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Several years ago a dime would give you a top
position for a PPC keyword, but those good old days are gone. You shouldn't
really be surprised that you cannot afford even the 10th ranking on some words
or phrases. After all, price have gone up everywhere and PPC Search Engines (SEs)
are catching on. The question is, how do you get better results with a limited
budget?
Find Affordable Words
If you cannot afford a high placement for some words or phrases, look for
words or phrases you can afford. Most of the PPC SEs give you a list of words
and phrases and how many times those words and phrases were searched. You will
find that the less-searched words are cheaper. For example, at the time of this
writing the top ranker in Overture (one of the PPC SEs) bids $3.30 on the
phrase, "auto insurance." But the highest bids on the phrase, "auto insurance
brokers" and "auto insurance agents" are both $0.51. Paying $3.30 for a visitor
is quite astonishing, but $0.51 is obviously more affordable. Of course, if you
can afford it, you will get more visitors from the top ranking on the
most-searched word than if you are the top on less-searched words. But, this is
also true: you will get more traffic from even the 3rd placement on
less-searched words than 100th on the most-searched words.
Be Specific
On PPC SEs, you have to pay every visitor from them. Make sure you bid on
very specified phrases to get right visitors. Using the above exsample, let's
say you are an auto insurance broker. Bidding on the word, "insurance" isn't a
good idea. You don't want to pay for a visitor who comes to your site looking
for a dental plan, do you? This can be avoided by bidding on a phrase like "auto
insurance."
Need More Money to Bid?
Now that you know how much money you can spend, you go to one of the PPC
search engines. Then, you find out that even the entire 37 cents won't give you
good placement. That's entirely possible.
Also, if you sell insurance only in a particular province or state,
localize your phrase to include that information; for instance, "auto insurance
in New York." Again, you don't want to pay for a visitor who lives in Florida.
Just a Penny but a Penny
The minimum bid is still just 1 cent on most PPC SEs, so don't over-look
the difference that a penny can make. For instance, if you`ve determined that
your conversion rate is 1%, that means you need 100 visitors to make a sale. A
slight difference in bid price will make a big difference in your profit. If you
bid one cent less, you will pocket an extra $1.00 per sale. When you sell 100
products, you will make $100 more. (Think what kind of hosting service you can
get with $100.) Conversely, if you bid 1 cent more than you can afford, you will
lose $100. And remember, these figures add up faster as you sell more.
Also, you need to remember that the more selective your keyword or phrases
is, the fewer visitors it will take to make those sales. That will rase your
conversion rate and increase your profit per click so that, if bidding become
intense for your keywords/phrases, you can afford to rise your bid a little to
keep your position.
You still need to do some homework like finding good phrases for your
business, but you now have all the information you need to bid on PPC keywords
for profit. Keep calm, and don't bid more than you can afford. Happy bidding.
Want to get the most out of both search engine marketing and search engine optimization? You need to understand what both of them are best designed to do - and what they’re not designed to do. If you figure that out, you can get the most mileage out of your SEO and your SEM. If you don’t figure it out, you can end up where every other major search mistake leaves you: with a gaping hole in your advertising budget.
The basic point to keep in mind is this: Paid search is your best option for reaching people looking to make a purchase. SEO does its best work reaching out to people doing research.
Before we go into how to take make the best use of the two sides of search, you need to understand who’s searching to begin with. The search population is basically broken into two groups:
- Researchers are looking for more information on a topic. They don’t know what they want to find - and they might not want to find anything specific just yet. They only want to know more.
- Purchasers know exactly what they want. They’re searching because they don’t know where to find it. At the most extreme, that could be the searcher who knows exactly where she wants to fly to for vacation, the type of hotel she wants to stay in, and the price she’s willing to pay; all she needs is the best Web site to book everything on. In general, purchasers are looking to do something (like book a flight), rather than to learn something. (There are plenty of searchers who want to do something specific, but who aren’t looking to buy anything - but we’ll still call them searchers, for the sake of simplicity. And you can be a “purchaser” of information, too - looking to subscribe to a particular magazine is one example.)
Of course, there is a middle ground: people who have a pretty good idea of what they want, but haven’t worked out the kinks just yet. Even if someone knows she wants to go on vacation in Orlando, FL, there might be a lot of information - like the kind of hotel she wants, or the flight length she’ll tolerate - that she’s left undecided.
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