Generating a positive ROI from PPCWritten by Karl Norris
Appearing on first page of major search engines for your key search terms is no doubt best and cheapest way to drive relevant traffic to your site. However, if you’ve got a new site or are operating in a highly competitive sector where achieving decent rankings, pay per click advertising can also prove to be a cost effective way to generate visitors and customers.So how do you go about generating a positive return from pay per click? Keyword list – bigger better Target specific keywords that relate to your products rather than bidding on very general terms. These are unlikely to prove cost effective, as you’ll be up against players with very deep pockets. Large keyword lists can be built by using two, three or four word search term phrases. Use search term suggestion tools below to generate a comprehensive list. Use search term suggestion tools Not surprisingly, best search term suggestion tools are provided by companies that offer pay per click advertising. I use suggestion tools offered by Google, Overture and Espotting. Merging these lists before submitting will ensure all keywords are submitted to providers you choose. Listings for company name Don’t forget to bid on terms that include your company name and variations thereof. This is worthwhile for several reasons. It will ensure your site is in top position if someone does a search on your site name, keyword is likely to be available for minimum bid, thus generating a good return on investment, and it prevents competitors from achieving listings above or next to your listing. Bid on lower value search terms The search term suggestion tools rank keywords on number of searches they have received for them in previous month. Always bid on those keywords that generate low levels of traffic, as they will often require a very low bid to ensure top position. Whilst volume of traffic might be low, conversion is likely to be much higher than for most popular phrases.
| | Has Google Lost the Plot?Written by Courtney Heard
With help of MSN, recently I’ve been reminiscing about Google of old. Remember those days? When you could take a good quality site, add a few keywords, get a few incoming links and bada-bing, bada-boom, it’d be #1 on Google? Remember old days, pre-Florida, pre-sandbox? The days when we, as search engine optimization specialists, didn’t feel like a private schoolgirl smoking in bathroom? When we didn’t feel like iron fist would come crashing down at any moment? Yes, those were good old days. And MSN has finally brought them back, though on a much smaller scale.Google hit it right on nose back then. Search results were almost never irrelevant - venturing to second page of results was an event that drew gasps. There was never, ever any reason to leave Google and search for same query on another search engine. Satisfied users world over, it was search engine of choice almost everywhere searches were conducted. I myself never strayed from Google, I was loyal and I was rewarded for my loyalty with consistently relevant results. But has Google taken their quest for perfection a few steps too far? Case in point: http://www.jimmylerner.com - this web site is official site of an author. Search on MSN for his name, “jimmy lerner” and his web site is top result. Now, try same search on Google. The top results are pages devoted to reviewing his book, book stores selling his book, a press release I sent out to announce his new site and a few times I’ve even seen sites show up in top ten that simply have a link to his site from theirs and are completely unrelated. His site has been jumping from second page to first and back again.
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