What
are pay per click search engines?
Pay per click search engines (also called pay-for-performance,
paid listings among other names) are engines which allow
site owners to determine their sites ranking in that particular
search engines results by bidding on keywords. Usually the
first 3-5 search results are used by a network of partner
search sites. The result for the site owner or webmaster
is a lot more highly targeted traffic and a lot more sales.
So the underlying idea to pay per click search engines is
that you find keywords related to your website and then
you bid (how much you are willing to pay for each visitor
that visits your site through the search results) and buy
high positions on your chosen engine. The more times a word
or phrase has been searched for the higher you will have
to bid to get high rankings. The only limitation is that
your site must be at least vaguely relevant to the keyword
you want to bid on. These engines allow you to skip all
the search engine optimization stuff and simply pay for
visitors.
Pay per click search engines have a number of benefits to
any webmaster.
Only pay for visitors, unlike banner advertising where you
have to pay each time someone sees your ad, on pay-per-click
engines you only have to pay when someone clicks on your
listing. So you are getting guaranteed visits.
Pay-per-click engines provide highly targeted cheap visitors.
Often you can buy a good ranking on a decent keyword for
as little as 1 cent or 2 cents per click. Overture has of
late installed $.05 as the minimum bid however. Popular
search terms can cost much more on the big pay per click
search engines most notable overture.com and findwhat.com.
Even still PPC engines are one of the most cost effective
way of driving targeted people to your site.
Hopefully you will agree now that using pay-per-click engines
is a great way to increase traffic and profit. OK lets talk
about how to use overture.com, findwhat.com and other PPC's
to make to most of your money.
Relevant terms are the ones that will bring you the highest
quality traffic. Basically this means only bid on terms
that are directly related to your site. For example if AKAMARKETING.COM
decides to use overture or any of the other PPC search engines
in the future, it would be bidding for terms such as "Internet
marketing articles" and "website promotion articles"
because they are the main focus of the site. Imagine if
you bid for terms that were not really directly related
to your website, the people that come from these terms are
not likely to buy or sign up, but you still have to pay
for them, it's like giving the PPC's free money so ALWAYS
STAY RELEVANT.
Bid on as many low-cost relevant terms as you can. The cost
of a top position with overture or any of the other big
PPC's depends upon the keyword you are bidding on and how
many people search for it. If you have to bid on a popular
word such as 'Internet marketing' be prepared to pay around
$2 - $4 for a decent position. But what if you went for
"Internet marketing articles" it costs less than
a quarter of the price, it will produce far less visits
of course, but is much more cost effective. Imagine doing
this on a wide scale basis, securing lots of low-cost positions,
the combined traffic from these positions will add up to
the level produced by a popular keyword - but at a fraction
of the cost.
It used to be a good idea to bid on all relevant terms (if
you could), however some of the big PPC's now require a
$.05 minimum bid. This means some terms will not be worth
it, terms that are worth it will contain several words and
are highly targeted, meaning that the searcher who clicks
through is really interested in your page and more likely
to buy/sign up.
Most pay-per-click search engines allow you to link directly
to the relevant page of your site. This means that you are
giving the searcher exactly what he or she is looking for.
This way you are more likely to make a sale as the visitor
is in the right mind-frame to buy and will not get lost
or give up before finding the page that he or she is looking
for.
If you have read the articles on search engine optimization
you will have learnt that it is more likely visitors will
click through if their search term is in the title and description
of your listing this is because it appears to be exactly
what they were searching for. So always try to include the
exact search term in your title or description. Furthermore
make your title and description as descriptive as possible.
This has a few benefits.
Searchers are much more likely to click on a link if they
know where it's going.
It saves you money because the people that click through
are really interested in your page because your title and
description is very 'descriptive'. If your title was not
descriptive they would click through and investigate, if
you didn't have what they wanted they would leave and you
have just lost money.
Remember with pay per click search engines you are only
paying for actual visitors and not views of your listing,
so being listed in the top 1-3 positions, is not always
the best strategy because the quality of people who click
on top listings might not be of the highest standard. This
is because a lot of searchers seem to click on a high listing
without actually reading it, again if you didn't have what
they wanted they would leave and you have just lost money.
Whereas if someone clicked through on a site ranked 19th
after scanning through all the descriptions briefly they
would be a much higher quality visitor because they have
hunted down exactly what they wanted and are genuinely interested
in that site. These people are the visitors you want as
they are much more likely to buy your product or sign up
to your newsletter.
Bidding on a top 3 position is a good strategy however on
less popular words and phrases as this means they will show
up on partner sites. (Overture.com partners with Yahoo and
MSN among others) These words are far cheaper than more
searched for general words and have a better visitor to
sale ratio. A PPC search engines partner sites will help
get the search count up on these words.
Get specific - generally the more words a keyphrase you
bid on has the more likely a visitor will become a customer.
Once again you only pay for clicks not views so you don't
lose money if no one clicks and if they do the chances are
good that they'll buy from you. It's very hard to lose money
on really specific keyphrases.
Well that's it. I hope you can use this information to make
you a bit of money, by the way OVERTURE.COM
and FINDWHAT.COM
are the pay-per-click engines I recommend the most.
Written by David
Callan
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