Drive More Targeted Traffic to Your Website With Pay Per click Advertising
Your website, with well defined objectives and strategies, can be your most effective marketing tool. However, a significant part of your internet marketing strategy should revolve around driving targeted traffic to your site. Without a steady flow of traffic, your website can't help increase your revenues.
In future issues, I will be sharing lots of tips and ideas to get targeted traffic to your site. This time, I'll start with the easiest and quickest method: pay per click advertising.
These ads appear at the top and the right column of the search results. Advertisers pay to have them displayed in this prominent place, when people search for a certain term related to the advertiser's product.
A small fee is charged each time someone clicks on the ad, based on the amount the advertiser bid for each click. The higher bidders appear higher in the search.
Pay per click advertising on search engines is one of the most effective ways to get targeted visitors to your website because the searchers are definitely interested in your topic. The down side, of course, is that it will cost you money.
However, depending on your product or service, it's probably worth it to spend a portion of your marketing budget this way, if it will significantly and easily increase your revenues. It works best if you have a small and well defined niche, and do keyword research to find the related terms people are searching for. More info on keyword research will be included in future issues of Grow Your Biz.
Google AdWords (http://adwords.google.com) is the most user-friendly and painless way to get targeted traffic to your website. It's a good one to start with to learn the ropes.
Yahoo Search Marketing also offers pay-per-click ads, and is currently offering a $50 credit to new clients. With proper management, you can get lots of quality traffic for $50. I didn't see this offer on their main site (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/), but you can use this link instead.
Finally, here's an inexpensive way to get your feet wet with pay per click advertising, while driving lots of targeted traffic to your site: check out  http://7search.com/. You can get the word out about your website for as little as one penny per click!
This company works with search engines other than Google, Yahoo and MSN. These search engines get about 35% of all searches on the internet, which is a lot of searches, as you know.
They also work with affiliate websites. Therefore, you may get your ad on the search engines when people search for your keywords, or on websites related to your keywords. You can get started with as little as $25.
Regardless of the vehicle you choose for your pay-per-click campaign, target more specific keyword phrases, for less expensive and more targeted traffic.
For example, I don't know about you, but if I'm looking for printer cartridges, I will search for HP deskjet F380 inkjet printer cartridge, instead of just printer cartridge.
My results will be filtered for me more effectively if I'm more specific. These "long tail" keyword phrases will be cheaper to bid on because they don't get as many searches, and you will get more targeted traffic. People who are very specific in their searches usually know exactly what they want, and are ready to make the purchase. With general searches, people are just exploring.
Track your results. Make sure you figure out how many sales resulted from the clicks you got from your pay per click campaign. Experiment with the wording in your ad, to improve conversion rates (the number of people who actually do business with you, after clicking on your ad.).
Once you figure out how to improve conversion rates, you may be ready to add to your pay per click repertoire, with Google Adwords and Yahoo search marketing, for even more traffic. After all, if the ads are significantly increasing your revenues, you can spend a little more to increase them even more!
© 2007 Emilie Nottle
Want to use this article in your website or ezine? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Emilie Nottle of Zooop Design, publishes Grow Your Biz, a monthly eZine for entrepreneurs and small business owners. If you're ready to take your biz to the next level, using your website as an effective marketing tool and automating your marketing efforts, subscribe at http://www.zooop-design.com/subscribe_info.html.
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