Pay Per Click Online Positioning
There are two issues that arise when it comes to pay per click online positioning. The first is what sites to use and the second is how to place your ads.
The first issue you face is what sites to place ads on. There are literally thousands of them out there. I’ll be honest. Three really matter – Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN. These are the big three search engines that control most of the traffic out there. Google and Yahoo are far more important than MSN. Still, these three form the cornerstone of most campaigns.
While the big three search engines are vital, there can be exceptions to the rule. This occurs if you offer a product or service in a very specific niche. If there are smaller search engines or sites that specialize in your niche and allow paid advertising, you probably should investigate them. There are a zillion specialty search engines, so take the time to look around for them.
Let’s assume you’ve signed up with the big three. The question now is how to position your ads. This is done through a bidding process. The more you bid for each click, the higher you appear in the ad listings. Unfortunately, the search engines no longer show you how they figure this out. They do a mysterious grading process that takes into account the quality of your site pages and the conversion rate of traffic into sales. This means bidding a bundle per click will not necessarily get you to the top of the rankings. You need to play around with the copy on your site and the text in your ads to find a happy medium.
So, we’ve figure it out, right? Umm, no. You also have to take into account your return on investment. Getting $1,000 in sales through your PPC campaign is great, but not if you spend $2,000 to do so. You have to keep an eye on your return on investment. To do this, figure out your conversion rate [how many visitors turn into sales] and the cost per click you can afford given that rate and still make a profit. This number should be represented as a dollar amount per click. It might be 10 cents, 29 cents or more. It depends on the profits from your product or service and conversion rate.
Pay per click online positioning seems simple at first, but it actually fairly complex. You need to test your ads repeatedly and watch your return on investment like a hawk. If you don’t you can quickly run out of money and have a bad experience.