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

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. 

Many pay per click marketing consultants speak of keywords as a monolithic group. They’re not. Here, we discuss two types and why you should know about them: branded and non-branded keywords.

What are Branded Keywords? Branded keywords are those keywords associated with a particular brand, eg, Nike, Gatorade.

What You Should Know about Branded Keywords to Improve Your Pay Per Click Results

While branded keywords are most often used towards the latter part of the buying cycle, how and when you use them will depend heavily on your business model.

These are usually the highest converting keywords – and have the highest value.

Note: Don’t use branded keywords just for the sake of pulling in traffic. You could be wasting money if they don’t convert. So, make sure that it fits within your marketing model.

What are Non-Branded Keywords? Quite simply, these are keywords not associated with a brand. They are industry-specific. For example, if your company produced a well-known electric car, say the GreenMobile I, then some non-branded keywords for that would be “electric car” or “energy efficient car.”

What You Should Know about Non-Branded Keywords Increase Your PPC ROI

Non-branded keywords are an excellent way to bring in “inquiring minds,” or potentially first-time customers. They allow you to build your brand. This is because if someone doesn’t know your brand specifically, by using non-branded keywords, they can find you via terms that relate to your industry.
If you’re not using non-branded keywords, you’re missing out on a lot of traffic.

Non-branding Keyword Research Tip: To find the best ones, research the language that your target audience uses when conducting searches. Knowing this will allow you to choose high-traffic, high-converting keywords.

The bottom line: Branded and non-branded keywords are important to your pay per click marketing efforts. Knowing when to use which can significantly increase your PPC results.

When most internet marketers think of pay per click marketing, they think of quick sales. And, while this form of search engine marketing is good for that, there’s another – just as good – reason to use it. What are we referring to? Branding.

Using PPC Marketing to Brand Your Business
In good economic times and bad, businesses need to brand their business. To digress for just a second, one of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is to stop advertising when times are tough or when they have too much business. Pay per click campaigns should be an ongoing marketing strategy.

Following are two reasons it’s a good idea to use PPC to brand your business:
(i) It draws motivated consumers: If you’ve done your homework and conducted the right keyword research, your search marketing campaigns will bring consumers who are highly motivated to buy. These are not tire kickers; they are ready for a solution to their problem (eg, to buy your product/service) if it fulfills the promise in the ad.

 (ii) It builds consumer awareness: Getting and staying in front of consumers is key to building brand awareness. Remember, pay per click marketing – by its nature if done correctly – draws highly focused consumers. They have a particular problem/need and are looking for a particular solution/product.

Staying top of mind with these types of customers is perhaps the number one reason to brand your business using pay per click marketing.

Running a Pay Per Click campaign can help your organic search results. Many are surprised by this because internet marketing is usually divided into two camps – paid or non-paid results.

What are Organic Results?

If you’re new to internet marketing, the phrase “organic results” may elude you. Organic search results are simply non-paid results that pop up when you conduct a web search.

What are Paid Search Results?

Paid results are those across the top and to the right. They usually appear under a heading like “Sponsored Links,” or in a shaded box at the top. Advertisers have paid to be put in these positions.

Both are highly effective forms of internet marketing, but knowing which method to focus on, when, and how to combine them to produce the best results can be confusing – not to mention expensive – if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Pay Per Click and Organic Search: The Perfect Internet Marketing Strategy
The short answer to why the two strategies work so well together is time and links.

To explain, pay per click campaigns can start to deliver traffic to your site immediately. If you have done your job on the content end, then those visitors who find you via a pay per click ad will then start to link to relevant content on your site. The more one-way links your site has, the higher it moves up in organic search results.

Organic campaigns like article marketing can take weeks or months to show measureable results. By getting that initial influx of traffic via pay per click marketing, you jumpstart your online marketing campaign.