Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

Not seeing the success from your Pay-Per-Click (otherwise known as PPC) campaign that you had hoped for? Well often times PPC campaigns are used as a band-aid or a short-term fix for the immediate lead shortage you might experiencing. That being said, a well-developed, properly invested PPC campaign can not only provide leads for your immediate needs, but can continue to be a valuable lead source for the future.  

So, what can you do to improve your campaign success?:

Develop a strategy. To continue seeing success from your PPC campaign you need to have a long-term strategy in mind. Short-term success is great, but that is going to dry up. Consider applying your other inbound marketing strategies to your PPC goals.

Review, test and adjust. To have real success in the future you need to be monitoring your campaigns to see what is working and what isn’t. You should also be testing out different keywords, ads and landing pages to see what works the best.

Don’t forget to link your Adwords account to your Google Analytics to have a full understanding of your traffic.

Add display ads to the mix. Text based PPC ads are not your only resource for advertising. AdWords actually has a Display Network where you can have graphic and animated banners advertisement. Do some testing and see if these types of ads result in a better click-through-rate.

Pay-Per-Click campaigns can be a valuable resource for leads for your business, but don’t forget other areas of marketing that could also bring you success online – email, social media, inbound marketing strategies, etc. And as always, when in doubt consult an online marketing expert. They can not only help you develop a strong PPC campaign, but can also help you develop an overall marketing strategy.

You may not be aware of it, but Google has always had rules for websites collecting personal and financial information; especially when it comes to pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns ran on their popular platform – Google AdWords. The reason you might not have been previously aware of these rules? Until recently, Google has not been strictly enforcing them!

However, that is quickly changing - Google has been enforcing their rules as they apply to PPC campaigns and Privacy Policies being present on advertisers’ websites. Some campaigns have even been flagged and prevented from spending, until a Privacy Policy is added to their websites.

Google states that a Privacy Policy must include:

•  What personal information is being collected in the form
•  How the information will be used by the company
•  If and how personal information will be transferred to 3rd party companies
•  Instructions on how users can modify or delete their personal information
•  How users can opt out of future communications

Don’t let your PPC campaign(s) suffer! Find out more about Google’s PPC rules and be sure to include a Privacy Policy on your website. If you already work with an Internet Marketing Consultant, they can help you develop terminology that is not only appropriate for your industry, but also ensures Google will not shut down your PPC campaign(s).

 

You probably are already running a PPC or pay-per-click campaign. You probably are getting a decent amount of traffic from your advertisements as well. So, why would I suggest you consider moving away from PPC and towards building your organic search traffic?

Well, let me start by saying that I think PPC traffic has benefits and you shouldn’t stop advertising this way completely. That being said, organic traffic has a different sort of value associated with the clicks. Let’s look at three highly valuable benefits of trying to increase your organic search traffic:

Increasing Organic Traffic or building a SEO Method makes you focus on content. When you start developing your organic search strategy you really get to focus on your website and what information you are putting out to the public.

Building a SEO strategy to increase organic traffic involves competitor analysis. By analyzing your competitors you get a better idea of what separates you apart from them, meaning you know what makes you better! Knowing the difference between you and your competition allows you to approach potential customers with ALL the information they need to make a decision.

Higher Quality Leads. According to eMarketer, only 25% of people will ever click on a Pay Per Click ad. That means that if you are heavily invested in PPC vs SEO, you may be missing 75% of your market online! Most companies will try to combat this by just investing more in PPC thinking that this will help them compete more effectively, and this does work somewhat, but the minute you turn off your PPC campaign your traffic stops. You are left with nothing but your previous leads/sales.

Also, according to Dan Zarella at Hubspot and the research they compiled recently, most people do not trust PPC ads. Organic search results are more trustworthy by a large margin. So not only are less people likely to click on your PPC ads, the leads you are going to get are not necessarily going to be the most qualified.

Now these are just a few of the many benefits associated with developing an organic search strategy. To be fair any traffic increase to your website can only be a boon, right?

Why not start increasing your organic search traffic by signing up for our free website scan? The scan will let you know where your website currently stands in search engines and how it stacks up to your competition.   

 

There are two voices in the online community in regards to incorporating misspelled keywords in your SEO and PPC strategies. One school of thought says, “why not pick up traffic from these popular keywords….that as a bonus usually come cheap?”. The other says that there are several great reasons NOT to try this keyword strategy. Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s of both opinions:

The “for-it” school -

Misspelled keywords get ranked and can get you traffic. Period. Users will sometimes be in a hurry and make mistakes when searching, and this doesn’t mean they aren’t going to click on the top web site that pops-up; especially if that site gets them information on what they were searching. The argument being, if a user types insurnce (meaning insurance) and you are an insurance company, they receive the information they were looking for and you get traffic - everyone wins.

Not only do these misspelled words rank and get traffic, but they are cheaper to bid on and have lower competition. What is the ideal scenario when focusing on keywords for SEO and PPC? Low competition and a high global monthly search; misspelled words usually fall into this scenario.

The “opposed” school -

You aren’t selling insurnce, you are selling insurance. Focus on your keywords and develop useful content that supports your website in searches. Google’s main focus is to match the user and valuable content websites, based on the users search queries. They already weed out (or negatively impact) websites for various reasons: spammy, no useful content, broken links, and so forth. Who is to say that Google won’t negatively target misspelling tactics in the future, to improve user experience? Do a Google search on insurnce, see that “Showing results for insurance” under the ads section? That is Google trying to tell you “hey you spelt insurance wrong!”.

Google will also go so far as to intuit what you were searching for in the first place and give you an auto populated list of 5 topics (dropdown list) related to your initial few letters you are typing in. This relatively new feature in Google never ceases to amaze me! I swear Google can read my mind 95% of the time and rarely do I personally ever get to the point where I misspell something because of this feature.

Another reason not to subscribe to the misspelling strategy? User confidence.  Think of when you are talking to a customer and you stumble over you words, embarrassing right? Purposely misspelling keywords is a lot like that. Not only are users not looking for insurnce (insurance), but Google is already doing everything they can to give users the highest quality content, it is only a matter of time before misspellings are weeded out.

What should you do?

So, you might be asking yourself “where do you fall on this misspelling thing?”. I suggest you focus on your content and SEO strategy - develop useful and highly valuable content that includes your targeted keywords and you have already won part of the battle for website traffic. Paid Search is a much better place to test out misspellings and see what results you can generate. You may want to test out some landing pages with some misspelled words to improve your paid search quality score, but that might not be necessary as misspelled words typically already come cheap enough.

An Internet Marketing Consultant, such as WSI, can not only help you identify other high-value keywords (that you might not be already focusing on),  but can help you develop a multi-dimensional Internet Marketing campaign that gets results. Think about that option before you start purposely misspelling words.

Display advertisements can be found on most web pages, especially free email providers. These ads pull double duty as pay-per-click ads, but they also raise consumer awareness of the brand being advertised. You get the benefit of the consumer seeing your brand message even if they don't click through.

In internet marketing a lot of emphasis is put on pay-per-click campaigns. These campaigns allow you to target keywords relating to your product or service and bid on those keywords and be found on the search results pages. The higher the bid the better your placement will be on the search engine results page and the more likely your ad will be clicked on by a potential consumer.
 
This type of campaign can be a great source of targeted traffic, but it doesn't do a lot for your long term brand recognition, nor does it tend to drive inexpensive traffic. PPC costs are rising each month and a good way to get more traffic is through the Content Networks. All those banner ads and text ads you see on major sites like ESPN, Facebook, HGTV, Blogs, and most of your major sites online now allow display advertising Brand marketing and brand awareness come from repeated exposure to your brand that doesn't necessarily result in a sale. You're continually reminding your audience what you have to offer so that when they are ready to buy they think of you.

The major difference between traditional pay per click advertising and display advertising is how you target your audience. PPC allows you to really narrow down who sees your ad and you can feel fairly confident that a visitor who clicks on your ad is looking to make a purchase. Display advertising is an ad that appears in a paid space on someone else’s site. Impression costs vary depending on the site, size of the ad, quality of the landing page, and a few other factors.

These ads have traditionally been less targeted than search engine ads but that has recently begun to change. Through the use of “cookies” in your browser display ads are now starting to appear with direct correlation to searches you've been conducting. Also, sites are using “Re-Marketing” cookies to display targeted ads to prospects after they have been to a specific site. Re-Marketing allows business to brand their company really effectively and keep in front of the target.

This new technology has totally changed the value of display ads as well as their success. You can now improve brand recognition and improve your reach to targeted leads all with display advertising.

Keyword Selection - 4 Options For PPC Keyword Matching

When determining what keywords you are going to target in your pay-per-click campaign you are taking the most important step towards PPC success. Start your keyword research keyword through the Google Keyword Tool after brainstorming 50 or so variations of who/what/where/why of what you are trying to accomplish with your traffic. Once you have your pay per click keywords, there are four options for keyword matching that you need to consider.

1. Broad Match - This matching system will take your keywords and break it down for additional matches. For example, if your keywords are “wooden high chair”, in a broad match format your PPC ad would appear if the user searched: wooden, high chair, wooden chair and even high chair accessories. Because your keyword phrase is being broken up there is a chance that your ad will show up in a less than ideal search situation.

2. Phrase Match - By simply putting your keywords into quotation marks you are using phrase match. This means that everything inside the quotation marks must appear in the search field. For phrase match your searches may include: “wooden high chair”, “wooden high chair cushion”, “wooden high chair restoration” and “used wooden high chair.”

3. Exact Match - Placing your keywords into brackets makes them exact match. This system requires an exact match for your keywords. If a keyword is missing you will not show up in the search results. This will result in significantly fewer clicks however the clicks can be far more valuable. Not only are the leads higher quality but the ad will cost you less because you'll receive fewer clicks but the ones you do get will be well worth it.

4. Negative Match - There are search phrases that you do not want your ad to show up as a result for. An example would be “broken wooden high chair”. Other words that you would want to avoid may be cheap and used. In order to list negative keywords you will need to put a dash in front of the word you do not want to be associated with such as -broken.

Once your keywords are all set up it is important to monitor them consistently. Pay attention to what bids are successful and how your website visitation and conversions are being affected. Keep in mind that the more specific your keywords are the fewer matches you'll get, but the more likely you are to obtain a customer that will make a purchase with you. PPC requires some trial and error but consistent monitoring will strengthen your campaign and help you find a formula that works for you.

Flat-Rate - When a PPC ad is done flat-rate, this means that the advertiser and the search engine's publisher have come to an agreement on the flat rate that will be paid whenever the advertiser's ad is clicked on. This is most commonly used by a website with a very narrow focus of interest in their website.

The publisher can look at the traffic surrounding keywords and content and determine the value of the visitors that will be obtained through the PPC ad. This is how they decide on price.

In most cases bid-based campaigns are better for businesses. This allows them to measure the competition, find niches and adjust as necessary. The downside of a PPC campaign is that it typically requires a lot of maintenance. If you cannot devote enough time to managing the campaign it is important to hire someone who is skilled in running PPC campaigns to manage it for you.

Pay-Per-Click advertising is offered by search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When keywords are searched for within the search engine there most likely be paid results along the right hand side as well as two or three at the top of the results page.


There are two different ways to get your website listed among those search results. Google is now offering and testing a few other methods, but most companies are focusing on the following two:

1) Bid - PPC bidding is the most common way to have your ad appear in search results for a specific keyword. Google, Yahoo and Bing are hosted by individual publishers. They each use a platform where you name your bid price. This will be the cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay. In any auction style setting the highest bidders win and their ads will be displayed at the top of the search results page. This type of campaign has to be monitored daily to keep up with competitor bids. A CPC can range from 10 cents to $30. The average cost is 50 cents.

People who have conducted a search for your keywords and then clicked on your ad are often times pre-qualified traffic and the likelihood that they will turn into customers is higher (as long as your are targeting the right keywords, when in doubt, think longer tail keywords, be more specific).

2) Flat-Rate - When a PPC ad is done at a flat-rate, this means that the advertiser and the search engine's publisher have come to an agreement on the flat rate that will be paid whenever the advertiser's ad is clicked on. This is most commonly used by a website with a very narrow focus of interest on their website.

The publisher can look at the traffic surrounding keywords and content and determine the value of the visitors that will be obtained through the PPC ad. This is how they decide on price.

In most cases bid-based campaigns are better for businesses. This allows them to measure the competition, find niches, and adjust as necessary. The downside of a PPC campaign is that it needs a lot of maintenance. If you cannot devote enough time to managing the campaign it is important to hire someone who is skilled in PPC advertising to manage it for you.

When conducting a search with a search engine, it will bring you both paid and organic results. Paid results are obtained through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns and the organic results come through search engine optimization (SEO).

Research has shown us that savvy consumers put more value on the top results listed among the organic search results. However if your site is showing up around the 7th result then a well placed PPC ad will be more successful. Either way, pairing PPC and SEO will give you the best opportunity for success.

There are 6 important ways to make sure your PPC campaign works well.

1. Have a Plan - Outlining your objectives and expectations for your PPC campaign before it starts is a must. Your PPC campaign should also tie in with the branding and marketing efforts for your company and other advertising efforts.

2. Choose Keywords - Keyword selection is imperative for a successful PPC campaign. Keywords should not necessarily be chosen by what words relate to your service but rather by what consumers would be searching for if they were in need of your services and products. Think like your potential customer and you will find your keywords.

3. Limit Copy - PPC ads are small. There is very little space to capture the searcher. Give them your name and why they need you in clean and precise copy.

4. Welcome Visitors - Adjust your website and landing pages to be user friendly. You do not want to greet someone searching for your product or service with a slow loading overly busy website that is overwhelming to look at. Clean up your site and make it user friendly before you start paying to have people click through to see it.

5. Emphasis On User-Friendly - Simplify the process for your users. No one likes online shopping on a confusing site that is difficult to navigate. Prepare for your online visitors and tailor their experience to be effortless and enjoyable.

6. Watch & Analyze Your Campaign - If you are using the bid system for your PPC campaign then you need to analyze and monitor your keywords and ads constantly. Watch what is working and what seems to need some work. Understand what words seem more successful and try to determine how you can alter your campaign for the best success.

A PPC campaign is a lot of work but putting in the time is sure to bring a big reward.

 Pay Per Click advertising is one of the strongest forms of advertising today. You pay to have your PPC ad appear when someone conducts a search using your keywords. Your ad is shown in the paid search results and you only pay if your ad is clicked on.

PPC becomes even stronger when you also optimize your website (SEO) to appear among the top results for organic searches (unpaid). But what happens after the lead clicks on your ad? Where are they delivered? Your home page or contact us page of your site?

Sometimes leads are lost after clicking through. This means that the landing page you are directing them to isn't doing its job to turn this lead into a customer. Here are 5 steps to make sure your landing page is working to turn website traffic into revenue.

1. Attention Grabbing Headline - Your headline is the first thing the visitor will see when landing on your page. This makes it the perfect place to tell them what your business has to offer them. Consider what key words they were searching and hook them.

2. Give Them A Deal - This is your bait. Give the visitor an incentive to give you a try. Free shipping, a discount on their purchase, a free consultation or any other offer is effective for capturing your customer.

3. Photos That Sell - Use valuable photos on your landing page. Ideally they should really speak to your customer and show them what it is that makes your product special. Another important fact: photo captions are read almost as much as headlines.

4. Intro Copy - Getting a visitor to your copy is a great success. Now don't bore them. Get them enticed enough to read further. Give them your best most interesting and compelling information right up front. Landing page copy should be short and to the point.

5. Present The Complete Package - The best way to lose a customer is to send them to an unprofessional, malfunctioning landing page. You need to put your page together in a way that instills confidence in the visitor. Professional logos and clean copy and layout are a must.

Follow these steps are you are on your way to PPC success. The ROI for a PPC campaign is very measurable. Watching the number of clicks you are getting combined with the number of converted customers will clearly tell you if your landing page is working.

Understanding SEO vs PPC 

Search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) have become household phrases to most marketers and businesses. Many of us know they are important to the overall success of your online presence and we've heard that they often work very well together but very few people really know the difference between the two.

While both SEO and PPC affect how your website ranks on popular search engines, they both accomplish this in very different ways. This is very important because 90% of people who do an online search only use the first page of results to determine what company to use or product to buy and on average about 80% never click on a PPC ad. This does not mean PPC is not important, but you need to know the averages to understand what you are dealing with.

Search Engine Optimization:

Implementing a solid SEO strategy is going to be the foundation of your online marketing efforts. The techniques you use should have lasting benefits that will increase the success of your site in the long term. As long as you are implementing ethical “white hat” or borderline “grey hat” SEO techniques, you should be able to grow the organic exposure and drive new traffic to your site with 7-30 days. Most companies are implementing a combination of white and grey which in my book is completely acceptable.

Obviously the goal of SEO is to get free traffic. While the idea that this traffic is “free” is not usually the case because you either have to hire a marketing company to implement/execute the SEO strategy or you are doing this work yourself. And as a business owner, your time is never free. To get this traffic, you typically research some core keyword phrases that work well for your industry, and expand on those to incorporate some long tail keywords. Creating an overall keyword theme for your site will certainly help expedite the results. Integrate these into your content (Title Tag, Meta Description, H1, Content, Internal Linking). This is the basic idea, but there is a lot more to it that we cannot possibly cover in this article.

Now you need credibility, link juice, Google love, PageRank…whatever you want to call it, or all of the above. The way that you accomplish this within an SEO strategy is by increasing the number and quality of links back to your site. Google is in the business of making money and they do that by providing the best search experience to their customers (you and me). In a nutshell, their goal is to provide the most relevant web site matched to a specific search phrase and provide the user with several options to choose from.

However, for any given search, there could literally be millions of sites that mention that search phrase somewhere on the site. Google also uses a bunch of other criteria to arrive at a site they believe is the most relevant and so on down the line. Typically, a site that is well optimized for the search phrase, and has a lot of quality contextual links (link on someone else’s site + search phrase in the link pointing back to target site). The links preferably should be contextual, but this isn’t a requirement either. It really depends on how many sites are targeting the exact same keyword phrase and how aggressive they are targeting it for you to rank on page 1.

Geo-Modifiers will be used to narrow the results if someone is looking for a local business, and Google will do that by looking at the IP address where the search is being done and comparing it to the locations of the websites that match. Typically just adding a location to your search

As mentioned previously, 80% of searchers will only click on the organic results so it becomes very important for every company to have some exposure here. But just relying on SEO or Pay Per Click to get traffic is a fools game. SEO can take months to see results, while PPC you can potentially start getting traffic over night. And with SEO strategy, your PPC Quality Score (every search engine has a system for rewarding sites that are well planned out and that align with the search phrase) will most likely suffer causing you to spend more per click then is necessary. Make sure you have some SEO work done to your site even if your entire online strategy revolves around PPC.

The biggest downside to SEO is that you have no control over whether or not your site will ever show up in the search results, and for some phrases it can literally take years to get on Page 1. SEO requires a consistent time investment and has become so complex that it is difficult for most companies to implement a strategy that generates results without hiring a full time employee or two, or outsourcing to a reputable marketing firm.

Pay Per Click 

Pay Per Click is essentially a way to pay for “air time” for your site on Google, Yahoo, Bing. PPC ads are the ones displayed typically at the top and sides of a search engine result page, also known as sponsored links. A PPC campaign is composed of a group of keywords and phrases that you are trying to target along with your ad copy. Each keyword you can select a bid amount for and depending on the keyword phrase you covet to show up on Page 1 for, your bids will vary considerably. You set a daily ad budget and your ads will start appearing and you will get charged each time someone clicks on your ad.

Basically you pay to show up at the center or right hand side of the search results page with the other paid results. This is very effective because a well thought out PPC campaign can ensure that you are being seen every time a certain word is searched (depending on the budget) and allows your site to start getting traffic overnight vs monts later with SEO. Ultimately your PPC listing is a mini-advertisement even if it isn't clicked on, it gets your name and product in front of your target consumer.

The downside of PPC is that when you stop paying to be seen at the top of the paid search list then you are instantly removed. You would have to pay forever to ensure you would always be visible on the major search engines. PPC is also getting very competitive in just about every industry. This is driving up the cost per click (CPC) and the cost per acquisition obtained through these campaigns. Also, Google is getting extremely picky about what types of companies can advertise through their PPC program (AdWords) and the rules they have are several pages long. PPC also requires constant monitoring on a daily basis to optimize the campaign to ensure that you are getting the most from your advertising dollars. 

Using both SEO and PPC together typically provides the strongest method of increasing your visibility within the search engines.