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Apr 21
PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING FOR COMPLETE BEGINNERS PART 3
By Comments
So here's the third and final instalment (for now at least) on
pay-per-click advertising for beginners. I'm sure it won't be my last
ever post on this subject though, as PPC is such a fascinating and
fast-moving area. In the previous posts I explained how you find what
customers are looking for and how to write ads to attract them to your
site. Now we look at what happens once they click your ad and arrive
there.
I have stressed the importance before of showing something that's
relevant to your potential customer. And the need for relevance
doesn't end just because they're now on your site. One of the biggest
mistakes that new advertisers make is to send everyone to their
homepage or some other generic page on their site. These are probably
the same advertisers I talked about in my earlier posts who only want
to write one generic ad because it would take so long to write one
for each product.
Each ad, must go to a relevant "landing page". Some companies will
build specific landing pages especially for their PPC campaigns, but
often you will find that a page already exists on your site that is
relevant enough.
Either way, you must provide a highly relevant page for people to
arrive at, and the more relevant the better. To continue the example
from earlier posts, let's say you're trying to sell LCD TVs. If
someone keys in "LCD TV", send them to a summary page of all your LCD
TVs. If they use a brand name too, such as "Samsung LCD TV" send them
to a page of all your Samsung LCD TVs - simple, but you often see it
done wrong, and people I've dealt with can't believe the difference it
makes when they do it right.
First time advertisers often cling to the misguided notion that "it
doesn't matter if they go to the homepage, they can still find what
they want easily in a few clicks". Yes, they probably can, but why
make them when you could send them straight to what they want? And if
you think "it's just a few clicks, let them look for what they want"
then consider this - they could find a whole lot more options with
just one more click..of the 'back' button!
If you don't show people what they want quickly, they can go back
to Google where they will see all your competitors' ads and the
chances are that their ads will link to highly relevant landing
pages. A lot of people really are that impatient online, believe me.
Don't forget that people buy things online simply because they expect
it to be quicker and easier, so make sure it is.
Just remind yourself of one thing - if people are on your site from
your AdWords ads, then you have paid to get them there - so isn't it
worth going to the effort of making the site easy for them to use? If
you don't think it is then maybe you'd be better off saving your
advertising money in the first place.
And it's not just for your customers' benefit that you want highly
relevant landing pages. Google will treat you better if your pages
match well with your keywords and the wording of your ads.
They award your ads a "Quality Score". The relevance of your
keywords, ads and landing pages are considered by Google, as is your
clickthrough rate when working out your Quality Score. There are other
factors involved too, but Google keep tight-lipped about those!
If your Quality Score is high, you will pay less for clicks. If for
example your score is 20% higher than that of a competitor, you will
pay around 20% less for the same ad position. So it really does pay to
have a good quality campaign, and landing pages are a key part of
that. Once you're set up on AdWords, you can see and monitor your
Quality Score for every single keyword in your account.
So, you now know the basics of how to set up and run a Google
AdWords pay-per-click account. Follow these basics and you'll be well
on the way to success with AdWords.
Categories : , , Comments Apr 21
PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING FOR COMPLETE BEGINNERS - PART 2.5
By Comments
Well well well, where did those two months go eh?
This blog was probably starting to look like one of those that gets
abandoned after 3 posts, but I am now back from an exceptionally busy
period and posting again.
Part 3 of the series on Pay per click advertising for beginners will
follow this week, but before I do that, I need to talk about something
that I totally overlooked in my last post - shame on me!
That something is "negative keywords". I've explained already that
getting a high Clickthrough Rate (or CTR) for your ads is vital, and
negative keywords are something that can really help achieve this.
Whatever your product is, there are probably lots of keyword
phrases you can think of to use for your campaigns. However, there
will be some people who use those keywords and phrases, that don't
want your product (or don't want to buy or pay for it).
If you could screen some of those timewasters out and stop them
seeing your ads, that would push your clickthrough rate up and you'd
only lose traffic from people that weren't interested anyway.
So how do you screen these people out? That's where negative
keywords come in. They are words that you want to exlcude from your
campaigns. So to continue our example of a retailer selling LCD TVs,
you might find that some people are looking for a free TV, or they
might want to find a competition where they can win one, or you might
want to exclude people who use words like 'used'. If this is the case
you simply add 'win', 'free' and 'used' as negative keywords. Then if
anyone searches with a term containing one of your search terms,
combined with any of those negative keywords (eg "used LCD TV"), your
ad will not show. That's a good thing because timewasters either click
your ad (costing you more, when they're not really interested) or
ignore it (which keeps your CTR down, making your ads more expensive
in the long run).
Here's another example - I once managed a campaign for a
reflexologist in Yorkshire. A lot of people search for reflexology
because they want to learn how to do it, so I used words like 'learn',
'course', 'college', 'training' etc as negative keywords, so anyone
keying in "reflexology course yorkshire" for example, did not see the
ad.
Adding negative keywords is really simple once you're set up on
AdWords. You simply add them to your keyword list, preceded by a minus
sign and AdWords will screen out any searchers using those words.
The benefits of using negative keywords are twofold - firstly they
cut out the number of timewasters that end up on your site, which cuts
your click costs. And secondly, because fewer people see your ad they
will increase your CTR, which over time could reduce what you pay for
your good quality traffic.
Findng them is pretty simple too - you can probably brainstorm a few
to start with, and you can also use the to help find more. Simply
key in a general keyword phrase and the tool will give you a list of
other keywords to consider. By looking through the suggestions, you
might spot some that would be used by people who wouldn't be
interested in your product, so you can add those as negative keywords.
Next post will be here by the end of the week and it will look at
what happens after someone clicks on your ad. Watch this space, and
thanks for reading.
Categories : , , Comments Feb 20
PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING FOR COMPLETE BEGINNERS - PART 2
By Comments
So here's part 2 on PPC for beginners. Last time I told you what
Google AdWords could potentially do for your business, and now you
just need to understand how AdWords works before you jump in and start
setting up some ads.
The one thing you must know is that to succeed in AdWords, it's all
about RELEVANCE right through from beginning to end. Sounds obvious,
but bear with me - a lot of advertisers make basic errors which cost
them a lot, and I'm going to explain them here.
Let's use an example - we'll say you're an online store selling
electrical goods - TVs, DVDs, MP3 players, and all sorts of other
things. Your site carries hundreds of products which can be viewed by
category (such as TV or audio) or by brand, and each product has its
own page.
Step 1 - Keyword Research
And now let's say someone is looking for an LCD TV. For argument's
sake, let's say they don't know what brand they're looking for just
yet. You need to find what most people will key in to Google when
they're looking for an LCD TV. You have to get your keyword research
right, as that forms the foundation of your whole campaign. There
could be many different terms used for essentially the same thing, and
you need to find ones that enough people use.
There may be some nerds out there that search for "liquid crystal
diode television receiving equipment", but let's face it, most terms
will include the words "LCD TV". There will be many variations though
and you need to find the best ones for you.
To find out what terms people are searching on, you can use -
you can try it out free before buying it, and it's great at
recommending alternative search terms that you may not have thought
of. If money's tight, the is a great free alternative. You simply
key in some phrases you're thinking of using and it shows you how many
times a month that term gets used. It also suggests lots of other
terms for you, and shows you the stats for those terms too.
Take the time to research a good long list of search terms. This
might include terms with "LCD TV" combined with a manufacturer's name,
eg "Sony LCD TV". If you have a great price on a specific item, don't
be afraid to use a really product specific term eg. "Sony XYZ123 LCD
TV 32 inch" - a few people do use such terms! You could use other
attributes in your keyword terms like "cheap LCD TV" (provided you are
cheap that is - you'll soon be found out if you're not so check your
competitors if you use words like "cheap" or "best deal"). And you can
still use some fairly generic terms such as "LCD TV".
Step 2 - writing ads
Your next step is to write some ads to go with each keyword or
keyphrase. Now this is where some people get it badly wrong. First
time advertisers might just write one ad and show everyone that one
ad. In extreme cases, they might have one ad saying "great deals on
electrical products" and everyone would see it - regardless of whether
they wanted a new toaster or a full home cinema system!
If your customers use a lot of different search terms, you will need
a lot of different ads. That means more time spent writing ads than a
lot of people realised, but it's worth it, because your ads will work
better that way.
Many first time advertisers don't write lots of ads like this. Why?
Because they think "it doesn't matter if my ads don't get clicked on,
because then I don't pay anything anyway" - but they're missing the
point.
You need to write ads that get clicked on regularly if you want good
results. Let me explain it from Google's perspective - Google only
makes money when ads get clicked on. So if the page is full of ads
that don't get clicked, Google won't make money (and you probably
know that Google makes serious money!).
AdWords doesn't just favour advertisers that bid high, because if
the ad doesn't get clicked, your high bid is irrelevant. Google also
takes click through rates in to account when determining how
high your ad appears, because that's how they make money. Here's an
example:
Advertiser 1 bids £5 per click and gets a 1% clickthrough rate. On
average that means that Google will earn 5p each time that ad is
shown (£5 x 1%)
Advertiser 2 bids only £2 per click but gets a 3% clickthrough
rate. So, Google makes an average of 6p each time that ad is shown
(£2 x 3%), and it's this advertiser that gets the best treatment from
Google, despite a much lower bid.
So now you know why it's so important to write lots of really
tightly focused ads - not ones that are a bit like what they keyed in
to Google, but ones that hit the nail right on the head!So if someone
keys in "Samsung LCD TV" and they see a generic ad saying "Home
Electronics", it isn't good enough.
Your ad will probably by surrounded by more targeted ads, and they
will get the traffic instead of you if yours is too general. If your
ads run for a while and hardly get any clicks, Google may even stop
showing them altogether.
So, if you don't have time to write lots of different ads, then just
write one highly relevant one for one product, and add more for other
products as and when you get time. That will get you further than
writing one general, untargeted ad.
So now you know how to search for keywords and that you need to
write ads to match them. Next you need to think about what happens
"after the click", which I'll cover in the next post.
Categories : , , Comments Feb 09
PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING FOR COMPLETE BEGINNERS - PART 1
By Comments
Pay per click advertising (or PPC for short) is not new - has been
around since 2000. For that very reason, you may find it hard to
find out how to get started, as nowadays many blogs and articles
about PPC assume you have some knowledge of it already.
If you're in this position, I'll tell you enough to get started. For
the sake of simplicity, these posts are all based on Google AdWords
for two simple reasons - firstly, Google is the biggest search engine
accounting for roughly two thirds of all online searches, and secondly
because I don't know the others well enough to write about them in
such detail. You should keep in mind though that there are other ad
platforms such as and .
Before I get in to the specifics in later posts, let's see what
PPC can do for your business:
* FIND CUSTOMERS THAT WANT WHAT YOU OFFER - other types of advert
interrupt people from what they're really trying to do, but AdWords
ads will be seen by people in the process of looking for something.
* GET STRAIGHT ON TO PAGE 1 OF GOOGLE - if you can't wait months or
years to achieve good search engine rankings in the normal search
results, AdWords is one way to get on to page 1 of Google quickly.
* FIND PEOPLE IN YOUR AREA - many new advertisers think "but the
whole world uses Google and I only want local people". But in
fact AdWords can be used to target very local searchers. You simply
give your address and choose a radius of X number of miles from your
address, and your ads will only appear to searchers living within that
range. Google knows people's location from the IP address of their
computer.
* CONTROL YOUR BUDGET - AdWords not only lets you choose how much
you're prepared to pay for each click, it even lets you set budgets
for the day or month, so the costs needn't run out of control.
* FLEXIBLE TIMESCALES - An AdWords campaign can be set up in
minutes (though it pays to take time to learn how it works first, so
keep an eye on this blog) and can be stopped in seconds if you've got
enough enquiries already. You can even schedule your ads to appear at
certain times of day, for example just during your office hours.
* LOW-RISK MARKETING - if you wanted to advertise in a
newspaper or magazine, or use direct mail, the upfront costs could
be huge, with no certainty of any return. AdWords on the other hand
can be set up with just a few pounds (or dollars), and could even
end up costing you nothing at all, if no-one clicks on your adverts.
It's a great way to dabble, without committing to spending a lot.
So, these are the main advantages of Google AdWords, and that
should be enough to at least give you an idea of whether or not they
could help your business.
In my next post, I'll tell you a few basics of how AdWords works, to
enable you to get the best out of it.
Categories : , , Comments Feb 04
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