Why do I need to establish a Pay Per Click program?

April 9th, 2008

intro

This month, in "good to know" we expand on the topic of PPC (Pay Per Click) and take a look at why PPC is an important ingredient in your online marketing plan... a topic which is truly "good to know".

What would you like to hear about? Click here to send us your thoughts and requests. We are always interested in what you have to say!

As always, you can get the latest info by checking out our website: Pepperstation.com.

Enjoy!

what's new

Spirit 3.4

We recently added a new flavor of navigation called "list method". This new style takes advantage of CSS standards and HTML <li> tags to create great looking navigation links for your site.

You can check out a simple example on a site we recently created at: jwrigleyvineyards.com. This site also has a cool photo gallery worth checking out, powered by jQuery. We love the look and feel of this type of gallery which is easy to work with.

Recordit 2.5

We are happy to announce the release of a new version of Recordit! This release focuses on the administrator, and introduces several new features that make it even easier to search and view your records and files.

Take a tour of Recordit by viewing a screencast of the new admin tool.

latest news

visit our blog to get the latest: blog.pepperstation.com.

good to know

In every issue, we provide you proven ways to make your website, email marketing, and promotion activities more effective. Today, we expand on the topic PPC and why this is an important component of your online marketing efforts...

Why do I need to establish a Pay Per Click program?

By Morella

Paid Search; a strong trend that's here to stay

PPC, currently the number one online advertising method, is one of the most quick, effective ways to promote your business online (spending is forecasted at $12 Billion in 2008). PPC advertising allows you to immediately buy a better position in the search engine results.

Paid or "sponsored" ads appear at the top or along the side margin and receive precedence over organic listings. These paid positions draw 50% of the clicks! So even if you are performing well organically, you are potentially losing a fair share traffic to sponsored listings.

Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing are the two leaders in pay per click services. Their setup is pretty simple, both offer easy to follow tutorials, great help docs and analytical tools that will help you target your key words and manage your campaigns.

Getting started

Step 1: Choose key words related to the products and services your site promotes. Write a small ad for each term that will display in the search results and make sure your ads link to the proper site pages:

Create several ad variations. Ad variations are multiple versions of an ad for a single product or service, all based on the same set of keywords. Variations are a good way to test many versions of the same message to see which works best with potential customers.

Step 2: Set your daily budget and the maximum cost each time your ad is clicked. You are charged only when someone clicks on your ad, not each time it is displayed.

Step 3: Once your ads start to run, measure and optimize your results. You will quickly see which terms are working, how many conversions you receive and how your daily budget is spent.

The following shows Google results for two ads, one of which has dramatically out-performed the other. The next step is to remove or alter less productive ads and improve upon high performers.

Both Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing programs provide you with a ton of data and thorough reports. This rich information will allow you to effectively manage your campaigns which is essential to increasing and maintaining the highest level of performance.

Online marketing contains many angles

The most important tip we can pass along is that your online marketing campaign should be split between organic search marketing, PPC marketing, and other mediums of advertising on the Internet.

TIP! Expanding your reach with search engines.

By Morella

Increase your visibility with additional domain names

There are many benefits to hosting multiple domain names, all of which promote your site being found more readily. Here are our domain tips:

• Add regional domains - if your product or service is focused on a certain region, incorporate it into your domain. Add your region name and or key word to the additional domain and point it at your main site.
• Account for typos - add domains that contain common misspellings of your domain name.
• Create multiple entry points - add domains that focus on the sub-products your site offers. For example, a nursery site with sub pages for cacti, drought tolerant plants and landscape design should add domains that point in to those specific pages. This can be achieved by creating individual landing pages (search engines love these!). The domain name can be a similar version of the main domain or completely different, including key words.
• Secure all of your top level domains. It is a good idea to own the .com, .net, and .org version of your domain. Consider purchasing the .info. .us and .biz versions too.

In May... Organically optimizing your web pages!