Saturday, January 3, 2009

Successful Pay Per Click Management

By Brian Basch

There is no doubt about it. Pay per click can be very lucrative and pay you big dividends for less work, in a short amount of time. It is certainly a powerful part of your advertising efforts. However there is a secret to this success that is not often talked about. It takes a smarts and patience to put in the necessary work needed to get results.

Choice of search engine is the key to the success of your campaign. Of course when you think of pay per click the big engines like Google and Yahoo spring to mind. This is because they are bigger and, some would say, better than the other engines. At the same time it should be noted that there are other search engines available. Pay Per Click Universe lists the top 10 engines.

1. Google

2. Yahoo!

3. ABC Search

4. Search Feed

5. 7 Search

6. MIVA

7. Enhance Interactive

8. Findology

9. Microsoft adCenter

10. Ask.com

Smart marketers will be able to utilize all of these programs and will see which ones work best for their business.

To make your pay per click campaign a success, you will need to choose the right keywords. When choosing a keyword you need to strike a happy medium between general keywords that will attract traffic and highly targeted ones that will give little traffic but make sales. Often you will find that the search engine itself will have a number of popular keywords in the database. You can begin with these but should not rely on them 100%. A lot of these keywords will attract a great deal of traffic but little or no sales.

Bidding will be your next choice. The position of your ad will be determined by how much you want to pay per click. Obviously the highest bidder will get the best position and exposure. Positioning is critical to success, as searchers will rarely look beyond the first 5 pages of the search results. If your ad is not among these pages you might as well consider it forgotten.

In the last you need to understand that you will need to pay close attention and micro-manage your campaign. Attention to detail is a must and you need to be acutely aware of every part of your campaign. Tracking sales conversions is a must. Adjust test and be sure that you nip problems in the bud, before they get out of control.

It is possible to make a tidy profit with your pay per click marketing. However in order to do this you will need to micro-mange your campaign and do your research carefully. Remember the key to success is being willing to experiment. Do not get frustrated if you do not see the money coming in as soon as you start your account. Bear in mind that "Rome was not built in a day."

So do not just read about these points memorize them and put them into action. You will be glad you did when you see the money coming in from your pay per click advertising. Use multiple engines to multiple your profits. - 16035

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