The goal for search engine optimization is to rank for free within the organic search results for your target keywords. In contrast, with pay-per click (sometimes called search engine marketing or SEM)your goal is to pay for placement by competing with other advertisers for ranking within the sponsored results section.
With organic listing there is no charge when someone clicks your listing, but you are charged every time someone clicks your PPC listing. These are the listings that are designated as sponsored listings and appear above and to the right of the organic search results.
No matter how successful your SEO success you should also use PPC as a primary method to promote your site. Research actually indicates that having both a sponsored listing and a high organic ranking greatly increases the credibility of your site resulting in an increased result in contrast to either on their own.
You should think of the search results page as real estate. A powerful strategy is to get your site onto that piece of property as many times as you can!
The largest (and most popular) PPC platform is Google Adwords. But, before you open an Adwords account and start spending money, you should familiarize yourself with the various components of Adwords. Google offers a number of free online resources in which to acclimate yourself. I strongly recommend taking advantage of those resources.
Every major PPC engine allows you to target your ads in a number of ways. One of the most common approaches is called “geo-targeting”, a method which allows you to display your ads in specific geographic regions. This is especially effective for local businesses, allowing the ability to test different markets.
Another popular form is called dayparting. This involves showing your ads only during specific times of the day or week. You may find that your conversion slips during certain times or days. Dayparting technology allows you to tell the search engine what time or day of the week you want your ads to run. This will cause your ads to pause during times you select.
Writing effective ad copy, setting effective bid strategies, and using keyword matching options are all important components of a successful PPC campaign. You can draft multiple ads for your campaign. The search engines will then perform tests on each of your ads, serving the ads with the greatest click through rate the most often. This is why writing effective ad copy is so important. You need to use compelling language separating your ads from the competition and (hopefully) enticing people to click.
Intimidated yet? Well there are also keyword matching options which determine the level of specificity necessary to trigger your ad. Conversion tracking, PPC efficacy, ROI. The best way to think about Adwords is that of a stock trading floor. Bid prices go up and down every second. Ad placement is determined not only by bid price, but a complex formula incorporating an assigned quality score that determines the quality of your ad and your landing page. This is a strategy best designed for a computer to monitor which can make billions of calculations on the fly and make adjustments in realtime.
It is for this reason that Wikimotive does not offer PPC management. Of course, it can be done manually, but I believe that if a business owner is going to invest their hard earned money on an advertising strategy, they should get the best possible return on investment.
There is a company that offers highly advanced software to manage PPC across all major search engines. You can contact Wikimotive for more details.
In the next article I’ll discuss Quality score optimization. Thanks for taking the time to learn your craft. Please comment and REMEMBER: There are no stupid questions.