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By Scott Harvey in Featured

It’s true that Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) such as Google’s “Adwords™” and Microsoft’s “Bing™” can be a remarkably effective, low-cost advertising solution that can almost instantly bring a flood of eager buyers to your website, if done correctly. However, it’s also true that you can take a terrible beating in a very short time if you’re not careful and don’t know what you’re doing.

You see, Adwords™ and Bing™ (the dominant Pay-Per-Click platforms) are promoted as being easy to use. In a sense that’s true. You can sign up for an account and be walked through how to put up a PPC ad in a matter of a few minutes. But, I can’t tell you how many local business clients have come to me mentioning that they have spent thousands of dollars on PPC – and yet they received zero sales for their efforts. They report that money is leaving their pockets – and it’s not being replenished. They have almost given up on Pay-Per-Click Advertising.

Here Are 5 Things That Can Go Wrong When You Try to Manage Your Own Pay-Per-Click Advertising Efforts…

1. You target the wrong keywords. Some search terms can get a lot of clicks, but very few sales, because they’re too general, and there’s no buying intent. For example, you have a tire shop specializing in off-road tires, and you bid on “tires.” That term is searched on over 16,000,000 times a month, so even if your ad wasn’t very good, you could get a lot of clicks. But that searcher isn’t your prospect-he’s in the early stages of looking around, and it’s likely that all you’re going to do is pay for a very expensive click and not get a sale.

2. You under- estimate the amount of clicks you can get, and don’t set an appropriate limit on what you want to spend. Sure, you can set a daily budget for your campaign, but that’s for all the adgroups in the campaign.

You could spend your whole budget early in the day on one poorly- chosen search term, and have all your other ads not get shown at all. Or you could mistakenly set your budget at $3,000 (what you wanted to spend for the month) instead of $100, and come back a few days later to find that you spent thousands of dollars. Happens all the time-and the search engines aren’t user-friendly when that happens. They still want to get paid.

3. You have a local business, but you advertise in geographies that can’t possibly bring you any business. If you advertise your dry- cleaning business located in central Denver in Google’s Denver “metro” area, your ads will be shown throughout northern Colorado, including places 250 miles away. That will get you some completely worthless clicks.

4. You advertise, using broad match, without properly using negative keywords, and pay for a lot of useless clicks. For example, if you sell guns, and you don’t set “Top Gun” as a negative keyword, you’ll pay for a lot of clicks from people looking for information about the movie, not about guns.

5. You bid on a keyword, and write a good enough ad to get the click, but your landing page isn’t congruent with the ad or the keyword. For example, you’re a signage and graphics shop, and you bid on the keyword “trade show graphics”, but when people click your ad, you send them to your home page where there are pictures of lighted building signs and vehicle “wraps”.

Your visitor doesn’t see what he expected to see, so he hits the “back”
button, and he’s gone.

I could write about a hundred similar errors, and probably a lot more than that.

With So Many Things That Can Go Wrong, Should You Continue to Invest in Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Pay-Per-Click is a fiendishly complex beast, capable of amazing and subtle refinements, and not at all easy to master. One of the most popular PPC manuals is over 300 pages, and that’s just the beginner’s guide. Not only that, PPC changes all the time, so it’s difficult, even for experts, to stay on top of it.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be doing PPC. You very likely should.

Done right, expert Pay-per-Click management can improve website results phenomenally. Traffic and sales increases of several hundred per cent are common-at minimal cost, leading to a very large return on investment.

You just shouldn’t do it by yourself, unless you’re willing to devote a LOT of time (and money) to learning it.

Because we’re experts in local search marketing and pay-per-click advertising, we’re able to help our clients avoid mistakes and get the kind of results they want, like:

* One very happy reverse mortgage specialist obtained exclusive, hot leads for less than half what he was paying to buy leads that weren’t nearly as fresh, and weren’t even exclusive.

* A physician, who was using pay-per-click advertising for years, increased his inquiries three- fold, at no increase in cost.

If you’re looking to achieve excellent results from Pay- Per- Click marketing, I urge you to consider investing in a PPC management expert who can handle all your PPC needs – because in the long run, it pays!

Local Search Marketing and Pay-Per-Click Management expert Scott Harvey works with business owners who want to improve their website marketing , get better search engine results and capture more clicks. Now, he is offering an 82-page, step-by-step guide to better website performance, covering PPC and many other proven website marketing strategies. Grab his FREE “Make the Phone Ring” eBook now at: http://www.honestwebsitemarketing.com

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

ppcI was talking to a small business owner the other day, who was complaining to me about how difficult it is to run Pay Per Click ad campaigns on Google when you are faced with conflicting information all the time. I asked him to elaborate and he said:

“I talked to my Google AdWords rep recently and he said that using company names in an ad violates Google’s terms. Also, in some of your blog posts, you seem to suggest bidding on common brand names is also a violation. But I was under the assumption that this was common practice. Is it not? I’m sure our competitors are doing that and I’m wondering if I could report that to Google?”

It did seem like a confusing issue, so I decided to research it a little more.

Use of Your Company Name or Trademark in AdWords

Putting your own company name or trademark in your ad is certainly not a violation, it’s encouraged, particularly if yours is a well known brand/name. In the section of AdWords Help called Use of Trademarks in AdWords, there is an authorization form you can submit to be able to use your brand / trademark throughout your account.

Use of Your Company Name or Trademark by Competitors

The use of your trademark by competitors is where things get complicated. It differs between region and differs again between ad text versus keyword bids. Google actually opened up trademark keyword bidding two years ago, however AdWord’s trademark policy is now dependent on the region your trademark is registered in and the region/s your billing account is located in.

This is a crucial change and one that has likely gone unnoticed by many advertisers. So here are the main regional trademark policies:

AdWords Regional Trademark Policies

1. In certain regions, Google allow some ads to show with a trademark in ad text if the ad is from a reseller or from an informational site. There is covered by a separate trademark policy for resellers and informational sites.

2. For regions that are NOT included in Google’s trademark policy for resellers and informational sites, if their investigation finds that the advertiser is using the trademark in ad text, Google will require the advertiser to remove the trademark and prevent them from using it in ad text in the future.

3. In most regions covered by the Trademark policy (250+ countries including UK, USA and Canada), Google will investigate ad text only. They will not disable keywords in response to a trademark complaint in these regions. Furthermore, their investigation will only affect ads served on or by Google rather than those served on partner sites.

4. In EU and EFTA regions, Google does not prevent the selection of trademarks as keywords. However, in response to a complaint, they will do a limited investigation as to whether a keyword (in combination with particular ad text) is confusing as to the origin of the advertised goods and services.

5. In some limited regions, Google may investigate the use of trademarks in ad text, in keywords, or in both ad text and keywords. These regions include:

• Australia
• Brazil
• China
• Hong Kong
• Macau
• New Zealand
• North Korea
• South Korea
• Taiwan

Because Australia and New Zealand are included in the above list (and these are the countries in which I operate), I have witnessed a few keyword trademark infringements and represented some clients who lodged complaints procedures based on this policy. I have also been following closely a landmark case playing out in Australia about this very issue:

Landmark Test Case

In 2005, Australian telecommunications company Telstra found themselves in legal hot water when an online publication owned by one of their subsidiaries purchased Google AdWords blatantly using the names of competitors in their ads.

As a result, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched legal proceedings against the Trading Post Australia and Google Inc. in 2007.

In their Federal Court case hearing earlier this month, the ACCC challenged the use by Trading Post of the keyword phrase “Kloster Ford”, which was the name of a car dealership in Newcastle, as misleading conduct in breach of the then Trade Practices Act. When “Kloster Ford” was searched for using the Google search engine, this advertisement appeared:

Kloster Ford
www.tradingpost.com.au New/Used Fords – Search 90,000 + auto ads online.
Great finds daily!

The ACCC argued that Trading Post’s use of “Kloster Ford” in its sponsored link was misleading and deceptive as it represented that there was an association or affiliation between Trading Post and Kloster Ford and the ad suggested that information regarding Kloster Ford or Kloster Ford car sales could be found on the Trading Post website, when it could not.

The ACCC also alleged that, by publishing the results pages with these AdWords, Google had itself engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. In response, Google raised a defense that it was engaged in the business of advertising and did not know that AdWords purchased by Trading Post amounted to an infringement of consumer legislation.

On 22 September 2011, the Australian Federal Court held that the Trading Post had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct under the Trade Practices Act 1974. However, they dismissed the claim against Google, stating that while Google provided the technical facilities that permitted the relevant advertisement to be seen, it did not follow that they had endorsed the information conveyed. Consumers would understand that the message being conveyed to them was an advertisement from the advertiser, they stated, rather than the publisher. A settlement between ACCC and Trading Post has since followed.

This case is significant for all Australian businesses that place advertisements through Google AdWords and other pay per click models, because it means that use of competitor trademarks, business names, brand names and URLs could potentially breach Australian consumer protection laws.

Navigate With Care

So the upshot of all this is that unless they have your explicit permission, your competitors generally aren’t allowed to use your brand/name in their own ads, but if you’re located in the US or other areas outside the limited regions mentioned above, they ARE allowed to bid on your brand/name as a keyword.

But it’s not all bad news – it means that you are allowed to bid on their brand/name as well.

However, as with any legal issue, tread carefully when using trademarks in your ads. Accidental or not, a violation of AdWords policy can result in the closure of your account by Google and possibly even land you with a lawsuit.

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

By Toby Russell in Featured

ppcHi now for all of us in the Internet marketing or information publishing arena we will undoubtedly use pay per click advertising at some stage. Now for those just starting out, it can all be a bit confusing so here’s a real beginner’s guide to the main ones – who they are, what they are and what you can expect. But as I’ve identified many times before you really need once you’ve been through this brief outline to go off and have a go, there’s nothing like DIY, you need to see and understand the nuts and bolts of how PPC advertising works.

What Is Pay Per Click?

Pay per click advertising, or PPC for short, is online advertising that works for any organisation whether offline or online and is certainly a method for helping advertisers drive highly targeted traffic to your site or offline business as well. .

Here’s the History Bit

It started in 1997 with Yahoo’s Search Marketing and since then has grown into a variety of different programs. There are a number of different options you can try. The top 3 pay per click search engine advertising programs are Google AdWords, Yahoo’s Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter.

Google AdWords

This is probably the top pay per click network and the one you’ll have heard most about. It has an interface that is friendly, clean and easy to use. It takes just a few minutes from the time you create your account until your ads are live and ready to go. It offers lots of different options for your marketing campaign. It costs $5 to get started, and you can bid for as low as $0.01 per keyword, so it’s really flexible.

Free to Use Keyword Research Tool

It also has its own free keyword research tool to help you choose keywords and phrases to target. No for me I reckon its one of the best and real easy to use so even if you don’t use AdWords the keyword tool I would sincerely recommend you check out and use.

Yahoo’s Search Marketing

This is the search engine that started it all. It has gone through several name changes from Yahoo to GoTo, and then Overture, and finally it’s back as Yahoo Search Marketing.

Like Google, this search engine enables you to reach a massive number of users with its ppc advertising, and also offers sponsored ads on all of its searches. It is also a comparatively cheap service and they offer special deals from time to time, just go & check it out.

Microsoft AdCenter

Microsoft’s PPC offering is top notch. Like the others, it has campaigns to help you customize your ad campaign. It also has its own free keyword research tool that lets you really target your customers, you can narrow it down to gender, age, time of day, geographical location, and just about anything else you can imagine. This feature makes it a wonderful all-in-one package.

The Disadvantages Of Pay Per Click

Whilst pay per click sounds very appealing, you should be aware that there are some areas you need to watch out for. You may have trouble winning your keyword bids at a competitive price and within you advertising budget, there’s lots of competition for most keyword phrases, so it can take quite a budget to get ones that you may want if they carry very high traffic levels.

Top Tip - drill down from top line keywords to cheaper less obvious ones and also consider long tail keywords which can produce some really stunning results for not a lot of advertising budget outlay. Don’t forget PPC is about driving traffic and more importantly targeted traffic so your keyword research is the real key to success.

Think Through Your Objectives First

Also a word of caution here, with the boom of ever increasing traffic, affiliate marketing growth etc, these major PPC search engines have instituted tighter regulations and restrictions. This makes it tougher for new marketers to get in on the ground floor especially if your budget is pretty small.

Google is still viewed by many as the reigning king of search engines, but both Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter are cheaper and not quite so regulated.

Since Internet marketing is about targeting smaller niches to make sales, it might be worthwhile to consider using these search engines instead of Google. But here’s my recommendation – try them all out with small amounts of budget, you need to find one you like, feel comfortable using and as I’ve said before it’s about having as many marketing guns in your arsenal as possible.

Before launching a full-scale pay per click ad campaign, test drive each of these search engines and see which one you like best. It’s possible that the advanced keyword research tool offered by Microsoft AdCenter is just what you need to help you get started. You may like one interface more than another. Think about what you want your campaign to achieve, and then choose the search engine that you are most comfortable working with and you believe is going to work best for you. So there you have it the beginner’s guide to pay per click advertising.

Toby Russell, Internet Marketer, Publisher & Property Investor offers tried and tested methods to help you succeed on line. Want to know more about Google Adwords & Other Online Advertising Methods? Get his popular Free Special Report -Chapter 12 tells you how to use PPC advertising, available at => http://www.startinternetmarketingonline.com

By Cathy Quel in Featured

facebook-logoHere are a few techniques that you can save money using Facebook advertising:

1. Use the cost per impression setting vs. the cost per click setting

You should pay less in advertising costs when using the cost per impression setting so long as you are getting a very good click through rate.

2. Direct your clicks to your Facebook page

If you direct your clicks to your Facebook page rather than to your external website, your cpc will likely be more cost-effective. The one thing that you still have to do will be to make certain your Facebook page is set up just like your website in that you can have visitors sign up to your list and you are also set up to send them through your sales funnel.

3. Only keep your ads active for a day or two

When you first start your Facebook advertising, you receive most of your clicks on the first or second day. Your audience gets used to seeing your ads over the next few days and they don’t click on them as often. What you need to do would be to modify your ads every other day with new headlines and new images. That way, you should keep the interest of your audience. Produce enough of these variations for up to 1 month or so and after that begin again with the first ad and continue rotating the remaining through in a cycle. You’ll be creating a sequence of ads rather then only one ad. Almost like split-testing. This way, your ads don’t get stale plus your target market will stay interested in what you are advertising.

Keep track of which ads are performing the best and once you have cycled through your series, keep the ones that did the best and run them again. Keep adding to the series with different headlines, different photos and different ad text. You would like to keep your cpc down under $.30 per click.

4. How do you know if you are making or losing money?

To ascertain just how much money you are making or losing using Facebook advertising, it is important for you to track everything. You have to track the cost per click, the click through rate, and what percentage of those clicks are subscribing to your fan page or turning into leads by visiting your website. In addition you have to have an efficient sales funnel created when capturing your leads. You could really have the ideal click through rate and you may be generating leads, but if no one is buying anything, you will be losing money.

Adverting on Facebook can be considerably more rewarding than Google AdWords. The kind of advertising that you do on Facebook, which is basically a soft-sell approach, works very well on Facebook. This type of strategy won’t work well on Google AdWords. And, the cost per click would be much more on Google AdWords than on Facebook.

These are just a few strategies that you can save money when advertising on Facebook versus advertising with Google AdWords. Just remember, when using these strategies, track everything that you are able to to help you determine simply how much money you’re making using Facebook advertising.

If you want to learn more about using Facebook advertising, download my free Facebook Guide here. Visit my web site at http://workonlinesuccess.com

By Toby Russell in Featured

googlelogoPay Per Click Advertising – Using Google AdWords

Marketing your online business is vital and by using both paid-for and free methods you get an effective mix of coverage, in this article I’m going over setting up a Google AdWords account and what every beginner needs to know to get started ….

The basic idea behind all advertising is to put your message in front of as many people as possible at the lowest cost, but even better is if you can combine that with getting to highly targeted people who you know will be interested in your product.

The best option for making this happen is to use pay per click advertising. Pay per click ads do more than just generate traffic to your site; it’s your shop window to targeted consumers who have a need to satisfy, a problem to resolve and therefore, if you can deliver a solution there’s every likelihood you’ll sell to them and make a profit.

The most popular medium for pay per click advertising is Google AdWords. Google being the gorilla of search engines ensures your ads receive possibly the widest exposure on the web.

How It Works

The way it works is that Google places your ads strategically on sites that are related to your product or niche or you can choose to appear on the search results pages. In other words, sites where your potential customers will be and search results for what your customers are searching for answers to and information about.

Google AdWords is a very popular system bearing in mind Google’s premier position in the search engine hierarchy..When someone is looking for information online, they naturally go to Google. It makes sense that if you want to advertise to the largest number of people, you should use the world’s most popular website.

How Much It Costs

The price you pay for your ads depends on your choice of keywords and how competitive they are – it naturally follows the more popular & competitive the price of the keyword will therefore be determined by that competition; in other words, if lots of other people are using it, it’s going to be more expensive.

Effective Keyword Research is Vital

So again your keyword research is absolutely key, you need to drill down to closely associated (to your main keyword/niche) keywords that are less competitive and therefore more affordable. When you decide on relevant keywords that you want to target, you simply bid on them and Google gives you a price. Sounds tricky but its really not, its very simple I know for Sam & I we thought blimey we’ll never understand all that but believe me the tutorials are great and its simple.

How To Get Set Up On Google AdWords

The system is very easy to use. It has a clear and friendly interface. It takes about 5 minutes to create an account. Once you’ve set up an account, write an ad using your selected keywords. Enter your bid and set the maximum you’re willing to pay for it. You can also decide whether the ad will be used only on Google’s search results page, or whether you’d like it to appear on other sites that use the Google AdWords system. These are sites that allow Google to place ads on them. Google places ads according to keywords used so that only relevant ads appear on sites.

You can also choose how you want the ads positioned on the site. You can pay more to have them placed higher, since people are more likely to see high posted high on a webpage. Once all of this is done, you wait for Google to approve your ads.

Here’s the Really Cool Bit – Controlling Your Cost

Here’s the best method you can use, set a daily budget that you are prepared to spend -and word of advice here initially set it very low – test it, get comfortable with the way the campaign is working, see what the results are like,and try a couple of ad variations – this way you don’t loose your shirt by spending too much money in one go- this is the real beauty of Google adwords – its targeted traffic within a budget. You can instantly pause or stop your Google AdWords campaign by simply clicking on a button in your account.

If the whole process confuses you, there is no need to worry. On Google’s AdWords site area there are a number of easy to understand tutorials as I’ve mentioned before, that walk you through the process and give you some tips on how to get the most out of your advertising campaign.

Pay per click advertising with Google AdWords is probably the Internet’s easiest and most effective form of advertising. In fact, it’s probably the easiest and most targeted system of advertising online or off. Not only does it get you great results, it’s also extremely flexible and easy to use. So there you have it, it’s an absolute must to have in your marketing arsenal, so go there today and get your account set up.

Toby Russell, Internet Marketer, Publisher & Property Investor offers tried and tested methods to help you succeed on line. Find out how to drive huge amounts of targeted traffic to your own Internet Marketing business with his popular Free step-by-step Special Report. Chapter 12 tells you how to use PPC advertising, available at => http://www.startinternetmarketingonline.com

By Tom Wilson in Featured

spn_exclusiveI recently attended a SEM seminar where the speaker, a SEO consultant, tried to show how scalable SEO is. Then he compared it with paid search, which, he said, was not scalable. As a PPC consultant, I found this irritating. Not only was he wrong but he was also peddling the standard myths about the relative ROI’s of these two SEM strategies.

What Is Scalability?

In case you’re not sure, I’ll explain scalability. This means that over time the gap between sales and costs widens so that your business or products become more profitable.

In the context of SEM, scalability occurs in any one of three ways. When simultaneously your marketing costs fall and sales value rises. Or sales remain the same, but don’t cost you as much to acquire. Or marketing costs remain the same but sales value rises. Whichever way, you have scalable (rising) margins.

SEO and Scalability

The speaker promoting SEO scalability showed us a very convincing graph. His example was a company just starting out with search engine optimization and hiring an agency. He put the agency cost to the client at $1000 per month for 12 months. On his graph, this represented a straight line.

By Search Traffic Pro in Featured

ppcPPC will be your greatest online marketing nemesis if you’re new to it and don’t prepare. It’s challenging to peruse spreadsheets of words, ads, and numbers and remember exactly what you’re looking at. Stop. Get an energy drink. Now take a step back – and think. Think about exactly what you’re looking at. Go row by row if you have to. Whatever helps you think about the keyword itself.

The keyword is the bread and butter of your PPC campaign.

Keywords are simply characters that users type into a search box when they’re looking for something. Keywords can be one word like “hotels”. Keywords can also be “longtail” multiple word phrases like “keeping austin weird, hotels”. Long tail keywords are longer three or four word phrases which are highly specific to your goods or services. These convert the most clicks to customers because they target a consumer who specifically knows what they want and is ready to buy. You gain access to keywords in the search engines by ‘bidding’ on specific keywords.

Keywords: The Most Important Part of PPC

The keyword is, perhaps, the most important component of your PPC account. It would be foolish then to waste your budget bidding on generic single keyword or double keyword phrases since these do not target the customer who is “late” in the buying cycle.

For example if you are a boutique hotel in Austin, TX it doesn’t make sense to just bid on “hotel” because you are going to be going up against the big guys like Expedia or Priceline. Instead hone in on a specific niche like your location and a special amenity that you offer that people will be searching for like “boutique hotel, Austin, Texas.” The competition will be less and the cost per click a lot less.

Getting Rid of Bad Keywords

This problem of non-relevant keywords is rampant in many PPC accounts. Sometimes it’s obvious like the “hotel texas”- sometimes it’s not. Here’s how it happens and how to fix it:

1) Remove Non-Relevant Keywords from Keyword Tools

Keyword tools like Google AdWords Keyword Tool are great starters for PPC accounts. Like thesauruses, you can look at lists of words that are similar to your products or services – a very useful tool.

However, keyword tools should never be trusted implicitly. Keyword tools use computer-generated lists of words and sometimes they make mistakes. Unthinking PPC managers dump every keyword they can think of into their campaign and waste a ton of cash, receive non-relevant traffic or no traffic at all.. The worst of it is the non-relevant (no: worthless) traffic will never convert or turn into new business.

Fix this issue by reviewing your keyword list. Lists can get crazy- out- of- control- big quick. Focus on one or two groups at a time and communicate with everyone who is working on the account, adding or pausing keywords. Here’s the science: Review your phrases and decide: would someone needing my products or services type these words into a search box?? No? Get rid of them, or pause them in you AdWords Editor. You can always ask someone else who is a fresh set of eyes give you a second opinion later. Your advertising dollars are too precious not to be reviewing those ad groups well.

2) Test Your Keywords

Another, equally important way to sort out keywords in your account is to determine whether they turn into the desired action. Going back to the hotel example, when you bid on “hotel, Austin, TX” does that longtail phrase yield the desired result on your website? Does it turn into online leads or phone calls? Review your web analytics to see which words people are converting on-clicking through to your website on. Though the keyword may seem relevant to you, searchers may disagree.

You can determine the effectiveness of keywords by using good tracking. AdWords Conversion Tracking or call tracking can demonstrate the effectiveness of each keyword in your account.

Proper keyword management is the single most important thing you can do to effectively manage your PPC account. To do it effectively, you need to get educated on proper online tracking, or make sure your PPC manager is doing their job i.e. TRACKING. Just make sure you are aware of the keywords costing you money and why. Wasting PPC budget is no way to run a PPC account – and pursuing keywords that are bad is the way it goes wrong.

Search Traffic Pro is a professional search marketing company. We focus on your company’s unique position in the market and seek to grow your presence online via PPC, SEO and search marketing strategies. We specialize in two things: 1. Growing Your Traffic, 2. Growing Your Customer Base.
Read our blog full of tips and tricks now at http://www.searchtrafficpro.com

By Scott Buresh in Featured

SEOptimizationThere are generally two types of clients who seek out search engine marketing services – those who are new to the discipline and are researching various companies, and those who were unhappy with a previous SEO company and are now looking to engage with the right vendor. Whatever your background or familiarity with SEO, it’s important to understand that while most good firms do require a contract for services, the firms that have the most confidence in their own abilities will offer the chance to prove themselves to you by first providing a no-contract, introductory pay-per-click campaign.

Understandably, clients are sometimes wary of handing over the reins to their website – most often their most powerful marketing tool – to a random search engine marketing firm. In order to test an SEO company’s mettle, why not give them the chance to prove how effective they can be at managing and improving your PPC campaign instead? This way, you are engaging in a low-risk, high-yield endeavor that will truly serve as a litmus test for your working relationship. First, if you are already running your own pay-per-click campaign, give the SEO company control over all or even a small portion of your account to prove that they’re worthy of your business by not only maintaining the account, but measurably improving your results. If you don’t have a current PPC campaign, you can take the money that you’d spend on SEO and request that the search engine marketing firm build and run a pay-per-click campaign to serve as a proof of concept. While SEO and PPC are certainly different disciplines, they share a number of similarities including keyphrase selection, creation of targeted copy, tracking of metrics, and overall ROI. If the SEO company excels in generating results for your company’s PPC campaign, there is a likely correlation to the success that they will deliver a return on a longer-term SEO campaign.

Another benefit to this trial relationship is that you can find out if you enjoy working with your search engine marketing firm. For whatever reason, sometimes business relationships just do not work out. Expectations, styles, and workflows differ, and these cultural and philosophical variations can render the relationship a poor fit. During your initial pay-per-click campaign, when your potential SEO company promises a deliverable, are they on time? Do they deliver results without asking for too much work on your end? Can and will this search engine marketing company accommodate your needs? And do they take the time to explain concepts that you don’t understand?

These same principles and considerations apply if you are looking for a search engine marketing firm to take control of your existing and ongoing campaign. A good SEO company with years of experience should be able to identify new search terms for cultivation, and improve the metrics of even your very well run in-house pay-per-click campaign. In addition to standard SEO knowledge, the firm should act in your best interest and should have access to a variety of cutting-edge tools to measure what works and what doesn’t for your campaign. Even if you allocate only a small portion of your budget to this trial-run, a good SEO firm should be able to deliver swift and impressive results.

Since the SEO company is supposed to be proving themselves to you during this time, a pay-per-click campaign with a new search engine marketing firm, especially serving as a proof of concept, should not have a contract term. This is meant to provide you with peace of mind and eliminate anxiety on your behalf for multiple reasons. For example, if you don’t think the company is a good fit and isn’t delivering results, you should be able to immediately leave without having any long-term damage done to your campaign. Even if the company is delivering improved results from the pay-per-click campaign, but you’ve experienced a negative or cantankerous relationship with the firm, you should be able to take your business elsewhere to another firm that will work with you to meet your goals, and match your business culture and communication style. Essentially, during a proof of concept period, you should have expended little capital, have experienced a symbiotic business relationship, and have developed a firm sense of trust with your future SEO company.

Another reason why a pay-per-click campaign is the ideal medium for acting as proof of concept is because unlike long-term search engine optimization, which can require weeks and months to deliver full results, you should see an almost instantaneous uptick in results from a PPC campaign with a skilled search engine marketing firm. Although SEO is almost always the better long-term investment for your money, a pay-per-click campaign as proof of concept should give you the confidence you’re looking for in your relationship with a SEO company. With PPC, you should see measurable results within 30-60 days. Not only should you see your cost-per-click go down and your conversion rates rise, but both of these variables should lead to an increase in revenue. And just think – if you spent this same 30-60 day period searching for a SEO company without engaging in a proof of concept pay-per-click campaign, this is a lost opportunity cost that could have brought you not only a financial return, but also the confidence to engage in a worry-free campaign with a reputable search engine marketing firm.

Every SEO company says that their reputation is solid and that they deliver results. But unless they’re willing to accommodate your needs and adjust their workflow to suit your business, they’re probably not the firm you’re looking for in the long run. So, whether your business is just exploring the world of search engine marketing firms, or if you are looking for a reputable vendor who can confidently stand behind their work, don’t be afraid to ask for no-contract pay-per-click campaign to see if they can really deliver.

Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company, which was awarded a prestigious American Marketing Association award in both 2008 and 2010. Buresh has been featured in respected publications such as Entrepreneur, Success, Direct Marketing News, Business to Business, Search Marketing Standard, Public Relations Tactics and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. His articles have appeared in numerous online publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to How to Build Your Own Web Site with Little or No Money: The Complete Guide for Business and Personal Use (Brown, 2010), The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and international clients.

By Richard Legg in Featured

googlelogoOne of the best Google Adwords tips I can give you is to not consider this a do it yourself type of traffic tool. Adwords has many elements to it and if you want to make more money than you spend you will need to find someone, or some course, to teach you how to get the most out of it.

Pay Per click (PPC) can work exceptionally well at getting hordes of very targeted traffic to your website virtually instantly. Of course, you may be asking, if it’s so good, why doesn’t everyone use it?

That is the crux of the matter. PPC is not an easy thing to learn how to do. It will take time and you need to be willing to invest not only the time but the money too. You will need to carefully test and track various elements of each ad that you place. In the start you will spend way more money than you will earn.

Another challenge is that Google isn’t really worried to much about you or your advertising budget, they are more concerned that their searchers get what they are looking for. The searchers on any of the search engines are the real customers and if they don’t find what they want they’ll go elsewhere. That is why Google wants to make sure to keep them happy by providing them with just what they’re looking for.

To do this, Google will periodically change the way they do things. They will rewrite an algorithm or make other changes and if you’re not right on top of those changes you can find that the ad that once made you a lot of money is now costing you a lot of money.

Here are a few tips that you can use to optimize your PPC campaigns:

1. Find a course or a mentor who can teach you the ins and outs of PPC advertising. If you try to just jump in and figure it all out on your own you had better make sure you have a lot of time and very deep pockets.

2. Carefully choose the keywords you use. Don’t even try to compete for the one or two word keywords since they will almost always have so much competition you’ll be spending way too much per click. Instead focus on the keyword phrases that have 3, 4, or 5 words in them. These ‘long tailed keywords’ can fly under the radar yet still get you some decent click through rates (CTR’s).

3. Always test your ads. You can do this by having several versions of each ad running at the same time. Find out which headlines get the most clicks. Which body text gets the most clicks, etc. Keep testing until you’ve got a winning ad. When testing make sure you only change one element at a time otherwise you won’t know which change really made the difference.

Out of all the Google Adwords tips I can give you the one I think is the most important is to find someone to show you the ropes. PPC is effective if you know how to do it right, but if not it can very quickly become a money pit.

Get more traffic tips at TrafficAttractionFormula.org

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

job searchWhat’s a job at the top of your field worth to you?

To unemployed advertising executive Alec Brownstein, it was worth around USD 6. That’s what Alec paid Google AdWords to get the attention of New York’s top advertising agencies and score himself two job offers.

Alec decided he wanted a job at one of New York’s top ad agencies. But to get an interview via the regular channels could take months. So he decided to bypass normal job application procedures and appeal to the egos of the Creative Directors instead.

How did he do it? He set up PPC ads using Dynamic Keyword Insertion that would appear whenever one of the Creative Directors Googled themselves, otherwise known as a *vanity search*. So a Google search for Gerry Graf, David Droga, Tony Granger, Ian Reichenthal or Scott Vitrone would trigger Alec’s ad to appear.

The ad read:

Hey [Director's Name]
Googling yourself is a lot of fun.
Hiring me is fun, too.

A click on the ad led to Alec’s site and contact details. According to Brownstein, nobody was bidding on the names, so he was able to achieve the top ad slots for around 10 cents per click.

The result? Alec scored interviews with 4 out of the 5 Creative Directors and job offers from both Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone of Y&R Advertising. He took one of the offers and now has a permament gig at Y&R New York.

Clever eh?

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