Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – Do’s and Don’ts

If you are new to PPC (Pay Per Click), you may find the whole process a little daunting. You’re not alone – it can be confusing if you don’t do your research.

The way I look at it, you have 3 options:

1. The big 3 (Yahoo, MSN and Google) have services available to help you with your campaign.
2. You can hire a reputable firm to help you with your SEM (that can cost you a bundle).
3. You can do the a little research and try your hand at it.

I worked for a company that practiced a couple of the options listed above as well as just blindly going at it on their own (without researching).

What happened?

When they first signed up, their CTR (Click Through Rate) was non-existent. They barely had any impressions and not one person clicked through to their website.
Result: Google canceled their campaign for them.

Next, they signed on with a high profile SEM (Search Engine Marketing) firm and paid roughly seven thousand a month for advice and management of the campaign as well as their advertising dollars that they had budgeted per month (another thirty thousand).
Result: They spent a ton of money to have many visitors to their website, but the ROI (Return on Investment) was a big bust!

Moving forward, they decided to just pay the search engine team to manage the campaign. It was cheaper than the former option, however the search engine team didn’t really manage the campaign quite as closely as they would have liked.
Result: More money spent, less than desirable outcome.

Finally, with a little research – they managed the campaign in-house, reduced the amount spent per day and cut out the middleman.
Result: Their conversion rates increased and the ROI improved.

It wasn’t the easiest route, but it certainly was the wisest. An important factor was that they paid attention to their analytics and search results, used campaign ad variations as well as landing pages and they did A/B testing.

With a little research, you too can take control of your PPC advertising. You don’t need to pay an expert. If you do decide to go with an expert, be on the lookout for a company that is bringing more traffic to your site without converting. If that’s the case, you are just paying to have more people visit your site but you aren’t making any sales. Every time someone clicks on your ad in a search result, you are being charged for that visit. If they aren’t contacting, leaving their email address or purchasing your product, you are throwing your money away!

5 Steps to taking control of your PPC advertising:

1. Tracking. You need to track the results of your ad campaigns and find which ad groups are working for you. The search engine provides you with CTR’s, but you’ll need to check your analytics to see where they went from there. The tracking needs to be at keyword level so that you can tell which ones are working for you.
2. Testing. You need to split test your ads. A tiny change can make a huge difference. Is your call to action producing results? You can optimize the title, copy text and url to improve your CTR.
3. Utilizing negative keywords. Removing unnecessary words that don’t pertain to your product or service will limit the number of CTR’s that aren’t relevant – resulting in using up your ad dollars quickly.
4. Relevant ads. If you use the same keywords for all of your ads, you won’t know which ones are working with which ads. It’s better to split them up.
5. Geographical targeting (Geo Targeting). The big 3 allow you to target your keywords to your biggest performing areas. If you are selling sheepskin boots and your sales come from colder regions, you can target those areas for those keywords.

I’m a big fan of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in conjunction with PPC. I believe you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

You can do a Google search for some PPC tutorials and get started learning how to manage your campaigns to produce great results. If you consistently monitor your campaigns and analytics, you’ll know soon enough if this form of SEM is working for you.

Good luck!

Joanne

2007 Recap

We're still out of the office for the holidays, but I felt compelled to post something on the last day of this glorious year.

Here's a list of our best articles for the year:

How to Get Traffic to Your Website for Free
Writing the Perfect Ad
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) Explained
Google Vs. Wikipedia
Top 7 SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Small Business Holiday Survival Guide
Branding...It's Not Just for Cows!
Make Sure to Take Time Off
What is Hosting?
TV and Radio Advertising
Help with Analytics
What is Web 2.0?
Learning Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Link Popularity
Business Branding
New Business Website
Starting Your Small Business
Domain Name
Web CMS
Website Keywords
Website Analytics
Writing a Winning Press Release
Promoting Your Small Business Affordably

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones and I hope 2008 brings you happiness, health and success in all you do!

Joanne

Viral Marketing

This Cadbury Gorilla video was forwarded to me today by a fellow blogger. The fact that it is still being circulated and is being parodied shows it has made an impact.

This is a compelling ad and a perfect example of viral marketing because it's quirky and weird and most people have learned about this through word of mouth.

From the Wikipedia page on this ad campaign produced by Cadbury Schweppes' new in-house production company 'A Glass and a Half Full Productions' :

"Their proposal was to step away from pushing the product through traditional advertising means, and instead produce "entertainment pieces" which would appeal to a broader range of consumers and spread through viral marketing – that is, through word of mouth."

We just plain like it!

Joanne

How to Get Traffic to Your Site Without Paying Through the Nose!

Happy holidays! Can you believe I went to the store at 5:00 am to try and get the kids a Wii on Saturday? Well, I didn’t get one – I guess they’ll just have to play with the boxes their clothes came in!

We’re gearing up for some much needed time off coming up next week, and I for one am excited! We are closing for the week, but I imagine we’ll end up working some – we always do.

I know, I know… you clicked on this because you want to learn how to get traffic, not read about me and my holiday plans!

When we started our business, we had a tiny marketing budget and really couldn’t afford traditional advertising. How did we gain clients? We got them through website visitors. When we started out, we knew we needed to attract people to our website. More importantly, we needed to keep them on the site once they were there.

Here are the main ingredients we cooked up for our plan:

1. Keyword research. We decided which keywords we needed for our online business success and then we wrote keyword rich content for the site.
2. We named specific pages/url’s for those keywords
3. We wrote meta tag descriptions for those pages
4. We submitted our site to major search engines and directories
5. We installed Google analytics and signed up for a webmasters account
6. We added a sitemap to our website and one to the webmaster account
7. We wrote articles with subjects that included our keywords and updated our sitemap with each new article
8. We began passing out business cards and posting them whenever we could.
9. We printed bookmarks with our company information and placed them in libraries and bookstores in books relevant to “Starting Your Own Business”
10. We posted ads on free classified sites
11. We wrote press releases and distributed them to online wire services (hoping to get picked up, which they were)
12. Once we verified that Google had crawled and indexed our content, we began submitting our articles to article syndication sites.
13. We sent out emails to friends, family, and past business colleagues to let them know about our new business. We asked them to refer us to anyone in need of our services.
14. We created a MySpace page and began social networking (albeit slowly, as we were busy running our new business)
15. We joined the local chamber of commerce (well this wasn’t free, but it didn’t cost but a drop in the bucket)
16. We started a blog (again, we were really busy in the beginning and our blog posts were few and far between – we ended up trashing the first blog and starting over and have great hopes for our new blog)

I know that there are many other things we have done that were absolutely free, and I’m sure I’ll remember them tonight at 3:30 in the morning! If I do, I promise I’ll comment.

One of the greatest joys we have had is to watch our analytics and see where our traffic has been coming from. Nothing gives us a greater thrill than to see that an article we wrote about search engine marketing or TV and radio advertising has brought us visitors.

If you’re a steady blogger, you know that it takes time to cultivate relationships and read all there is out there to read. Sometimes you can get so caught up in it all that you look up and can’t believe the day is half over. It’s so much fun that it’s almost sinful that you’re getting paid to do it.

Sometimes there are days when you’re tired and don’t feel much like writing anything or commenting, but you fear if you don’t write something you’ll lose subscribers/visitors/fans. It’s best not to post if your heart isn’t in it. When we have those days, we’ve learned not to post anything. It keeps the blog fresh, informative and entertaining.

I hope the information I shared can help you if you’re just starting out and struggling to get things going. We’re here for support, if you want to comment – we’ll write you back. We’ve been there, and we “get it”.

Have a great night!

Joanne

The Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) Explained

Every year my family publishes a “Bad News Letter”. Ever experience the annoying high achieving family newsletter that comes in the mail from a distant relative? That’s not the case when it comes to my family. We love to highlight and laugh at the bad things that happened throughout the year. You won’t find any braggarts in that gem. I've been busy after work hours getting it together to pass out to relatives on Christmas Eve.

On to the subject…

Last week I was conversing with a client over the phone and she mentioned that she wanted her new website to be on the top of the SERP’s page. When I started to explain to her the logistics of being listed at the top for her search terms she was fascinated. She is a very intelligent woman with several websites already, and it got me to thinking that I should probably do a post for people who don’t quite understand it all.

So, with that in mind – let me just explain (gently) how it all works:

Whenever you go to a search engine such as Google and you type in a keyword or phrase (the words you are using to search for something), after you hit “Search”, the items that come up are broken down as follows:

Take a look at the image below with the results in red:

Those are the top paid results. To get in that position, you have to be engaged in a PPC (Pay Per Click) or (Adwords) campaign with Google and you have to be the top bidder for the keyword phrase that was searched on. In this case the phrase was “complete business cards”.

In the next image, look at the results in red:

These are also paid or “sponsored” results from a PPC campaign. The results on the side are not the top dollar advertising. Again, the person in charge of the campaign has a choice on what keywords to bid on, how much they want to spend per word or phrase and what position they want to be in.

In the next image, look at the results in red:

These are the natural search results. Meaning, the results that are showing up here are based on SEO (search engine optimization) and not a paid advertising campaign. This clearly demonstrates how important search engine optimization can be to your marketing budget.

I can get into more about PPC campaigns and how they work in another post. Next time we can have a look at Yahoo or MSN. I hope this was helpful to you.

Joanne

Help with Analytics

Most businesses consider their website an integral part of their marketing campaign. However, simply putting up a website and hoping for the best just isn’t enough. It’s essential to track your site’s traffic. This will let you know which marketing campaigns are working. For example, is your new website copy helping you make sales, or causing people to leave your site right away? Without tracking your visitors, you’ll never know.

Once you have your website analytics installed, and can see all those visitors coming to your site, you need to interpret the visitor activity information. What does it all mean?

Let’s break it down:

Hits: Many people confuse hits with visits. They are not the same. Hits are the number of times that an http request is made to your server. For instance, if a single visitor visits several pages on your site and pulls up images and other files on each page, the visit can count as several hundred hits.

Unique Visits: Tracking a visitor’s IP address, browser and operating system will measure the number of actual unique visits generated on your website. A visitor can browse several pages on your site, but their activity will only be counted as one unique visit. This number is the one you want to pay attention to, as it will give you the most accurate representation of how much traffic your website is generating.

Bounce Rates: Pay attention to your pages’ bounce rates. This number measures the number of visitors who come to your site and immediately exit. A high bounce rate can indicate that your page isn’t capturing your visitors’ attention. The page is either in need of updating, or is attracting visitors who are actually looking for something else. You can experiment using A/B testing to see which designs, content, and graphics work to lower your bounce rate.

Top Entry Pages: Where are visitors entering your site? Often, you’ll see direct hits to your site without a referrer. You can use the top entry page statistics determine how your visitors are arriving at your site. They may be coming from an online article or blog you’ve written. Make sure that your visitors will be able to easily navigate your website, no matter which page of your site they arrive on initially.

Top Exit Pages: This statistic shows the pages from which the majority of your visitors are leaving your site. Factors such as page content, graphics, navigation, and even color can affect a visitor’s decision to exit a website. Altering your website’s pages can work to keep a visitor’s interest in the site. Again, using A/B testing will show which design works best to retain your visitors.

Traffic Sources: This is by far my favorite in the analytics toolbox. I love checking our analytics every day to see which one of our ads, articles, or campaigns is driving the most traffic to our site. Use this resource to find out which of your marketing efforts are most effective.

Keywords: Another fabulous tool that will let you know what search terms or phrases your visitors are typing in to arrive at your site. Use this information to create articles and page content to drive visitors to your website.

Map Overlay: This tool will reveal where your visitors are located geographically. You will be able to see if the majority of your traffic is coming from the United States, or other countries. It will even narrow down tracking to certain cities or territories. This is extremely useful for honing your marketing message, as well as for scheduling staffing and determining your business hours.

Browser/Capabilities: It is essential to know how your visitors access your site. Do you have a slick flash website with Javascript? If so, visitors who are using dial up, or don’t have Java installed won’t be able to see your site. Viewing browser information will tell you which browser the majority of your site users are using. You can then make sure that your site is optimized for that browser. It’s also important to note here that you should always test your site to make sure it has the look and functionality that you require, in all browsers.

If you’re using Google Analytics, you have the added bonus of the site overlay, which is a fun tool that shows you how visitors found your content, and moved through your site, as well as funnel visualization and conversion goals.

All in all, it’s crucial to have analytics for your site, so you can maximize your marketing efforts by determining whether you’re reaching your target audience and converting visits to sales.

Joanne

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

I know I promised to liven up this blog, but today's post is a really important part of your website success and I want you to benefit from it! I can always sing and dance for you later...

I wrote a new article titled "Learning Search Engine Marketing (SEM)" and placed it in our articles section. Below is the first portion of the article for you to view and decide if you want to venture on to read the rest:

Wikipedia defines Search Engine Marketing as a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

I could go into the technicalities of SEM, algorithms, robots, etc. However, if you’re reading this article, you probably aren’t interested in me stuffing a bunch of technical terms down your throat. You would rather learn about search engine marketing and how it can bring you more business.

I chose this topic today based on a couple of conversations I recently had with new clients.

One of our clients had embarked on a small ad campaign with Yahoo before coming to us. He mentioned that when he was spending the money on Yahoo, the traffic to his site was much higher. When I asked how many sales he garnered from the advertising, he replied that he didn’t know. Website traffic and conversions to sales are two completely different things, with the latter obviously being more important. It’s crucial to keep track of your ROI (Return on Investment), if you are going to invest in online advertising. Make sure that you have the tools within your company—whether it’s your own database for tracking sales, or another form of tracking system—before you spend your first marketing dollar.

Another conversation I had with a client involved a Google Adwords campaign. He was bidding using every keyword under the sun. He had a huge CTR (Click Through Rate), but again, nobody was buying. At the end of the day, his budget was gone and he didn’t have anything to show for it besides lots of traffic and an empty bank account. Until I explained to him that he was paying for people to come to his site and quickly leave, he didn’t “get it”. Having the right keywords in your campaign and your ad copy, that are relevant to your product or service, will get you qualified click through to your site. You don’t want people to click on your ad, only to find that your site doesn’t offer the information they were looking for, and leave immediately. That will cost you wasted dollars each and every time they do that.

More Learning Search Engine Marketing...

Joanne

Link Popularity

What is link popularity and how can you build link popularity to help your business?

Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results.

Wikipedia defines link popularity as a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web.

There are all kinds of website design and search engine optimization terms out there that can be confusing especially when you are just getting started with your small business website.

Lets break down some of the definitions for easier understanding:

Link Popularity
Link popularity is the measure of the number of hypertext links coming into a website from other websites on the Internet. Although you obviously want to have several links incoming and outgoing, but it’s important to pay attention to the quality of your website inbound and outbound links. For instance, if you have several incoming and outgoing links to sites that aren’t relevant to your website, your links aren’t quality links. When browsing the web and you stumble upon a site with great information and you click on their resources, would you rather be directed to more information about the subject you originally searched for and related items, or links to widgets?

Anchor Text
The anchor text is the text that you click in a hyperlink. Many times you’ll see “click here” to view our pricing. Using click here rather than a keyword such as “widget pricing” takes away from your natural search engine optimization. The search engine algorithms use anchor text and can get you better ranking if you are using it correctly.

Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are two-way links from one website to another. Basically, you place a link on your website to the other company website and they in turn place a link on their website to your website. Often times you are allowed to include your anchor text in the link you are placing on the external site, other times – you can include your company name, website and a brief description. Again this practice is another important part of search engine optimization.

Non-reciprocal links
Non-reciprocal links are sometimes referred to as one-way links. It is just as it sounds, a link to your site, or a link from your site that isn’t returned. Meaning, I often link to Wikipedia for definitions to help explain items in my website articles. Wikipedia doesn’t link back to me for my articles.

Link Exchange
A link exchange involves reciprocal links and usually occurs when you or your Webmaster receive an email from a company that would like to exchange links with you or you can initiate a link exchange with a website that you think has valuable information and would benefit your site users. Always fully check out the sites that are requesting link exchanges with you to make sure that they aren’t part of linking farm or using practices that Google and the other search engines frown upon. You don’t want to accidentally get your site banned from the search engines!

Paid Links
Paid linking involves buying and selling links to improve a site’s ranking. Google and other search engines use linking in their algorithms to determine a sites “importance” which effects the site ranking. Google frowns upon the process in particular as well as other search engines and there has been quite a bit of controversy over Google suggesting that webmasters report paid links to them. There are instances where it is okay to purchase a link for advertising and you can check out the guidelines in Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

Now that you’re familiar with the terminology, it’s time to get out there and start building your link popularity! Remember quality and quantity and watch your website move up in natural search engine results.

Joanne Pele is the Vice President of Operations at Complete Business Systems. Complete Business Systems provides a ready-to-go branding package for your company, including website, logo, business cards and letterhead. Additional services include postcard design, databases, press release and web content writing. For more information, visit CompleteBizSystems.com, or call 800-479-9186

Joanne

Promoting Your Small Business Affordably

Making the most of a small business budget can bring big results.
While most business owners realize that having a good marketing plan is a must, often they don’t know where to begin.

Affordable Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
The key to managing your marketing budget wisely is making every dollar count. Often, there are great ways to promote your company affordably.

The continued evolution of the Internet provides several ways for companies of all sizes to market themselves for little or no money. Most people realize that to be competitive in today’s business environment, having a website is an absolute necessity. Your goal should be to direct people to your website, not to tell your whole story in an online listing. List your website in relevant online business directories, join business networking sites, and submit press releases to the many free online wire services available. Include your website address on all your printed materials, such as business cards, letterhead, brochures, and in print ads. Remember that consistency is key. Your website, logo, and marketing materials should always use the same fonts and colors.

Take advantage of local low-cost marketing resources, such as joining the chamber of commerce, volunteering for charity benefits, and attending business fairs. Always have a ready supply of business cards with you, as opportunities to talk about your company often come up unexpectedly.

Complete Business Systems strives to make small business branding simple and affordable with its all-inclusive package. The package includes a professionally designed 10-page website with Flash introduction, website hosting and domain name, custom logo design, and letterhead/business card design and printing. Additional services include custom databases, press releases, and brochure and flyer design and printing.