What To Expect From This Guide This guide will help you learn more about PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, and will give you some tips and tricks on fully optimizing your PPC experience. Please keep in mind that this guide will help guide you in what to do, and what direction to go in. This guide will not provide you with all you need to start a successful PPC campaign. Understand that in order to run a very successful campaign, you need money. While you can always find free coupons floating around for $50 in AdWords here, or $200 for AdCenter there (which I will talk about a little later), those are very useful for testing what will work for you. Once you find what words, you have to invest your money into running further campaigns. Reading this guide will help you understand what PPC is, how to use it, and what things you should do to save money, but it won't tell you that PPC advertising is a cheap way to get traffic; it's not. What is PPC Advertising? PPC means Pay Per Click, and like many things, it is what it sounds like. You have ads posted up in different search engines, and on different sites, and every time a visitor to that site clicks on your ad, you pay for it. What do PPC ads look like? Well if you've ever gone to a website (which all of you have), you will had to have seen a PPC ad somewhere. The most popular form of PPC ads come from Google, and are called AdWords. Here's a picture for further clarification : Now you know that you've seen them somewhere. You may even have them on your own site via AdSense, where you place AdWords ads on your site, and every time a visitor clicks them, Google pays you. Back to PPC. Now there's a couple great things about PPC : 1) You only pay if a user clicks your ad, you don't pay per impression or anything. So you're going to be paying for guaranteed traffic. 2) Pick what keywords for searches or sites that you want your ads to show up on, this creates targeted traffic. Through good keyword selection, you'll have a higher chance of converting clicks to sales, members, or whatever you want, because the traffic coming to your site will already be interested in the field of your site. The only real bad thing about PPC is that it can get expensive if you want to run a serious campaign. You can always find coupons for free testing, but to run a long-term campaign, you'll need some money in your pocket. Next we'll talk about the different PPC companies out there, and how you should choose what one to use. PPC From Large Search Engines The three largest search engines -Google, Yahoo!, and MSN- all have PPC programs, they are called : -Google AdWords -Yahoo! Publisher Network -Microsoft adCenter Now with each of these PPC programs, you will select what keywords you want that relate to your site, and place a bid on each of those words. The bid is how much money you're willing to pay per every click. The lower you set your bid, the lower your spot will be in the search results. If you bid more on keywords, you're going to pay more, but your result will be closer to the top, and will get clicked more. Here's an important tip to remember : bidding for the #2 or #3 spot can be a smarter move than bidding for the #1 spot for a keyword. You may want a #1 spot on really important keywords, but for many, the #2 or 3 spot can work almost as well, and will save you money. Keeping with this topic, you want to bid a different price for each keyword. Many webmasters set a default bid for all of their keywords, and then end up wasting money for #1 spots that they don't need. So for more important keywords, you can set a higher bid, but aim for #2 or 3 spots for the less important keywords. Next we'll talk about publisher programs, and who has them, and who doesn't. First, what is a publisher program? In our case, it's a PPC client who publishes their ads on other relevant sites, not just search engines. So when you bid on a keyword, your ad will not only show up in the search results, but it will show up in the sites from those search results that use the same client you use (AdWords will show up on sites with AdSense). We'll take a quick look at what these ads look like if you didn't know : Out of the big guns, the two companies that use publisher programs are Google and Yahoo. When you sign up for AdWords or YPN, your ads will appear in targeted searches, as well as targeted websites. Microsoft's adCenter currently doesn't have a publisher program, so your ads will only show up in MSN searches and on Microsoft sites. The other smaller PPC programs I mentioned, like Bidvertiser, Adbrite, and Looksmart, are only publisher programs. They don't have search engines where your ads will appear, but they will appear on relevant websites. From this, we can see the obvious advantage that publisher programs offer : more opportunities for clicks to your site. Next, I'll tackle one of the most commonly asked questions regarding PPC. What Program Do I Choose??!! There's a lot of PPC programs out there to choose from, and a few things to look at in deciding what program you are going to use. Hopefully after reading this next segment, you'll be able to narrow your choices down. I can't tell you exactly what you want to use, because what I use may not for example be in your budget. PPC really in the end comes down to money. If you have an unlimited budget, you can bid for the #1 keywords on Google for every keyword on the planet, and show up under every search result. I don't think anybody reading this will have that kind of budget though, so you have to do a bit of looking around to find what fits your budget best. Again, I'll start with the three big boys on the block, and I'll list them in order of popularity and cost (highest first) : -Google AdWords -Yahoo! Publisher Network -Microsoft adCenter The first obvious pros to AdWords and YPN are that they are both have publisher programs, where MSN does not. On the other hand, they will be more expensive than MSN. I would advise that unless you're on a really small budget, go for AdWords or YPN. Now the next question comes up, Google or Yahoo? This is a somewhat tough question to answer. Google is the most popular program used out there, but of course it will cost you more then. Yahoo is still very popular, and you can save money with it, but I'll explain one of the problems when it comes to Yahoo. YPN's biggest problem is their relevancy. The best way to explain this would be with an example. Now say that someone makes a thread about hunting in the General Chat section of the Profit Geek forums. The forums in itself are about webmastering, but there is a forum where you can talk about anything. So a user decides to make a thread about hunting, and there's a hunting discussion going on there. Now we take Bob, who is browsing the internet for some hunting advice. He searches for "big game hunting" or something, and in the results he finds a link to a thread started in Profit Geek about hunting. He clicks on the link and checks out the thread. Now say Profit Geek was running YPN ads in the forums. A category would be picked on what type of ads were to be placed there, and then ads dealing in that category would show up everywhere on the site, including the off topic forums. So Bob is browsing the hunting thread, and in that thread will be webmastering ads. There's a good chance that Bob is not a webmaster, so he won't have any interest in clicking those ads. Google on the other hand displays relevant ads on sites, sites that have the matching keywords on that page. So if Profit Geek is running with Google ads, and Bob goes to the hunting thread, he'll find hunting ads which he'll be more likely to click. That in mind, if you can afford it, Google would be a better choice over Yahoo if you want more clicks. What it comes down to again, is your budget. Google is more popular, and more people will be bidding on the same keywords as you. For example (not exact figures, just representations), if you're bidding for the #1 spot for the word "webmaster", you may be paying $5 per click from Google, $3 per click from Yahoo, and maybe $1 per click from Microsoft. One of the advantages that Yahoo and Microsoft have over Google is that they're both still in beta stages, so you'll get some extra perks from that like better customer service. YPN and adCenter are beta, so support is always there to help you fast with problems you have. Google is so huge, that sometimes a response won't come right away. Next I'll talk briefly about the smaller PPC programs out there like Bidvertiser and Adbrite. There are even more small PPC programs out there, but I'm not going to go into too much detail about them. Programs like these are strictly publisher programs, and your ads will only be displayed on relevant websites that match your keywords. The major advantage to this is once again the money. You are going to be paying a lot less for higher keywords than you would be for any of the "big guns". The disadvantage is that these programs aren't even as close to as popular as Google, so your ads will be up on a fewer number of sites. I Chose a Program, Now What? After you've chosen a program, it's time to first create an ad, and then start bidding on keywords. I'll talk again about keywords, but we've already covered most of it. Remember that you don't always have to shoot for the #1 spot, and remember to bid a different price on each keyword. Now for actually picking keywords, the more relevant keywords, the better. Most PPC program will have a "Keyword Suggestion" tool or something like that, where you can type in an example keyword (like "webmastering"), and they will give you a bunch of similar keywords, and the popularity of those keywords. Keep in mind also that you don't want to choose any vague keywords, you want the most precise and targeted keywords you can find, because you'll get more clicks from them that will turn into conversions. So choose a lot of keywords, but make sure they're really targeted and not vague. Now you know how to choose keywords and what to bid on them, so we'll talk about the actual ads. Next I'll talk a little about choosing what text to put in your ads. We'll start with the title. Your title has to be short, descriptive, and catchy. You have to make the viewer either : 1) Click the ad just upon reading the title, or more commonly 2) Make the viewer want to read more (the description) You should include a keyword in your title, with some descriptive text, or your slogan. Some example titles used for Profit Geek may be : Profit Geek - Make more Money One-stop Webmaster Source Profit Geek - Win $1000 (contest we are running in the forums) In the description, you want to say what you have to offer that will pull in the viewer. Describe any specials you have, or what makes your site better than the rest. Some more examples for Profit Geek would be : Webmastering site including a blog, forums, podcasts, directory, and more! Webmaster supersite giving away a $1000 cash prize, anybody is eligible! A very important tip going along with this is to mix your texts up according to the keywords you bid on. I know it's time consuming, but you'll get better conversion with more targeted descriptions. For example, if you're bidding on the keyword SEO, you might want your add to look like : Profit Geek SEO Advice Profit Geek offers the best advice on SEO all for free in their SEO blog, check it out! www.ProfitGeek.com If you were bidding on the keyword "webmaster advice", you could have something like : Best Webmaster Supersite Profit Geek is the one-stop webmaster supersite where you can get free webmaster advice! www.ProfitGeek.com I know it takes time, but in the end it will help you get more clicks that will convert. Next I'll reveal a trick used in PPC that I call the "arrow trick." What the arrow trick is, is you create an arrow in your ad of the targeted keyword. When users search that keyword, if you use that exact keyword in you ad, it will be bolded. It's kind of hard to explain, so I'll show you an example. This is one of the ads that comes up in Google when you type "shoemoney" : This has been said to make the ad more "attractive" to users, and they'll notice your ad more and what it's about. Test, Test, Test! One of the great things about PPC is that you can always find some sort of coupon to get free ads. You can either get emails from the companies, or somebody will always post in a forum when there's a deal going on. I've taken the liberty to find the current deals going on for PPC, so you can get some free money and start testing! Microsoft adCenter $200 coupon Click here. Google AdWords $50 coupon Click here. LookSmart $300 coupon Click here and use the promo code SESCHQ4. Ask $50 coupon Click here and use the promo code SESCHI06. That gives you $600 to play around with, and test! See what spots give you more clicks and conversion, play around with keywords, play around with everything and see what works. Going a bit off topic, I want to come back to a point I made about choosing the #2 and 3 spot over the #1. If you can afford to always go for the #1 spot, go for it. It's been scientifically proven that the #1 ad is viewed the most, and the number drop dramatically as you go down the spots. You can read more about it here. But if you are on a more limited budget, it's smart to not always bid for the top spot, as people still do look at the #2 and 3 spots. It Only Starts Here In this article, I provided a pretty solid base on what PPC is, how to pick, what to pick, and how to set up your ads. Please notice that this is only the start to your journey in PPC. There is so much more to be said about PPC than I have mentioned in this article, and reading more will help you greatly. There are many more techniques and tricks that can be applied to PPC, this article was only meant to give you a solid start. A great place to learn more about PPC is at the Google AdSense Learning Center. There are movies covering multiple topics regarding PPC, and you will learn a lot from them. I hope you've enjoyed this article, and if you have any questions, feel free to PM me at the forums (user SUP3RNOVA). Make sure to follow the blog for the latest news and articles. Knowledge is power, Paul
if you've learned anything about search engines though, you should know that duplicate content is bad....you are better off just leaving a link to send some traffic to his site rather than posting it here. I just fail to see a legit reason to post such an extensive article here...heh
Nice post, keep them coming! What I'm wondering is if someone is using a lot of 2-tier and 3-tier PPC advertising, like 7Search and Searchfeed. Anyone have good experiences with these? I've setup my account at Searchfeed after I read some good stuff about it. Unfortunately, I don't get any clicks at all! My budget hasn't changed in 2 days, something must be wrong. My account is activated (you have to call the support when you used your credit card, weird....) My experience with adCenter so far is very good, I used the $200 coupon to experiment and I get good traffic. The best conversion comes from adcenter! Not from Adwords! Well, I also pay a lot more at adcenter, gotta spend the $200
I don't know...I've just kind of stuck with the fact that the bigger ones are usually better, like Google and Yahoo. I used the adCenter one just cause it was free .