends can help you keep your campaigns fresh, popular, clickable and hence, profitable!

One of the reasons many online marketers get into the Pay Per Click (PPC) game is to “hit the ground running,” so to speak. But like any type of marketing, PPC takes some skill, some luck and lots of testing. All of this can take – well, time.

Following are three tips to get quick results from your Pay Per Click marketing campaigns.

Don’t Auto Match: Turn off Google’s auto matching feature. You see, this feature is really for those who are new to PPC marketing, and/or who are lazy – and that’s not you, right?

If you’ve done your homework with keyword research, you will have made this unnecessary. And, you’ll probably do a much better job of driving targeted, motivated buyers to your site. After all, you’re spending your money, not Google’s, so you have much more of a vested interested in getting it right.

Appeal to a Few, Not Many: “Huh, what?” you may be thinking. The key to pay per click success is not how many surfers click on your ad, but how many qualified, interested, motivated-to-buy prospects click on your ad. So, be as specific as possible. Use negative qualifiers to weed out tire kickers and appeal only to those who want what you have to offer – now!

Forget Being #1: This is another piece of pay per click marketing advice that may seem counterintuitive. However, research has proven that being number one isn’t necessarily the best spot to be in. Why? Because you get a lot of curiosity seekers who’ll click on ads in this spot.

An ad in the third, fourth or even the fifth spot can convert better.

The only sure way to achieve success in Pay Per Click is to be in the game and monitor, test and tweak; tweak test and monitor. Good luck!