Pay per click (PPC) is by far the fastest way to drive traffic to a website. You can literally have traffic within hours of setting up an adwords account.
How to Use Pay Per Click
Setting up an account is simple. To add PPC for your businesses you just need to pay the search engines a certain amount for every time your ad is clicked on and the searcher is taken to your website. These paid ads appear at the top and bottom of the search engine. Some SE’s still have them on the listed down right side too.
As Google has about 80% of the search market, in general you will get the most results/traffic from your adwords account. Yahoo and Bing have joined forces and some folks report they are much EASIER than Google to deal with. Either way it is a very good option (especially if you’re new and testing it out). Another GREAT PPC option is Facebook.
Pay Per Click – Get Traffic To Your Site Fast!
You can do very targeted PPC campaigns in ALL the above options but Facebook allows for even greater targeting with demographic info and other options that make your ads VERY targeted to your specific customer. More targeted ads may be LESS overall traffic but they will be more qualified leads and potentially a better ROI for your money spent.
3 Keys To Successful Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
1. Do keyword research and find out what your customers are searching for and the competition for those keywords. You ideally want HIGH search volume and LOW competition. You can use a Keyword Tool for research.
You should also think about and look for longer keyword phrases. They tend to have lower competition and are more targeted buying terms. For example, a person searching for “small gardening tools” is more likely a buyer than someone searching for “gardening” who is likely just looking for info.
2. Once you have your keywords set up, your ad groups and ads to only have one or a few very related keywords together. For example, you would have “gardening tool” and “vegetable gardening tools” in the same ad group but “garden rake” in a separate ad group.
You also want to MAKE SURE that the keyword for the ad is in the page they are going to land on when they click your ad. This makes search engines and the searcher happier which in turn = better results!
3. Write compelling ads that address people’s problems and/or solutions to get people to click on the ad. You want to ensure you have the keywords in the headline and in the ad if it’s possible. You can look at other ads to spark ideas for your ads.
This is sort of a given, but you also NEED to have something of value and a compelling website and message so people will buy your products or services when they land on your site.
Google has GREAT training in their business center on how to do pay per click so make sure you go through them all BEFORE you get started. You obviously want the best ROI on your pay per click so make sure you know what you are doing. Once you have a good grasp on PPC and can do it properly you probably don’t lose your shirt. PPC is EXPENSIVE if you don’t take the time to learn what you are doing.
