Archive for the ‘Pay Per Click’ Category

During conversations with web business professionals about pay-per-click search engines, “traffic volume” is always a hot topic. Over the last year or so, Google Adwords has emerged as the pay-per-click (PPC) search engine most enamored for driving “traffic volume”.

Indeed, with Google Adwords providing paid listings for Google Search, the #1 search engine in the world, as well as American Online (e.g. AOL), Ask Jeeves and MySearch.com, the fourth, fifth, and seventh spots, respectively, for the most popular search engines per a 2004 study by Neilson/NetRatings, it deserves strong recognition.

However, successful web marketers understand that “driving traffic volume” is only a means to an end – the “end” being website conversion.

Website conversion is when a visitor takes action (ideally your most wanted action) on your website after clicking through your ad. It is important because it leads to financial results for your web business and generates a return on your advertising spend (ROAS).

Every web business consists of unique characteristics created by their market demographics, psychographics and product/service benefits. A PPC search engine that generates visitors who convert well for one web business may fail miserably for another. Therefore, when developing your PPC strategy consider the search engines’ “usage demographics.”

Usage demographics are the profiles of Internet users who prefer one search engine over others based on their perceived functionality, content, and search result placement and relevance. By understanding usage demographics for the search engines Google Adwords and Overture supply paid listings to, a web marketer can develop a relevant message and target an ad placement that most effectively connects and converts their most qualified buyers.

Although Google Adwords and Overture’s partner networks consist of thousands of content and search-based websites, the highest percentage of their traffic originates from the five most popular search engines. Among these, Google Adwords supplies paid listings (i.e. Sponsored Results or Listings) to Google Search, Ask Jeeves and American Online (AOL) while Overture supplies Yahoo! and MSN.

Below are the primary search engine usage demographics to consider when developing your PPC strategy:

A. Gender: Male versus Female

A May 2004 study by Hitwise showed that “55% of women prefer MSN Search while a majority of men favor Google Search”. Yahoo! Search was split even on gender with a greater focus on people 18-34 in age.

A 2004 MarketingSherpa study indicated that MSN’s user profile consisted of time-limited, married females who searched less frequently yet performed greater e-commerce searches. While Google Search was favored by professional males who performed greater news, media, entertainment and education searches with a lesser intent to purchase.

For AOL and Ask Jeeves, AOL is favored by women with less buying intent than MSN Search while Ask Jeeves is preferred by children.

Furthermore, an April 2004 iProspect study uncovered that, “women found paid ads to be more relevant than men did when searching across Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL.”

These statistics are startling when considering their influence on your PPC strategy since women represent roughly 75% of major household purchases and as stated in a Women.com study, control 80% of all purchasing decisions.

B. Relevancy: Paid versus Organic Listings

Another usage demographic to consider for your PPC strategy is “perceived relevancy” of paid versus organic listings. Ads perceived as having greater relevancy lead to higher website conversions.

The iProspect study referenced earlier also discovered that “Internet users are more likely to click on an organic search link on Google, and a paid search result on MSN.” Organic listings on Yahoo! were considered 61% more relevant than paid listings while AOL was split 50/50.

C. Age: Young versus Adult versus Seniors

A third usage demographic to review is age. Preferences among the top five search engines are fairly mixed among age groups; Yahoo! is a strong favorite with 18-34 year olds; while MSN and AOL have a stronger preference among the 35-55+ age group. As stated earlier, AskJeeves is favored by teens and adolescents which is growing in their buying power within American households as stated in a recent BusinessWeek research study.

So what does this all mean for your PPC strategy?

First, it is highly recommended to run Google Adwords and Overture campaigns concurrently using keyword-level tracking systems to determine which PPC search engine generates the most cost effective and best converting visitors. Usage data generated from your website is the best market research.

Second, consider your writing style. By understanding the common characteristics of your customers and writing PPC ads best suited to the search engine’s usage demographics, you will increase your probability of connecting with your audience and improving your website conversion. Also make special note that women have a stronger propensity to buy AND a higher “perceived relevance” for paid listings on MSN Search.

Third, although Google Adwords accesses a larger traffic pool, Overture’s partner network, mainly MSN Search, has the highest perceived relevancy for paid listings and the highest propensity for purchasing. Although counter-intuitive to current conventional thinking, Overture may deliver better “converting visitors” than Google Adwords.

In closing, a greater focus on the search engines’ usage demographics when writing your PPC ads, targeting PPC channels and developing corresponding landing pages will enable your marketing strategy to ultimately achieve stronger financial results for your web business.

Kevin Gold is a writer, speaker and co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Enhanced Concepts specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales through web conversion strategies and ROI-driven search engine marketing. If you want to increase your leads or sales and get, a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” visit http://www.enhancedconcepts.com.

“Todd” was keen to compete in one of the most notoriously difficult categories ? work-at-home. He was smart, earnest, hard-working and keen to make affiliate marketing more than just a part-time endeavor. He had dreams of living on the beach in Mexico and surfing between sessions at the computer.

He had put together a sweet little landing site. He had 20 keyword groups running about 10,000 unique visitors a month. He was spending $5,000 per month on pay per click on sales of $6,000. He was collecting email addresses at a rate of 100/day through an opt-in form. He had placed his Google tracking data on the confirmation page of his subscription form. He had great data he collected daily over the past 4 months. He had calculated his visitor value based on commissions divided by clicks and was bidding accordingly. He was a dream client.

Could I help him?

I was drooling over this one. In this case I was 100% sure I could at least double his profits, and likely triple or quadruple. Why was I so sure?

1) He was tracking sign-ups, not conversions

2) He was selling 22 different items off of one landing page

3) He was calculating his visitor value incorrectly

The first thing I did was turn off his keyword groups one at a time. When I got to his top keyword group, the one with the highest conversion rate, we prepared for a massive drop in commissions. There was only a slight dip.

He was stunned. He had made a simple assumption ? that there would be a correlation between signups and sales. That is, a keyword that produces twice as many signups would likewise produce twice as many sales. But that wasn’t true. We had seen vividly that there were keywords that produced lots of signups but few sales, and visa versa. He was bidding based on wrong data. His finely-tuned Ferrari of a website was, in fact, a peddler’s cart of clanking pots and pans strapped on with little thought to efficiency.

I had him write letters to each of his advertisers, requesting they place his Google tracking code on their Thank You page. That way he could track sales directly. (Important: Place the code in an attachment; email programs can scramble the code.)

Most didn’t answer. Normal. After three failed attempts, I advised him to drop that particular advertiser. Others refused, to which I reply, “Are you nuts?” No one stands to profit more from an efficient affiliate than the advertiser. I recommended that he drop them, too. He did, all but one, which was a big money-maker.

Now that he was actually tracking actual sales, not subscriptions, the guesswork was gone. We began eliminating keywords ? lots of keywords. Advertising costs plummeted. Sales sailed along at the same pace.

But we were not done.

His landing site was very broad, selling over 20 different products, which was find for keyword groups like work-at-home. Yet about half of his Google ads were related to specific product. I had him create mini-landing pages to receive these ads. For example, a keyword group on medical transcription was no longer directed to the main landing page, but to a mini-landing page with info about medical transcription only. This slashed his bounce backs and upped his sales.

Finally, I had him recalculate visitor value for each keyword group. A visitor who came from a search on “free home-business ideas” is worth far less than one who types, “medical transcription.” We adjusted his bids accordingly.

The results? His sales stayed at $6,000 per month, while his advertising costs plummeted to $2,500 per month. His monthly profit had increased 350%, from $1,000 to $3,500. It took about a month to complete the project, and, yes, it was a lot of work, but it was certainly worth it. Best of all, he now had the information he needed to keep the campaign on track as sectors go hot and cold, and keywords get overbid. Whereas his competitors were working in the dark, he understood why and how his site was performing, and why and how it was not.

So let’s review the steps

1)Turn off one keyword group at a time to test assumptions

2)Add tracking to advertiser welcome pages

3)Remove poorly-converting keywords

4)Create mini-landing pages for certain keyword groups

5)Recalculate bids based on visitor value by keyword.

We had taken a campaign that was producing a modest income and transformed it into a juggernaut, without any SEO, all built around pay per click advertising, a hot website and a killer auto-responder sequence. But none of that would have worked without first tracking the keywords that allowed us to find not just any customer, but the right customers.

Michael Hetzer, The Artful Affiliate, is President of Webster Henrietta Publishing. He is an author, consultant and sought-after speaker. He is the founder of a number of services for Internet affiliates, including the training program, “My 1st Google.” You can learn more about Michael Hetzer at:

http://www.michaelhetzer.com/

An unfortunate byproduct of the pay per click advertising business is click fraud. Many people with an online business spend large amounts of money on pay per click advertising only to discover that many of the people clicking on their ads weren’t really interested in their products or services.

Bogus “visitors” to a pay per click ad represent click fraud. This is a serious scam that threatens the viability of the pay per click advertising business which has become enormously profitable for all of the major search engine operators, namely Google, Yahoo/Overture, and MSN.

Click fraud has different twists, but the end result is generally the same. Advertisers are billed for fruitless traffic generated by someone who repeatedly clicks on an advertiser’s ad without any intention of ever buying anything.

The search engine advertising market is currently about $3.8 billion per year and estimates vary widely on how much click fraud is actually going on. Clearly, the search engine operators would like to downplay the extent of this problem. Some industry experts claim that a little click fraud exists but that it is overblown by advertiser paranoia, while others estimate that ten to twenty percent of all clicks are false (made by someone with no legitimate interest in the ad itself).

Virtually everyone involved with pay per click advertising sees click fraud and knows it’s there, but no one is quite sure what to do about it.

Both Google and Yahoo/Overture acknowledge that the click fraud problem exists, but claim improved internal controls will prevent the problem from escalating. Their stated position seems to be that they are concerned about click fraud, but that it is not a material issue so far. Both of them are touting their increasing internal actions aimed at detecting and combating click fraud.

Such reassurances from search engine companies certainly aren’t surprising, given how much they stand to lose if advertisers cut back on advertising spending. The stakes are huge and the search engine companies are actively involved in public relations campaigns. Industry research firm eMarketer expects $7.4 billion to be spent on search engine advertising by 2008, up from only $108.5 million back in 2000.

The incentives for click fraud have increased along with the money devoted to search engine advertising. Advertising on search engines has turned into a fast-spreading craze as more and more marketers have realized substantially higher returns on search engine ads than on more traditional marketing campaigns conducted through print media.

Most pay per click advertisers set a spending limit and once the spending limit is reached, the ads cease to appear in the search results. Click fraud is a very unethical competitive tactic where someone repeatedly clicks on a competitor’s ad until the spending limit is reached and the ad then disappears from the search results. It seems that it’s only a matter of time before some advertisers become so exasperated with click fraud that they file a class-action lawsuit against a major search engine.

The success of search engine advertising has substantially raised prices that advertisers pay for top spots. Unfortunately, these higher prices have turned click fraud into a dark little industry of its own. Some crooks have hired cheap overseas contractors to just sit in front of computers and constantly click on targeted ads and others are developing sophisticated software to help automate and conceal click fraud.

If you use pay per click advertising it would be wise to carefully monitor your traffic to determine if you are the victim of click fraud. In any event, it’s probably safe to say that pay per click advertisers are going to have to accept a certain level of click fraud as just a cost of doing business.

Kirk Bannerman operates his own successful home based business and also coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. For more information visit his website at Proven Work At Home Business

Google stands to lose millions if fraud continues. It is only a matter of time before the current problem of click fraud implodes on Google.

You’ve seen them, there impossible to miss, glaring at you on virtually every page of your favorite website, those little blue boxes that webmasters have become so fond of, the infamous Google Ad’s. Everyone wants to get in on the big bucks action. If you listen to the stories, Google is writing some impressive checks and the temptation will be just to much for the hackers. The target is so obvious.

You see, hackers don’t care who benefits from their efforts as long as “the Man” suffers. For many years now the man has been Bill Gates and Microsoft. Hackers have done everything possible to disable his empire, creating virus after virus just to mess with him, even the US Government got into the act. Now the new giant on the block is Google and the hackers are drooling with anticipation. It is just a mater of time before some genius hacker figures out how to get a spider to do his dirty work and turns loose a new age type of virus, the “clicker bug.”

Here is a quick overview; the search engine advertising market is currently almost $4 billion per year with fraud estimated somewhere in the 5-15% range. The majority of this fraud is done at the search engine listing page level and most is accomplished by hand. The object is to drive up the click counts of a targeted website to use up there budget and consequently disable there ad or better yet get the company (your competition) to remove them entirely.

Both Google and Yahoo/Overture acknowledge that the click fraud problem exists. Their in house experts claim that improved internal controls will prevent this problem from escalating. Their stated position seems to be that they are concerned about click fraud, but that it is not a material issue so far. Given how much they stand to lose if advertisers cut back on advertising spending, this cavalier attitude certainly is surprising. Industry research firm eMarketer expects $7.4 billion to be spent on search engine advertising by 2008. At the current fraud rates that amounts to $750 million, about three quarters of a billion dollars!

Now along comes the “clicker bug” and instead of attacking the case hardened, almost bullet proof, servers of the search engine giant, they crawl the internet and click indiscriminately on 3 or 4 ads per website every night. The clicks would appear harmless and the bugs effort will only generate revenues of $ .25 for the page owners. After all, the object is to take down the man not generate revenue for any given website. The search engines will be so busy guarding the vault against monsters they won’t notice the ants walking away with the refrigerator, but multiply that quarter times the total number of websites available and in just a few days Google could be overwhelmed. The only way to stop it would be to encrypt every ad or employ pattern gif’s like the “who is” pages do.

Grant it the technology is not quite there yet but hackers are some the industries brightest, if a bit deranged, programmers and they will figure it out. If I can think of it they can do it.

Michael Klasno is an Assisted SEO Marketing Specialist and CEO of Net Performance Group Inc. Net Performance specializes in fishing and outdoor website design and marketing. For more internet marketing articles by this author please visit: http://www.netperformancegroup.com/Articles/articles.htm

Starting an ultimately effective pay-per-click campaign is difficult. Although the paid search engines like Google Adwords and Overture (now re-branded as Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions) want you to believe otherwise. A goal of “getting website traffic” is logically appealing since marketers tend to directly associate website traffic to producing website actions like sales, subscriptions and so on. The problem is “all website traffic is NOT created equal.” Just because you receive “traffic” does not mean you will achieve website actions.

For example, if you are selling a real estate course on buying foreclosures and you bid on the keyword “real estate” ? you may receive thousands of website visitors yet not sell a single real estate course. A large percentage of the businesses that come to us for assistance relate their pain from this experience by commenting, “We were getting x,xxx visitors to the website per month and no sales, we can’t figure out why?”

Let me tell you “why?” ? All traffic is not created equal. What this means is that you need to attract visitors (your target market) who are most relevant to your product or service. In the example above, the keyword “real estate” is so general that its relevance is diluted especially for a niche market for a course on buying foreclosures.

You need to actually perform a search for each of your primary keywords and look at the type of websites that rank high in the natural search listings. They have earned (well…in most cases) a high ranking because they are highly relevant to the meaning of the keyword.

A search engine’s mission is to deliver highly relevant search results to their customers. Therefore the natural search results indicate what the search engines believe most effectively satisfies their customer’s expectations when they search on a particular keyword.

Paid search increases the simplicity of “getting website traffic” yet the difficulty lies at the heart of your primary goal – getting actions that drive business growth like sales, subscriptions or contact us form completions. Here lays the challenge not advertised by the paid search engines ? how to generate website actions.

You are faced with a number of real challenges when aimed at achieving website actions from your paid search engine campaign. The challenges focus on two key aspects: the cost you pay per click and the relevancy you present to the click-through. These are important because they affect your business growth in terms of conversion and profitability ? the intersection of website visitors with website actions.

Paid Search ? Bidding Strategies

The first aspect is your cost per click. It is controlled by your willingness to bid and budget a certain amount for an ad placement. All pay-per-click search engines possess unique bidding nuances. However, for the two largest, Google Adwords and Overture do not become fixated on the top bid position. Test how each keyword performs in achieving your primary website actions all the way up to the seventh bid position.

Depending on your product or service, you may be amazed how bid position six attracts less click-throughs but produces more website actions. Or maybe position four generates more actions. Regardless – test, test and test ? the outcome may mean lower costs and higher actions for you.

One tested strategy is to determine the keyword “click price” you are willing to pay using your performance metrics (e.g. your cost per action, conversion rate, value of a buyer and so on) and then search for that keyword on the major search engines where your ad will appear. Check out where each bid position is listed on the search results page.

Recently Overture and Google Adwords have increased their number of displayed results to up to eight “sponsor results” or paid ads on the first page. In some cases, the fourth and fifth or fifth and sixth bid positions will show at the bottom of the first search results page and again at the top, right margin of the page ? in essence two ads for the price of one. Be aware of this strategic opportunity!

Here is another proven strategy that has worked wonders for our clients. In Overture’s direct advertiser center, a marketer only views the top five bid placements. Bid a penny below the fifth bid position to attain the sixth one. Typically, because this bid placement is not “visible” in the marketers’ control panel, you can obtain a great bid placement at a dramatically lower click cost with sustainable or increasing conversion rate.

For example, we set a real estate client’s bid for a high demand / high cost keyword to the sixth bid position and paid $0.59 less than the fifth position and increased actions significantly while drastically reducing their cost per action. Even better, this bid position was sustained for the keyword for over four months! Because it’s under the “radar screen” in the Direct Advertiser Center in Overture and marketers never bothered to view the actual search listing results, we made a killing! If you want to conquer your competition ? follow this strategy.

Landing Page Development

Have you heard of landing pages? If not, you must get familiar with them this week and immediately start implementing them for your paid search campaigns especially your primary and most competitive keywords. Why the sense of urgency? Because highly-relevant landing pages have proven to increase website actions.

In one of many possible examples, a client’s website actions to website visitors’ ratio increased from 0.7% to 10.8% in one month because of implementing and testing different landing pages. That’s a ten times increase! Landing pages work.

So, what are landing pages? Landing pages are simply web pages designed specifically for a keyword or related group of keywords. They are highly relevant to the keyword searched and consistent with your ad’s claim. They immediately focus a visitor’s attention to a primary action. In essence ? landing pages ask your visitors to take an action.

One of the reportedly major reasons why pay-per-click marketing programs fall short of their intended goal is because businesses direct all of their click-throughs to their home page. Since most businesses’ home pages are designed to serve mutliple audiences (i.e. media relations, investors, current clients, potential prospects, customer services, etc.) they do not provide the level of relevancy and consistency expected from the visitor.

If your pay-per-click marketing is not living up to your expectations, consider which web pages you are sending visitors to. Are they relevant and consistent with your pay-per-click ads and keywords? Do they offer too many calls-to-action? Do they “fit” the expectations of the visitor searching on the particular keyword?

For example, are you sending a visitor searching on the keyword “Sony LCD TV” to a web page with twenty varieties of electronic products? An effectively designed landing page would present the visitor a “Sony LCD TV” with customer benefit oriented copy, an immediate “buy now” call to action and all applicable guarantee, shipping, customer service and return policies.

A study conducted in April 2004 by Atlas DMT called “Search Listing URL and Conversion Rate” connected the use of landing pages to their affect on increasing website actions. The study showed the following astounding results?

? Headline of landing page matches keyword = 0.79%.

? Headline of landing page is on Home Page = 6.31%.

? Headline of landing page matches theme of Keyword = 9.28%.

? Headline of landing page matches specifically to Keyword = 11.81%.

The study showed that the more relevant your landing page is to your website visitors, the higher your website actions.

Landing pages also provide an excellent format to “split-test” different relevancy strategies like changing your headline, changing colors or graphical images, and alternating actions to determine which produce the best outcomes. If you are not familiar with split-testing (also called A/B split-testing) then do a little research ? it has emerged in the mainstream as a proven strategy. But a word of caution, don’t get caught up in the scientific application of split-testing. Instead use a simple tool like www.Hypertracker.com and focus on trends ? like are your website actions increasing or decreasing.

Marketing whether online or offline has historically been viewed as a cost of business which breeds simplemindedness. A laggard’s attitude of “why spend the extra time to achieve a positive ROI?” To some degree in the offline world, the complications and costs of tracking campaign results supported this attitude; however, the connectivity of the Internet enables real-time campaign tracking. It allows the extra effort focused on generating positive ROIs to reap significant rewards to those who learn and implement proven and tested strategies.

For your paid search campaigns, do not take the simple road to get more website visitors. Instead take the “road less traveled” to get more website actions. Start implementing landing pages and strategically building a paid search campaign that generates astounding ROIs and conquers your competition. The strategies are now in your hands ? the rest is up to you.

Kevin Gold is a writer, speaker and co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc. Enhanced Concepts specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales through web conversion strategies and ROI-driven search engine marketing. If you want to increase your leads or sales and get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” visit http://www.enhancedconcepts.com

Sure you can. If you will learn how many other people make money online with Adsense, I mean really study how and ask a lot of questions on marketing forums, there is no reason in the world you cannot make money with the Adsense program.

Before starting to develop this opportunity to make money online you need to understand some basic things about Adsense. I will outline some benefits and disadvantages about Adsense here.

Let’s start with the Adsense benefits:

You don’t have to pay a fee to use this program. You can apply for free.

You can join the Adsense program very easy. After you are accepted into the program you just have to paste a bit of code into your pages.

Because of their method to identify what a page is all about you don’t have to spend time finding advertisers, they will place on your page the exact advertisers you need.

If you own a really big network of sites, you don’t have to apply for each of them. Just apply once and use the same code on every site.

And many other benefits but let’s take a look at the disadvantages too:

The biggest disadvantage that most users report is that the stats Google supplies are inadequate. Even if they’re very easy to understand they don’t tell you which ads people are clicking on, or which keywords are involved. That’s very frustrating.

The minimum payout is $100, users that have sites which don’t receive much traffic say that it’s too high. If you plan on doing from adsense a successful business. don’t worry about this.

If you want to display adsense ads you may not display other text based ads on the same page with them. When you apply humans will check your site for approval, if you are rejected just try to understand why they did, fix it and appeal again.

You will never know how much from the amount that advertisers pay you will receive. You will just receive an unknown percentage from that amount.

With this benefits and disadvantages in mind you can now start to learn all the inside secrets of adsense and develop a real online business. You can start doing so by reading about it on major make money online forums, tring to understand all there’s about it many users discuss this topic very deep.

Check out this home based business opportunity and discover new ways to make money online by visiting James Carter’s website http://www.extremeemailprofits.com

Pay-Per click fraud dates back even from the time when Overture was still Goto.com. Only, it wasn’t as serious as it is lately since the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is becoming very popular for getting highly targeted traffic as well as making an affiliate-based commission.

So, what’s pay-per click fraud?

In an ideal world, you and I will pay a fee to a site that offers PPC program and hosts our ads whenever those ads are being clicked by a visitor. The visitor then examines our site and eventually makes a purchase. We make money.

In click-fraud-world as it is nowadays, those clicks that you and I pay for are not coming from potential customers. But from scam artists, automated scripts known as “hitbots”, underhanded competitors, and even affiliates that just click on our ads in order to earn commission offered by the PPC providers. We lose money.

Fraudulent clicks or “click spam” can be defined as any kind of click that occurs with zero possibility for a conversion to occur, or a website visit not being originated by a legitimate user. Fraudulent clicks happen on a regular basis – even more than what we could possibly imagine.

Indiatimes published a shocking article about a mother who gets down to work every evening while holding a baby in her lap. She is clicking on PPC advertisements. She doesn’t care about the ads, but diligently keeps count – it’s $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

“The trend is catching up in India,” – says Goutam Rakshit, chairman, Advertising Council of India – “It’s a numbers game as far as media buying is concerned. And anybody who can manipulate numbers gets the edge. This is unethical, and needs to be curbed.”

John Squire, the vice president for product marketing for Coremetrics, estimated that his company’s clients are spending approximately $10 million a year on fraudulent clicks. They are spending about $10 million on consumers that don’t exist.

How much are you paying for customers that don’t exist?

If you think your PPC campaign funds are depleting due to a fraudulent click activity, affiliate-generated fraudulent activity, or if you are simply suspicious of the traffic that occurs without any increase in sales – then perhaps you need to start getting tougher with your PPC analysis.

You can always ask for refund from the PPC provider running your campaign if you have suspected a fraudulent click activity. But, you won’t get the refund unless you have hard core facts to prove it.

And now, let’s get down to the facts.

1a. On a less technical note, define a unique URL for the sales page that will go through the PPC program. Clone your sales page and save it under a different URL.

If your page is selling vitamins for an example, and lets say your URL is www.hotvitamins.com, save it as www.hotvitamins.com/power. Or, create a sub-domain, such as http://power.hotvitamins.com.

Then, use this “cloned” sales page for your PPC campaign. That way, the only traffic coming to that page is from the PPC website. Only, do not link this new URL to any other website. You want to have 100% pure PPC traffic so you can keep an eye on it.

1b. For more technical people, you can assign unique session id to each of your URLs within your PPC campaigns. I’m seeing both techniques being used.

2. Use a basic log analyzer program to begin to investigate the data on the received clicks, including date, time, referrer, page views, URL, IP, etc. Your webhost should already provide you with a log analyzer program or a “Site Statistics Tool.”

If not, maybe it’s time for you to change your webhost, or you have to install log analyzer software yourself.

What you want to do at this stage is look for anything suspicious. Based on how comprehensive your “Site Statistics Tool” is, at the end of the day you want to be able to capture the IP address from each click.

Then, look at the quantity of the clicks from each IP address, click behavior and click timing. Run a “reverse IP address lookup” to see who is making those clicks.

Basically, you want to be able to gather as many details as possible for each and every click. Whether you will depend on the tool your webhost is providing you, or you will install a software yourself, or you will contract it out, make sure you have the capability of capturing the IP address.

If the IP address was not captured, or cookies were not generated, that’s an indication of clicks being generated by automated scripts known as “hitbots.”

3. Start tracking the conversion ratio. You can choose to track conversions either by using your own conversion tracking system, or by using a third-party conversion tracking tool. There are plenty of low-cost conversion tracking solutions.

In some cases, the services offering to track your clicks will have a sales conversion option available for you. That’s a service you definitely want to get if you don’t want to deal with it yourself.

But, if your sales ratio is very low or even zero, your chances are very high that you’re being bullied by someone. It could as well be the low demand of your product or a high competition, but if you’re getting high amount of traffic from your PPC campaign and low to zero sales, the chances are very high that you could be a victim of click-fraud.

So, what do you do if you suspect that you’re receiving fraudulent clicks on your PPC campaign?

4. Be meticulous – very thorough. Make sure you have data that points to questionable traffic. You have to have evidence of the suspicious clicks. Ensure that you have a legitimate case even if you have to double check your records. The PPC provider will ask you for facts and not an opinion.

5. Carefully document your traffic analysis during your PPC campaign. Document anything related to the campaign – handwritten notes, email exchanges, scribbles, reports, screen shots, etc.

6. Be sure to record every one of the clicks, whether they’re from your server logs or from a third party processor that you might be contracting for this purpose.

7. Document all relevant competitor positioning. Ever since Google changed its policy on PPC ads, there have been various reports on competitors of a same product manipulating Google’s new system.

It’s the people with more technical knowledge manipulating the system for their own good while killing the campaigns of the people with no technical knowledge. They’re not breaking Google’s rules, but they know when to pause their campaign (knowingly) and when to reactivate it again.

8. On the other note, you might want to contact your competitors to see if they’re experiencing click fraud. Your PPC campaign might not be the only one experiencing these fake clicks. Two victims’ cases presented to the PPC provider will make a stronger case.

9. When feeling highly confident that you have a strong case and clear facts that you’ve been a victim of click fraud, contact your PPC account representative and submit your data with a request for refund. Their investigations can, and do take time.

10. Meantime, continue to monitor your click activity and record any additional data.

It’s unfortunate that we have to be so much involved to protect ourselves. We pay for advertising so we can free up our time and let someone else do it. But with the seriousness of PPC “click spam” nowadays …….. you snooze – you lose.

If the PPC providers don’t solve this problem, perhaps there are other ways of bringing highly targeted traffic with less stress.

Steve Dimeck. Author and Publisher. To receive more quality articles such as the one you just read, sign up for Steve’s [TSM] Bulletin at: http://tsmbulletin.ogdteam.com Your next issue of the [TSM] Bulletin is just one click away.

What are Website Conversion Strategies?

Website conversion strategies are marketing and technology efforts focused on increasing your website’s efficiency with turning visitors into prospects or customers. The majority of website conversion strategies involve redesigning your current website and re-writing your website’s copy. However, to build an effective paid search campaign, conversion efforts must also be allocated outside your website and on selecting keywords, re-writing paid ad copy and considering the paid search engines’ user demographic and psychographic profiles.

The process of converting visitors into prospects or customers through a paid search channel starts the moment a person sparks a thought, launches a browser to search and selects a keyword. At that moment, the potential visitor has developed a preconceived expectation to what they are looking for and what they are planning to find. As a marketer, by choosing the right keywords, you begin the process of pulling a qualified search user to your product or service.

After the search user enters their selected keyword, they scan the search engine results page for relevant listings that match their preconceived expectation. By knowing your customers and therefore understanding what potential customers want, your ad copy targets the search user’s expectations and pulls them into a click-through. The click-through transitions a search user to a website visitor.

Your website visitor has followed a “path of consistency” from the keyword they selected to the relevant ad copy they clicked-through. They expect to continue to find equal consistency and relevancy as they land on your website.

For example, let’s imagine a visitor entered the keyword, “silver apple ipod.” They found your “Sponsor Results” ad on Google which stated, “Silver Apple iPod; 32mg, free shipping; $439″ and clicked through to your website.

At this point, the visitor’s expectations have been met with the keyword they selected and the keyword ad copy you displayed in the search results. As they land on your website they expect to find the same consistency and relevancy that led them through the click-through.

Let’s assume you understood the “path of consistency” concept and the visitor landed on your website with a headline stating, “Apple iPod” with clear product specifications including the $439 price, a “silver” color choice option (clearly visible), a free shipping statement (including shipping policy) and other essential e-commerce policies and shopping cart components. The consistency immediately identifiable by the visitor increases their confidence, comfort and commitment to completing their intended action.

Unfortunately, many marketers view paid search as a way to generate traffic versus a way to increase website performance that generates positive financial results. By sending the pay-per-click traffic to a website’s home page, a marketer mistakenly creates a disconnect in the “path of consistency” process.

Using the same example, if a visitor clicks-through an ad stating, “Silver Apple iPod; 32mg, free shipping; $439″ and lands on the home page which promotes hundreds of technology products, the visitor will momentarily feel lost. They expected to find an Apple iPod but now are confronted with the task of searching again for an Apple iPod using the website’s navigational and on-site search architecture. A momentary break in the path of consistency forces the visitor to think, reassess and decide whether to move forward or back-track in search for greater consistency and relevancy from a competing website.

By completing the “path of consistency” from keyword to ad to website the visitor has a greater probability of converting to a customer. As Leonardo Da Vinci stated, “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

This is very similar to the traditional salesmanship strategy of getting the prospect to say “yes” multiple times before asking for the sales close. Your job as a marketer is to get the search user to say, “Yes, that’s what I want” from keyword, to ad copy to website. Then your website’s specific call-to-action asks for the close.

Website conversion occurs when you satisfy a visitor’s preconceived expectation.

The primary strategy for increasing your website conversion is getting to know your customer. By satisfying your customer’s needs first; you will correspondingly satisfy your own. In the book, “The Psychology of Persuasion” author Kevin Hogan describes the Law of Reciprocity which states, “When someone gives you something of perceived value, you immediately respond with the desire to give something back.”

Although effective website conversion is not always as clear-cut as the Law of Reciprocity suggests, the principle applies ? if you give your website visitor what they require such as confidence, comfort, convenience and fair value then they will reciprocate by completing your call-to-action.

Whether you are a B2B or a B2C enterprise, website conversion strategies concentrate on connecting a visitor to what they want in a convenient, clear and consistent manner. Here are some quick website conversion strategies to keep in mind for your website or custom landing pages?

1. Always add your phone number (preferably a 1-800 number) in a prime location on each page of your website – preferably in the header or another prominent position like the upper-right margin of your web page. A phone number not only adds credibility but also provides a convenient communication channel for visitors to contact you if they need assistance.

2. Use customer-benefit copy meaning more “you” and “yours” than “us” and “we.” The principle here is to focus on serving the needs of your visitors. Answer their question, “what’s in it for me?”

3. Offer multiple order or relationship-building contact points. For example, B2C enterprises should provide the means to order products via mail, fax, phone, and online using all major credit cards and even PayPal. For B2B, offer a white paper download, a webinar registration, online brochure or product demonstration in exchange for the visitor’s primary contact information, as well as a phone number and a contact us form. Make it easy for your visitor to start a relationship with your enterprise.

4. Test various calls-to-action, headlines, positioning messages, testimonials, layouts, graphics and other website components under an A/B split-testing format. One of the greatest benefits of paid search and the Internet in general is your ability to quickly test and track results from different website conversion strategies.

5. Implement keyword-specific landing pages for your paid search campaign. Consistency and relevancy are essential and a custom landing page offers the most effective opportunity for completing the “path of consistency.” Coupled with A/B split-testing, custom landing pages have helped increase many of our clients’ results by 60% and greater.

Website conversion is a process and not a destination. By continually identifying and learning new conversion strategies for fulfilling your visitor’s desires, you will increase your website’s performance and generate greater positive financial results in return.

The next and final article of this series will focus on lifetime value of a customer and how it enables you to turn more visitors into prospects and customers regardless of rising paid search costs.

Until next time, get to know your customer and test new website conversion strategies to more effectively satisfy your customer’s needs. Remember the “path of consistency” and implement landing pages for your paid search campaign.

Kevin Gold is a Founder of Enhanced Concepts and a published author. If you’re interested in increasing your leads or sales, get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” by visiting http://www.enhancedconcepts.com

Although the degree of increase varies among industry resources, a recent survey conducted by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) indicated an average 26% increase in bid prices in 2004.

Statistics aside, all indications show an upward trend in keyword bid prices which means fewer results in 2005 from the same dollar spent on pay-per-click marketing in 2004.

What Has Caused the Increase?

The simple answer is that pay-per-click marketing has proven to be a tremendous measurable and controllable strategy for generating targeted website visitors among small, medium and large enterprises. As demand for pay-per-click marketing flood the keyword supply of top-tiered pay-per-click search engines and as enterprises compete for top ad placement, the bid prices increase accordingly.

Also, the competitive nature inherent with a bid auction or even with Google Adwords’ performance auction structure where a combination of maximum bid and click-through rate calculates your bid price causes an increase in bid prices. Just as with an eBay auction, the bid price increases until either a buyer pulls out of the keyword bidding or backs off from shooting for a top position.

What Do YOU Do When Keyword Bid Prices Increase?

This question will be answered over a series of three articles. Each article will address, in detail, each one of the following three strategies:

1. Understand Your Performance Metrics.

2. Maximize Your Website Conversion. (Part Two)

3. Discover the Lifetime Value of a Customer. (Part Three)

Collectively, these three strategies will assist you in managing your pay-per-click marketing regardless of an ever increasing bid pricing environment.

Understanding Your Performance Metrics ? the Foundation

The foundation for managing a performance-based pay-per-click marketing campaign is through understanding your performance metrics. By measuring campaign and keyword performance, you’ll know how to effectively handle the dynamics of a competitive bidding marketplace.

What are Performance Metrics?

Performance metrics are measurable results gathered and calculated from your business’ online systems or in this case, from your pay-per-click marketing campaign.

Referred to also as “key performance indicators”, performance metrics form a dashboard for you to gauge the effectiveness of your pay-per-click marketing. Further, performance metrics help establish a baseline for cost effective bid management supported by your current website performance and your business’ financials. As Business Executive, Thomas S. Monson stated,

“Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.”

Understanding your performance metrics starts with defining at least one value-oriented action such as an opt-in, subscription, registration or sale that you seek a visitor to perform on your website. This action (or your “marketing objective”) is the target for calculating your performance metrics and measuring your campaign’s effectiveness.

Performance metrics vary among individual businesses and their unique marketing objectives; however, two specific performance metrics apply to all pay-per-click marketing campaigns regardless of their objectives. These include:

? Conversion Rate

? Cost per Action

You also need a firm understanding of your business financials and your pay-per-click marketing campaign’s unique traffic statistics including:

? Average Action Value – The average worth generated from the completion of an action.

? Gross Profit Margin – How much you generate on an action, excluding marketing costs.

? # of Unique Visitors – Visitors generated from your pay-per-click marketing efforts.

? Total Pay-per-Click Cost – Cost to generate the visitors.

Conversion Rate

Google defines a conversion rate as “the number of visitors who took a desired action divided by the total number of visitors in a given time period (typically, per month).” A conversion rate represents your website’s ability to turn clicks into actions.

Conversion Rate Calculation: Actions / Total Number of Visitors

For example, if your pay-per-click marketing campaign generated 1,000 visitors to your website and 10 completed your objective (action) then your “conversion rate’ is 1.0%.

Cost per Action (also called “CPA”)

Your “cost per action” (CPA) measures how much it costs for you to generate an action (marketing objective.) In other words, CPA is the dollar amount you need to spend for your pay-per-click marketing campaign to generate one valuable action.

For example, if $100 in your pay-per-click marketing generated 1,400 visitors and 10 completed your marketing objective, your cost per action is $10.00.

Cost per Action Calculation: Total Pay-per-Click Cost / Total Number of Actions

Once you have figured how much it costs for you to generate one action, you can apply it to the value each action is worth.

Here’s an Example?

Imagine you are selling products (product sales is the marketing objective) and your average “sales” value is $100 and your gross profit margin is $65. Historically for every 100 pay-per-click visitors to your website two sales are generated; a sales conversion rate of 2%.

During a particular month, you spend $500 on your pay-per-click campaign. It produces 1,400 visitors at an average cost-per-click of $0.36. Based on your 2% conversion rate, your pay-per-click marketing generated 28 sales. With this data in hand, you can now calculate your CPA.

Cost per Action: Spending of $500 divided by 28 sales = $17.86 per sale.

Discover How to Calculate a Target CPA to Establish a Maximum Bid Price

Using the same example, you can set a maximum bid for your pay-per-click campaign by figuring out what percentage of your gross profit margin you are willing to commit to your pay-per-click marketing budget. Let’s assume you commit 30% of our gross profit margin to your pay-per-click marketing campaign.

With a gross profit margin of $65 and a budget commitment of 30%, your target CPA is $19.50.

Target CPA: Gross Profit Margin ($65) times (30%) budget commitment equals $19.50.

Now take your target CPA of $19.50 and multiply it by your current conversion rate of 2% to find your maximum bid price. In this example your maximum bid price is $0.39 per click.

From these calculations, you now know your average maximum bid price across your pay-per-click marketing campaign must be equal to or less than $0.39 per click to produce your target CPA of $19.50.

Performance Metrics take the Risk Out of Your Bidding Decisions.

As Robert Kiyosaki, author of mutliple New York Times best-seller books including Rich Dad Poor Dad states, “being uneducated is risky.” By knowing your performance metrics, you can determine the constraints of your bid prices against your financial objectives to ensure the achievement of your business goals.

Performance Metrics Pinpoint Areas of Competitive Advantage

Most importantly, knowing your performance metrics enables you to identify and prioritize marketing strategies and website improvements that directly affect the bid price you can bid while remaining profitable.

As shown in the above example, your website’s conversion rate and average sales value has an extraordinary effect on your cost per action. By focusing your efforts on increasing your conversion rate and/or your average sales value, you can bid profitably at higher “per click” amounts.

Competition beware ? when your enterprise is armed with the insight gained through performance metrics you are a powerful force regardless of ever increasing keyword bid prices.

Until next time when we dive into maximizing your website conversion rate?start calculating your performance metrics!

Kevin Gold is a Founder of Enhanced Concepts and a published author. If you’re interested in increasing your leads or sales, get a free copy of “Understanding Your Conversion Rate” and “12 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion” by visiting http://www.enhancedconcepts.com

Lots of people would like to get their Web site to the top of Google’s free listings. But that’s precisely the problem: You’re competing with lots of people. It’s certainly possible to get to the top – after all, somebody has to be there! – but it takes a lot of time and effort. Alternatively, you could pay a search engine marketing company to do this for you.

But by far the better way to get to the top of Google is to pay for it. Google’s “AdWords” program allows even a small business to buy advertising for selected key words and phrases. You might be surprised at how little you have to pay.

Here’s how it works …

Google (at www.google.com) has two types of listings: Free and paid. Google makes its money from the paid listings.

Google AdWords is the name of Google’s paid advertising system. It is a pay-per-click advertising system, which means that you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement.

AdWords is an auction-based system. You offer to pay a certain price for each click, and you compete with other bidders for higher placement.

You choose which words or phrases you would like to use for your ad. When somebody searches Google using those search terms, your ad will appear. If they then click on your ad, it takes them to a specific page on your Web site.

The biggest advantage is that it gives you CONTROL.

Another problem with trying to get into the free listings at Google is that you don’t have much control over how your page will appear. You’re not sure exactly which search phrases will display it; you’re not sure what Google will say about it; and you’re not sure which pages of your site will match Google’s criteria for each search phrase.

With AdWords, all those problems disappear. You can control the exact wording of your ads, the exact page they link to, the exact search phrases they match, and exactly when they appear.

For example, when I went overseas for a month last year, I turned off all my Google advertising while I was away. (That was in the days before I had fine-tuned my advertising campaigns. Nowadays, I would just leave the ads running, knowing that they would make me money in my absence )

You can control where the ads appear in the world. For example, at the time of the Australian election last October, one of my clients had an election-related Web site, so we ran some Google ads – but only for Australian Internet users.

You can get even more specific with geography. For example, I can run ads for events that I’m conducting in Sydney, and only show those ads to people in and around Sydney.

You can run two ads side by side and find out which is more responsive. Then you delete the weaker ad and replace it with a third ad that you pit against the stronger ad. Keep doing this until you find the ad that gets the best results.

Google tells you exactly which words and phrases people used when searching. For example, when we did the advertising for the election campaign, we found that “Australian election” had 50% more searches than “federal election”; and “liberal party” had three times as many searches as “labor party”!

With all these benefits, why would you ever go for free listings?

I hope I’ve convinced you by now that Google AdWords is the best way to get traffic from search engines.

But what about the free listings?

Actually, I’m NOT suggesting that you give up the idea of getting a free listing in Google. There are definitely advantages to these listings.

What I am saying is that you should go for the paid listings first – to test your market, refine your ad copy and improve your marketing. Then put your efforts into the free listings if you choose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gihan Perera is a co-author of “Get Traffic Fast”, a fast-track program to get started with Google advertising, avoiding the common traps and pitfalls.

Sign up to his free mini-course “Google Kick Start” here:

http://GihanPerera.com/get-traffic-fast.html