Finding The Cheap Clicks

Home
>
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
>
Finding The Cheap Clicks

As anyone who uses Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising in their marketing campaign knows, getting your ad copy on the front page of a search results listing is becoming more expensive by the day. It's a new phenomenon known as 'keyword fatigue', and it's down to the overwhelming success of programs like Google's AdWords. As more and more advertisers realise the benefits of this form of traffic generation, so the number of people bidding for the same keywords increases, and the bid prices climb accordingly. Great news if you are a publisher taking a cut of the revenue, but not so welcome for those doing the bidding.

So are the days of 5 cents a click now just a distant memory? Not at all, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of keyword phrases out there for minimum cost, all it takes is a little more effort to use them. To understand how this can be done, with Google AdWords in particular, it is first necessary to understand how ad positions are determined.

Google's PPC program, like their core search engine, places a great deal of emphasis on advertisment relevance. When a web surfer types keywords into the search box, Google wants the ad that most closely matches that phrase to be shown nearest the top of the list - not just the ad bidding the highest amount of money. It mutiplies bid price by keyword relevance, and that means that by careful selection of your keywords, it is possible to be placed above competitors and pay only 1 cent more than they are (Google doesn't necessarily charge the maxium amount you bid, only enough to put you ahead).

There are three simple ways you can trump your competitors with your keyword selection:

1. Longer phrases. There are huge numbers of people bidding on a loose term like "mortgage broker", but fewer people bidding on a tighter phrase like "mortgage broker in texas". If a searcher types "mortgage broker in texas" into Google, and you have that phrase in your keyword list, your ad will be deemed more relevant than anyone just using "mortgage broker" in their own list - which means a cheaper click for you! Of course, there are fewer searches for mortgage brokers specifically in Texas than for mortgage brokers in general, so it's necessary to build a large list of similar keyphrases targetting many locations.

2. Closer matching. Just because you might type "in car satellite radio" into Google, doesn't mean every surfer will do the same. Somebody else searching for the same thing may well enter "satellite radio in car", or "radio in car satellite", and so on. If your ad contains every variation, it may trump a competing ad which lists only the first example. In other words, having just the keywords in your list isn't necessarily enough - having them in the same order a searcher enters them will give your ad a better relevance score.

3. The final (Google specific) method is to ensure that you wrap every keyword or keyphrase in both quotes and brackets. Again, this means that if someone enters an exact term you have listed, your ad will beat a competing ad that has the same term but without the brackets or quotes.

Clearly, building keyword lists in this way can be more time consuming than simply selecting a few generic words that describe your product or service, but free tools such as those at http://www.keyword-linker.com can make the process much quicker than doing it manually.

Cheap keyphrases are still there for the taking, the winners in PPC now will be those who put in the effort to catch them.

About The Author

Henry Eldridge-Doyle is an internet marketeer, and site developer at http://www.keyword-toolkit.com.

In The News:

An Introduction To Paid Search Conversion Tracking
Search Engine Land (blog)
Or, if a user is searching on a topic and happen to be drawn to your site, only to buy later, thatâ€™sa good use of PPC advertising as well. ...

PR-inside.com (press release)
Where Search Meets Social: Integrating Social Media into Organic and Paid ...
B2C Marketing Insider (blog)
Similarly, social media can be utilized to explore special offers to be incorporated into PPC text ads and landing pages. For example, research could ...
What is search engine marketing?Helium
Internet Marketing for the IP SavvyTelecom Reseller (press release)
PromotionWorld Names Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing the Number One SEO ...PR Web (press release)

all 46 news articles »

Impact Media (blog)
Comparing Google Adsense and Google Adwords
Helium
Such advertising is called Pay Per Click, or PPC. Advertising prices are based on the value of the keywords used in a campaign. ...
PPC Management Software Provider Acquisio Joins Google Preferred AdWords API ...PR Web (press release)
Web Marketing Workshop in Sydney Achieves Google AdWords Certified Partner StatusThe Open Press (press release)

all 19 news articles »

Impact Media (blog)
Affordable Seo Company UK
Business Urls (blog)
Wе аrе proficient іn many forms οf online marketing аnԁ specialize іn Affordable Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click advertising (PPC), ...
SMX East Super Early Bird Rates Expire Tomorrow July 30 – Register Now!Search Engine Land (blog)

all 33 news articles »

Daydreaming About Paid Search: How About Airtight Ad Groups?
Search Engine Land (blog)
As I wrote in Rich Stokes' new book, “Ultimate Guide to Pay Per Click Advertising” you can use negative keywords both to keep search queries from matching ...

TechShout! (blog)
Bing algorithm tests go live in Yahoo! Search
Vertical Leap News (press release)
Search engine optimisation and PPC advertising for Bing will, for the first time, start to have an effect on Yahoo!'s SERPs as the 'Search Alliance' ...
Blueglass LA Session: Marketing Strategy: Don't forget searchSearch Engine Journal

all 143 news articles »

Tricks on how to cash in on Internet marketing quickly
Helium
The website was using PPC (Pay Per click) advertising. By lousy content, he meant content that was written from the search engine spiders only. ...

PR Web (press release)
PPC Training - New Customized AdWords Training Courses
PR Web (press release)
How, through ppc advertising, they can reach, engage with, and convert their target markets. "They will learn how to develop the PPC strategy that's just ...
Search Marketing Goes Real-Time with UK Start-upPR Web (press release)

all 5 news articles »

Online Social Media (blog)
Social Media Marketing Integration Strategies: SEO and PPC
Online Social Media (blog)
... what Kent Lewis is saying on b2cmarketinginsider.com, you need to understand that SEO is Search Engine Optimisation, PPC is pay per click advertising, ...

The PEC Review: Facebook Pay-Per-Click Ads
Practical Ecommerce
This is very good news for ecommerce marketers, since Facebook has an easy-to-use and targeted pay-per-click (PPC) advertising service that can place ads in ...

Google News

Finding The Cheap Clicks

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Pay-Per-Click Advertising