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As every pay per click marketer knows, keywords and keyword phrases are the foundation of every successful campaign. In order to assist you with this, major search engines like Google and MSN (Bing) have three different kinds of what’s known as (phrase/keyword) matching.

The 3 Different Kinds of Matches in Online Search

Exact Match: This is the most limiting of the keyword/keyword phrases match type. With this type of match, your pay per click ad will only show up if a prospect types in an exact keyword phrase on your list.
Broad Match: In contrast to Exact Match, with this type of match, your PPC ad will show up even if the term is not on your keyword(s) list.

Search engines return keyword variations – these can be for example, singular and/or plural forms, synonyms and phrase variation.

Phrase Match: Phrase match is kind of a hybrid between Broad Match and Exact Match in that your pay per click ad will only be shown when a surfer queries your keyword phrase using these keywords in the exact order you enter them.

For example, if your keyword phrase is “womens running shoes”, your ad would show up if the user typed that in phrases like “Nike womens running shoes” or “discount womens running shoes”; but not, “womens athletic shoes” or “female running shoes”.

Now that you know the difference in the match phrases, you can accurately discern which one is more profitable for your pay per click campaign. 

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.

When most people think of pay per click marketing, they think of tiny little “word” ads that you click on. Video doesn’t usually enter the picture. However, “PPC video marketing,” so to speak, has been around for a couple of years.

In 2006, Google bought YouTube (for an astounding $1.65 billion, no less). This allows it to offer a very valuable service to internet marketers via an already established outlet – loyal “YouTubers” who like receiving content via video.

The Beginning of Video in Pay Per Click Advertising
It took Google about a year and a half to capitalize on their acquisition of YouTube. In February 2008, they started testing the use of video ads in their pay per click advertising model. Now, video ads appear as display ads on MySpace and other social media networks.

How Video Ads Appear in Pay Per Click Ads
Experts generally agree that it is very easy rich medium platform to master. Video ads show up as a single link under a normal pay per click ad.  This link is next to a plus-sign icon, indicating that there is a video (or more information to be found if the surfer clicks).

When a web surfer does click, a small window (about 160×140 in size) appears in which the video will show.  A timer shows how long the video is. Most are very short – less than 30 seconds. At the end of the video, a URL of the advertiser’s site appears.

Ready to Set Up Your Own Video Pay Per Click Marketing Campaign?
Learn more about how to set up and run a PPC video campaign (via Google). If pay per click marketing confuses you altogether, it’s a good idea to invest in some training (Pay Per Click Summit is coming up soon in Chicago on Nov. 4-5) to make sure you’re doing it right – from the beginning.

It’s October, which in some cases, means that you’re already late to the game if you haven’t put together a PPC holiday marketing plan.

The great thing about pay per click marketing though is that you can be up and running in minutes.

Following are three things you can do to ensure more profits this holiday season.

Holiday Keywords: Add holiday keywords to your PPC campaigns. This is a basic that many pay per click marketers forget – especially newbies. What are some of these: pre-Christmas sale; post-holiday sale; black Friday deals; holiday fragrances; holiday gifts for her/him; etc.

Bundle Products & Services: Last-minute shoppers tend to be stressed out because they’ve waited until — well, the last minute. The more you can pack into an offer, usually the easier the sale. This is why things like gift baskets tend to be great sellers. You ostensibly get “more for your money.” And, this is what every shopper wants – especially the procrastinators. Give it to’em!

Sell the Ease; Not Your Product: Many pay per click marketers are hyper-focused on selling their particular product or services. But again, especially around the holidays, shoppers are looking for more than this. What are they particularly looking for? Ease and convenience.

So sell the ease of online shopping – and live up to it. The easier you make it for prospects to order from you, the better. So do as much as you can to entice them, eg, offer free shipping, offer a generous return policy, offer a discount for ordering online, etc.

Note: Don’t offer services that are detrimental to your bottom line just to secure a sale; but make every effort to sell as much ease and convenience as you can.

By following these basic pay per click holiday marketing tips, you can help to ensure a profitable holiday season.

Last week at PPC Summit in Los Angeles, the Search Marketing expert trainers shared a wealth of Pay Per Click knowledge with the 100+ marketers attending the event. Keyword targeting is always a hot topic and the use of long tail keywords was one of the tips discussed.  

In our last post, Long-Tail Keywords In Pay Per Click Advertising Works, we covered the value of using long-tail keywords. Today, we want to continue this discussion, highlighting how to get more value out of the long-tail keywords your visitors may already be using to find you.

How to Get More Value Out of the Long-Tail Keywords Visitors Are Already Using to Find You
Many pay per click marketers don’t realize that a lot of their traffic may already be coming from some long-tail keywords. This presents a golden opportunity to get even more traffic and sales. How?

Quite simply, your web presence already has good search engine juice (ie, good organic rankings) for this term. However, it may not be ranked as high as it could be, since you have spent any time specifically optimizing it for that/those specific long-tail keywords.

Once you do this, you can exponentially build on traffic you are already getting. Following are two ways to do this.

Write More Content: Writing and distributing articles is one way to optimize a site quickly for popular long-tail keywords. This will give your site higher visibility quickly, especially if you distribute the content far and wide (eg, article directories).

Put Together More Offers: If a popular long-tail keyword is bringing you more traffic, look to see if you have any special deals, discounts, or other offers that can convert this traffic into sales. If not, put together one (some).

These are just two ways to make your pay per click campaign pay off with traffic you may already be receiving. 

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.