Website Traffic: Getting The Right Visitors
People talk incessantly about - gaining more website traffic - but they rarely mention that a site really needs targeted website traffic. The only way to have a successful site is to court targeted website traffic — or people who keep coming back to your site, visiting one page after another.
Targeted website traffic includes people who are actually interested in what your site offers. They have been -targeted- for that very reason. For example, when you look at a book ad on Amazon.com, they show you books other people bought who also liked the one you were looking at. That’s because it is reasonable to assume that if you’re interested in the first one, you’ll be interested in others like it. They are targeting a fantasy fan for their fantasy books, instead of trying to sell them to random people. That is what you need to do as well.
Now, targeted website traffic doesn’t mean guaranteed traffic — just a strong possibility of more website traffic. You don’t want to lure anyone and everyone to your site. Internet loiterers take up space.
Randomly luring people is the difference between displaying magazines for people to leaf through or snagging a loyal customer who returns to buy each month.
The starting point for building traffic is to look at the keywords that you’re using on your site and then see what keywords visitors are using to search. Words are the starting point for any internet search. If someone wanted to find soft dice they could hang from the rear view mirro in their car then they will type related words into a search engine.
This is why you’ll often hear internet marketers talking about ‘getting inside the head of the prospect’. What would they type into a search engine in order to find fuzzy dice? Would it be “car dice”, “furry dice”, “soft hanging dice”? Or some other variation that you’ve never thought of? Picking the right keywords is about improving your chances of success.
So what else are you selling along with your fuzzy hanging rearview mirror car dice? You can’t get targeted website traffic if you don’t know who you’re targeting, so figure out just what kind of site you have. Should car dice should be sold at a car accessories site, a weird gifts site, or a kitsch site? They should be sold on a site that has other merchandise that will appeal to the fuzzy dice people-like fuzzy steering wheel covers, or even animal print clothing, if it’s a retro shop. That approach will get you more website traffic.
Nobody can give you guaranteed traffic. Internet traffic is like the stock market — you can make predictions, but you can’t always know for sure whether the risk will pay off. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t significantly improve your odds of getting more website traffic by going after targeted website traffic. Go after the people who want what you have and, believe me, you will see some results.
The Benefits of the Top PPC Services
There are a multitude of PPC services that you could choose from if you’re starting a campaign. Yet, there are only a few real choices for a serious campaign. This is because of one reason - volume.
So what services are in the top tier of PPC (pay per click)? The industry leaders are Google and Yahoo, with Google AdWords claiming the lion’s share of the PPC market. Both Yahoo and Google offer a similar compliment of features, and either can be used to manage a very successful PPC campaign. So what differentiates the two? Well, if you are looking to run a very large-scale pay per click campaign, then Google is the most logical choice. The number of potential customers in the Google enterprise is staggering when compared directly against the leading other search engine services.
Yahoo’s search marketing service has many of its own merits, and can work very effectively for a campaign that doesn’t require its owner to completely dominate their particular industry. Many people choose to use both Google and Yahoo, creating a campaign that incorporates both of these top PPC services. For someone with a larger budget, this can be a very effective way to maximize reach.
While Google and Yahoo are the top PPC services out there, many other exist such as MSN and Ask Jeeves (ask.com) to name a couple. Either of these would also be an effective way to run a smaller campaign. And, because these services are not as competitive as the top PPC services, it is actually possible to get a lower CPC (cost per click) on similar search terms, and to increase the efficiency of each conversion. The biggest drawback, though, is a smaller potential customer base. These smaller services simply cannot compete with the astronomical numbers of Google and, to a lesser degree, Yahoo.
In truth, almost all of the PPC services you can choose from offer very similar features and benefits. There is a standard across the PPC industry, and most services comply tot his. But as Google and Yahoo are very large media companies, they have developed very smooth systems that are bug-free and streamlined. But what really separates the top PPC services is simply volume. Google does more customer volume than all the other PPC services combined. Yahoo is a solid (though distant) second place. Both of these campaigns can be used on a large-scale basis, while the other services are perhaps better suited for smaller, more specified PPC campaigns.
Four Easy Way To Manage Your AdWords Campaign
It seems like every day the bid pricing on Google AdWords is getting more and more competitive. While this is true to a degree, the potential effectiveness of an AdWords campaign has also never been greater. If you haven’t had much experience with Google AdWords campaign management, then you may want to remember these four simple AdWords management strategies for your next foray into the world of PPC advertising.
Before you can even start to run an effective campaign, you need to carefully choose relevant keywords. These, after all, will form the backbone of your campaign. Don’t just arbitrarily add keywords to create a broader potential consumer base. And, don’t use a relevant keyword generator unless it really is generating effective keywords. Remember that you only want clicks that will turn into sales. Empty clicks just means money down the drain.
The next thing you should take into consideration is your bid placement. It is a smart strategy to bid for the first page, but not for the first spot. Why is this? If you bid for the top spot, you are going to get a lot of wasteful clicks form people who aren’t really sure what they are looking for. So, if you are looking to generate brand awareness, this can be an effective strategy. But, if your margins are very critical, bidding for the top spot is a good way to get lower-quality leads and ultimately erase your margins.
The next tip you should think about when conducting your AdWords campaign is the necessity of monitoring and testing your keywords. Failing to do so for even a few days can spell disaster for your campaign. Because PPC advertising is an auction-type marketplace, the profitability of your keywords can go form high to low based on the actions of just one of your competitors. Additionally, a keyword that was very profitable the month before can become overly saturated and your margins can disappear without you realizing it. Make sure you keep on top of your campaign by continually monitoring and testing on a weekly or even daily basis.
The final AdWords management strategy you may want to consider is placing ads on relevant websites instead of just on SERPs. These bids can be priced by the click or as gross impressions. Paying by the impression is a great way to get bargain deals on ad listings. And since users are already browsing for products or services relevant to your own, they will still be targeted customers.
By implementing these four easy solutions, you can increase your chances of success in the PPC industry. Good luck.
Pay Per Lead vs. Pay Per Click
If you are like a lot of companies dependent on client leads to keep afloat, you may be noticing a trend from some of the lead generation companies out there. Not only are the leads expensive, but they aren’t as strong as they used to be. We are hearing this again and again from our clients who are shifting their budgets to crank up the stronger quality pay per click search leads.
Many lead gen firms use pay per click (PPC) search to attract their leads. Once they have a lead, they will ship it out to a variety of vendors, charging each the same fee. If you are seeing your leads get more saturated, it might be time for you to go right to the source instead of letting the middle men do that for you.
Getting into PPC advertising is not as simple as it used to be. Sure, you can set up a website with some contact info, but the competition has gotten more sophisticated in recent years. In order to really compete and push down your cost per acquisition, you’ve got to throttle up your effort and skills.
One thing we continually preach to clients is the importance of fine tuning every aspect of your online lead pipeline.
The first place to begin is with your pay per click ad copy. It’s fairly easy to place an ad and launch it. However, the pay per click engines are putting more emphasis than ever on “Quality” algorithms. If you are unable to make the daily effort to test your ad copy, you are going to fall behind those that do. A good PPC management company will run daily split tests for their clients. This is who you are up against more and more these days — experts who double and triple the click through rates of their clients’ ads.
Maybe that doesn’t sound important, but it is. Doubling and tripling your quality traffic can do the same for your number of leads. And, it can lower your costs per click in the process.
But don’t stop there, look at your landing pages (the pages where you send your pay per click traffic). Are the contact forms too busy or too buried? Is your phone number buried? There are ton of things you can do to convert leads at a higher rate.
If you can optimize your landing pages over time, you can now take that traffic and double or triple your lead conversions. We’ve seen it time and time again. So, put in the effort, it is worth the time.
If you don’t know where to start when it comes to Pay Per Click search, hire a PPC management company. They will develop keyword lists, find keywords from your competition, advise you on some ideas for your landing pages and conduct those daily split tests.
So, consider getting rid of the saturated lead gen services and heading for the source. The results can be dramatic.
Three Helpful PPC Bid Management Techniques
When it comes to PPC (pay per click) advertising, it seems like the marketplace is getting continually more saturated and competitive, making it harder than ever to run a cost-effective campaign. This is true to some extent, but there are still ways to run a campaign that gets great ROI. Here are a few PPC bid management techniques you can utilize to do just that.
First, don’t outbid your own budget. Just because there is a bidding war going on doesn’t mean you have to get caught up in it. Remember that if you spend more to get customers than the profit you earn by converting them on the backend, your entire campaign is not only a waste of time, it’s actually a waste of money also. It is much better to have fewer clicks and get them at a price where you can achieve ROI (return on investment) then to get caught up in a bidding war you can’t win. Plus, with fluctuations in the PPC market, just try to ride the low waves, and avoid the high waves.
The next thing you should do is forget about what ranking you are on a SERP (search engine results page). Bid an amount that you can afford, not for the spot you want. If you are in the top spot or the fifth spot, it doesn’t really matter. It is a good idea to try and get on the first page if you can, but beyond this you shouldn’t worry about it too much. Also, consider this: people click on the top spot without even thinking about it too much. This will lead to many clicks that have no chance of turning into conversions, drastically lowering your conversion rate and reducing your margins. Only bid for the top spot if you are the dominant player in your respective industry - or you wish to obtain this title, and realistically have the resources to do it.
Also, there is a technique called bid jamming that you might want to try. Basically, some PPC services have a visible bid system, meaning you can see the bids of all your competitors. Something you may not know is that your competitors don’t pay the price they bid for each click, but instead pay one cent higher than their next closest competitors bid. If you bid one cent lower than your next competitor, it will force him/her to pay full price for the bid, something that is hard to keep up for long.
These are some basic bid management techniques that can help you maximize ROI with your PPC advertising campaign. Remember that patience can go a long way to maximizing the efficiency of your PPC campaign. Don’t be afraid to wait for your moment, and then seize it when it comes.
PPC Management Services UK
Using some highly concentrated online marketing PPC campaign is a great strategy for improving sales in the UK. But occasionally the necessary time to manage a PPC campaign is just too much to handle without some outside help. If you reach this point, there are several available PPC management companies in the UK that offer varying types of campaign management service. This article talks about what they offer.
When a company offers PPC campaign management, they are usually offering to do 3 things for you. First, they will do a careful keyword analysis for keyword and keyword phrases related to your industry. Most access similar information to do this, and therefore will draw up similar results. The PPC management UK company will attempt to create the best possible mix of high-volume keywords and very targeted keywords, giving your campaign some diversity and, ultimately, giving it the best chance for success.
The next thing that most PPC management companies UK will offer is an ad writing service. Though this varies based on the company, most reputable PPC management companies will afford you this option for an additional fee. By writing different text ads for each keyword group, they should be able to increase the relevance of your ads, and subsequently increase the amount of clicks you get. And by providing a more specific ad, your clicks-to-sales conversion rate will likely improve once customers arrive at your sales page.
The third main feature of PPC management companies is the monitoring of your campaign. This means that they will track detailed statistics of your campaign’s progress and report these numbers back to you, along with suggestions for new strategies if they are needed. This is the most valuable service to many people who use PPC management because it is time consuming.
After taking these factors into consideration, you should determine if a PPC management service is a good fit for your needs. If you are conducting a smaller campaign, it will probably not be cost-effective to hire out a professional service. With a larger campaign, it may be worth it to save yourself valuable time. And, on a larger scale, you have a greater chance of offsetting these costs with increased margins. It is important to remember that a PPC management UK company will charge you for setting up your campaign, and then take a percentage of your monthly budget. If you can’t afford this double billing, then it may be best to run your own PPC campaign - something that is very doable.
