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Targeted Traffic with Pay Per Click's
Copyright 2004 Dirk Wagner
In
order for your online business to succeed you must get
targeted traffic to
your website. No matter what product or
service you are selling, if you don't
make sales you won't be in business for very long!
One of the best
ways to get targeted traffic to your website is through Pay Per Click Ads. If
you have spent any time surfing the world wide web or used search engines
to seek out a particular keyword or phrase then you have more than likely
seen Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. Two of the most popular PPC's are Google Ad
words http://www.google.com which are
featured prominently on many websites on the net and Overture http://www.overture.com which list sites
in search engine results like Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN, etc, across the net.
However, there are literally thousands of PPC search engines on the web today
to choose from.
PPC ads offer a way to attract relatively cheap
targeted traffic to your website and product or service. Here is how PPC
ads work.
You bid on specific keywords or key-phrases to have
your
search engine listing or short ad come up when people search for that
specific keyword. For example, if you are selling Golf accessories, you would
bid to have your site ad come up when a person searches for "Golf Clubs". If
the person sees your ad and is interested and they click on it and you
simply pay your bid amount. That is targeted traffic.
You may bid $1
to get listed at the top of the search result, but your competitor could then
bid 1.05 and outbid and move ahead of you. This does happen unless you are
able to bid on less popular search terms that your competitors do not and
still many people use.
Bids for the top positions vary from pennies to a
few dollars, but most PPC search engines have keyword suggestion tools to
help you find keywords and their search results to suit your budget. You may
bid on as many keywords as your budget can handle. A general rule of
thumb would be to aim for one of the top two positions for keywords with
low bid searches and aim for top 5 for keywords with higher volume
searches.
You must be careful though to bid within your means!
PPC's
are all about conversion rates. For example, if your conversion rate
is 2 visitors per 100, and you make $10 per sale. Your maximum bid would be
the following: conversion rate x profit per sale. In this example, it would
be .02 X $10= 20 cents You should bid 20 cents or less to be profitable.
This is something you must figure out on your own if you are using PPC's for
the first time in order to be successful.
Finally, your ad should
follow certain guidelines. You want to describe your product or service in
your ad as precise as possible. Remember you are not looking for
"tire kickers" because you are paying for their click whether they buy
something or not! Link the ad to the specific product or service you are
selling instead of sending prospects to your home page so the prospect does
not have navigate to find what they clicked on originally. Try to include
the keyword in the title or description. Statistics have shown this method to
produce higher clicks. Good Luck!
About the Author:
Dirk
Wagner is CEO and owner of http://team4success.biz and the free, easy
to install #1 home business toolbar with automated updates. A website
dedicated to helping the home-based business entrepreneur start and succeed
with there very own home-based business by publishing his free online
course for successful Home Business.
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