Pay-Per-Click Search Engines (PPCs) allow you to bid for specific keyword placement. They provide great opportunities for driving low-cost, supplemental traffic to your Web site.
PPCs are best investigated after you have a built a solid foundation of content based upon C >> T >> P >> M.
If you rely entirely on the PPCs for your traffic, you never really own your business. Once you stop paying, your visitors stop coming. On top of that, your relationship with your visitors is purely commercial so these skeptical visitors convert into customers at a much lower rate
How to make PPCs work?
Before you bid on anything, do your research first. To keep everything organized, create a BID-FOR-KEYWORD LIST. Label the first column “KEYWORD” (yes, the same KEYWORD as in your MASTER KEYWORD LIST. Now add 23 more columns to the right of KEYWORD.
Label the first two columns to the right of the KEYWORD column “Price I Should Bid” and Buys #”. Leave these two columns empty for now.
Ready for a test run? Use FindWhat to research each one of your HIGHPROFITABILITY keywords.
To the right of the column labeled “Buys #,” enter the number of sites that have bid at least a nickel for each keyword (ex., let’s say that you do a search for “fashion model” and you find that 15 sites bid at least one nickel for “fashion model” -- enter “15”).
Now, in the next 20 columns, enter the price for the “Top 20” search results spots (searchers are unlikely to scan any result past #20 so beyond #20 is a waste of time). Since your research shows that only 15 sites bid for “fashion model,” enter these bid prices in the first 15 columns. Leave the last 5 blank or enter 0.00.
Now, back to those first two columns to the right of your KEYWORD. Enter the best price you should bid in “Price I Should Bid.” And in the next column (“Buys #”), enter what spot in the search results that bid will yield.
Your best strategy is to bid a penny higher than the highest site that seems to reach your target visitor. If the descriptions for the first three sites are clearly aimed at someone who is not your target, why outbid them?
With a Pay Per Click Search Engine, you basically want as few clicks as possible. Actually, let me rephrase that... you basically want only targeted clicks... people who understand exactly what your page is about and who click for that reason.
Why? Because you pay for each click!
So, you don’t really want as few clicks as possible... you want as few off-target visitors as possible. Gear everything you do to maximizing on-target visitors for the least amount of money.
Bottom line strategies?...
1) Bid for on-target keywords, especially the less-obvious ones. They will be quite cheap to buy. Obvious and popular keywords have become too expensive. There’s no way I’m paying $5 for popular keywords -- not unless I’m selling a product that has a profit of $500 and I have a 10% Conversion Rate!
2) Write your Title and Description so that only your target market clicks (remember, each click costs you). A Pay Per Click searcher who reads your Title and Description should clearly understand what she'll get if she clicks. If it does not interest her, she’ll give you a pass. Which is exactly what you want when it comes to Pay Per Clicks. Why pay for a click by someone who hits the back button as soon as she arrives?
Write your Title and Description so that they... • relate to the keywords that you are bidding • are relevant to your site (you definitely do not want to trick anyone to your site) • compete effectively against other listings with similar subject matter • shout “Click Me! Click Me!” But only the right customers hear the shout!
Google’s AdWords Program
According to Danny Sullivan (of SearchEngineWatch.com), Google ranks AdWords by multiplying the cost-per-click of the ad with its click through percentage. Danny calls the resulting figure the “CVR,” or the ClickValue Rate. A quick illustration might be helpful at this point...
For example, site A bids 10 cents a keyword and has a 2% Click Through Rate... 10 cents per click X 2% Click Through Rate = 20 CVR
Site B bids 7 cents a keyword and has a 3% Click Through Rate... 7 cents per click X 3% Click Through Rate = 21 CVR
As a result, Site B’s ad will appear above Site A’s since it has a higher ClickValue Rate, even though they are bidding less money. This is Google's attempt to ensure that only the most relevant ads appear for various search terms. Google defines relevancy by CTR (Click Through Rate). Ads that get clicked on frequently are more likely to be relevant to that search term, and tend to rise to the top of the results list.
Ranking AdWords by a combination of bid amount and CTR means that Webmasters who run ads that generate only moderate interest will have to pay through the nose for a top spot. There’s not much point in paying big dollars to obtain greater exposure for an ad that does not generate interest.
For example, let’s assume that a competitor of Sites A and B above (Site C) bids 5 cents per click on an ad that only garners a 1% CTR... 5 cents per click X 1% CTR = 5 CVR In order to obtain the top position for this keyword, Site C has to up the bid -- not to 11 cents per click (as you might expect) but to 22 cents per click... 22 cents per click X 1% CTR = 22 CVR
Believe it or not, without increasing their click through percentage, bidding 22 cents for that keyword is the only way Site C can obtain a ClickValue Rate higher than either Site A or B. This, of course, works to further encourage Webmasters to address the bottom line... relevant ads and listings only.
Google will prevent your ad from showing up for certain keywords if it does not generate at least a 0.5% CTR. Again, this is another attempt by Google to improve ad relevancy. If your ad doesn’t generate this minimum rate, Google feels it can’t be relevant to that particular search term.
Your account is also monitored for activity to ensure the 0.5% minimum is met. When it is not, you’ll receive a warning to make changes, and to deactivate under-performing keywords. Receive three warnings, and your account is suspended (you can reactivate it by paying another $5 fee). In contrast, when you advertise on the PPCs, all keywords approved by the editorial staff remain active as long as your account is in good standing.
Google will not allow you to send visitors to any pages that contain a pop-up. Overture will allow this, as long as you pop-up a single window.
Bottom line? Despite the drawbacks, the AdWords program does have benefits over your average Pay-Per-Click SE. It does take a little a longer to get into the swing of things with AdWords, but once you do, the flexibility of the program and its ability to serve up ads to an extremely targeted audience are powerful positives indeed (not to mention Google’s huge search network)!
Submit to Major Directories When Financially Appropriate
Directories are a different beast from Search Engines. They do not spider pages. Instead, a human editor reviews each submitted site and decides whether that site “makes the cut.” Think of directories as gigantic bookmarks of qualified, quality sites, organized into categories and sub-categories.
A directory listing’s value is not the traffic it brings, but the quality of in-pointing links it provides.
The best directories are managed and maintained by human editors. Every site in a directory has met a certain minimum standard of quality. A Search Engine that finds your listing in Dmoz or Yahoo! can be pretty confident that your site belongs in its database. For a new site trying to establish itself and build some link popularity, securing a directory listing is a “must-do” strategy.
It generally costs cold, hard cash to submit to the major directories. But paying the fee does not guarantee that your site will be accepted. So use paid resources wisely, and only when you are sure your site is ready for “prime time.” While a listing in Yahoo! is quite expensive ($299 annually), the good news is that you can obtain a decent quality in-pointing link from most second tier directories for $15-$30.
Wait until you’ve built your site up to at least 15-20 pages before you submit to the directories.
Let’s take a look at the directories…
Zeal.com http://zeal.com/ Some of you may wish to hold off on the commercialization of your Web site. This will enable you to submit to the Zeal directory which is free but only open to non-commercial sites.
Why is Zeal important? It provides a back-door entrance to the LookSmart directory. It will provide a decent quality in-pointing link, as well as a smattering of traffic from LookSmart and its directory partners. However, you’ll have to become an editor yourself before you can submit your own site. This can take an hour or two, so be prepared.
The Open Directory (OPD) http://www.dmoz.org/ The Open Directory provides directory listings to many crawler-based Search Engines which use OPD to supplement their crawler-based results. There’s no charge for submitting your site, which makes this a “no-brainer.”
However, take your time researching the right category for your site, and do not resubmit, even if you are not listed after 6-8 weeks. The OPD is often backlogged, and notoriously slow for adding new sites. Resubmitting may make your site lose its place in the listing queue.
Paid Directories
Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/ Yahoo! is the grand-daddy of all directories. Got a commercial site? Want to list in the “Shopping and Services” or “Business to Business” areas of Yahoo!? You must use Yahoo!'s Business Express service. This service has a $299 annual recurring fee ($600 for adult sites).
Rather than paying a one-time fee for a static directory link, LookSmart charges a review fee plus a minimum cost-per-click of $0.15 for every listing it approves. (They offer two PPC models – a static model and a “bidded” model.)
Second Tier Directories.
In some ways, second tier directories offer greater value than the majors.
Submission costs, for example, are quite reasonable -- between $15 and $30 will get you in, usually within a couple of days. Even though these directories are not as highly trafficked, it will be easier for your visitors to find your site. Remember you’re not after traffic from these directories. You want the in-pointing link.
Here are some smaller directories that are worth considering...
You are automatically listed in the following directories when you submit to another one, as shown here... • AOL Search -- you are listed automatically in AOL’s directory when you submit to Open Directory. • MSN Search -- you are listed automatically in MSN’s directory when you submit to LookSmart. • Netscape Search -- you are listed automatically in Netscape’s directory when you submit to Open Directory. • Ask Jeeves -- you are automatically submitted to Ask Jeeves' directory when you submit to Open Directory. It also lists its own (Teoma-generated) results prominently.
Pay-Per-Click SEs are good tools to bolster or supplement the free traffic you are obtaining from your highly optimized Keyword-Focused Content Pages. PPCs can bring you guaranteed, targeted and cheap traffic. Investigate how you can best use them to promote your business after you have created a minimum of 15-20 content pages.
Directories, on the other hand, won’t drive a ton of traffic to your Web site. Sure, you’ll get some visitors. However, their true value comes through the provision of quality in-pointing links. As link popularity continues to grow in importance, so too does the importance of a couple of qualifying links. The best major directories and second tier directories offer just such links.
