Done right, PPC marketing provides an instant source of targeted traffic and can boost sales in a cost-effective way, helping you to improve your Internet return on investment (ROI).

Why Pay Per Click Marketing?

 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is great for free traffic, but sometimes it can take time to rank well for the keywords that are most relevant to your business. Even if you are ranked well for your keywords, your PPC ads can reinforce your branding and drive even more traffic to your site.

A well devised PPC marketing campaign will enable you to target potential customers who are looking specifically for your service – and can pay for itself many times over.
 
Best Practice PPC Ad Techniques

There are several ways to maximize your PPC marketing efforts, including the right keyword selection, organising the campaign in to ad groups, landing page preparations and the all important ad copy. Here are ten best practice ad copy techniques sure to boost your PPC campaign.

• Use power words such as “exposed,” “secret,” “guaranteed,” “shocking,” or “incredible” in your ads to capture the attention of the viewer.
   
• For ongoing improvement to your copy, test two ads simultaneously in order to evaluate and improve on each ad’s effectiveness.
   
• Focus on the benefits of the product rather than the features.
   
• Use a strong call to action like “act now” or “contact us for a free report.”
   
• Use the keyword in the ad’s headline.
   
• Capitalise The First Letter of Each Word.
   
• Include a question in the ad.
   
•  Use abbreviations (and keep a thesaurus handy) in order to make the most of the limited characters.
   
• Consider using time sensitive offers to convey urgency in your call to action.
   
• Try to stand out from your competition by offering something they cannot or by using a more exciting approach to attract click-throughs.

Remember that the goal is to get a viewer to click on your ad, not to sell the product with the ad. Let your landing page sell the product once they click on your website link.

Most importantly, keep a careful eye on your PPC marketing campaign and regularly look at the reports to evaluate how your ads are performing. Track the conversion rate and cost per conversion of each advertisement to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

The first question you may be asking is exactly what is the purpose of the Quality Score? One of Google’s main objectives is to provide its users with highly relevant search results to queries. The Adwords Quality Score is intended to ensure that only the most relevant Adwords ads are displayed to users.

Why Is The AdWords Quality Score So Important?

Improving your Adwords Quality Score can be highly frustrating and a time consuming process. Once you fully understand how Google calculates its Quality Score you’ll be able to improve it for all of your keywords which will in turn help you to reduce your average cost per click figure.

The Adwords Quality Score is calculated every time a search query is performed. As a general rule the higher the Quality Score the lower the bidding price for that particular keyword and the higher the position an ad is likely to appear. A keyword with a higher Quality Score can consistently achieve higher ad positions at a lower average cost than a keyword with a much lower Quality Score. A keyword with a lower Quality Score will likely achieve lower ad positions and actually cost the advertiser more in bidding costs.

So How Is The Adwords Score Calculated?

For first time users the Adwords Quality Score and how it is calculated can appear a little confusing at first. When a new PPC campaign is created a provisional Quality Score is calculated for each keyword within the campaign. This provisional Quality Score is based on how that particular keyword has performed for other advertisers and how relevant it is to your ads.

Ideally when creating a new PPC campaign you should divide your keywords into groups of around 10 or less. These keywords should be closely related so that an ad can be created which will be highly relevant. Each ad group should trigger at least one relevant ad that includes the most popular keyword within the ad group. This keyword should ideally be featured within the ad title and contained within the first line of ad text.

The landing page for your ads should also contain highly relevant keywords and be closely matched to your ads. It is likely this page will not be the homepage of your website. As your PPC campaign matures Google will fully evaluate the landing pages of your ads and the remainder of your website. As a result the remainder of your website should ideally follow the theme of the keywords contained within your PPC campaign.

In addition as more time passes, the Quality Score of individual keywords will evolve and change based on the performance of each one. As a general rule if an ad achieves a high Click Through Rate then it will likely cause your Quality Score to rise. In contrast a low Click Through Rate will likely cause your Quality Score to fall. Ideally you should aim for a Click Through Rate of 1% or higher for all keywords over a prolonged period of time.

Conclusion

The exact formula that Google follows to determine Quality Score is a closely guarded secret. However we do know what factors Google looks at when determining Quality Score. We also know the Adwords Quality Score is calculated slightly differently for both the Search Network and Content Network.

For the Search Network the main factors which influence the Adwords Quality Score are:

• The historical click through rate of keywords the ad it triggers
• The historical click through rate of your entire Adwords account
• The historical click through rate of your domain
• The quality of your landing page
• The relevance of keywords to ads within your adgroups
• The relevance of the keyword and matched ad to the original search query

For the Content Network the main factors which influence the Adwords Quality Score are:

• The ads past performance on the target and similar sites
• The relevance of your ads and keywords in the ad group to the target site
• The quality of your landing page

10 years ago SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) was basic and simple, competition was limited. Success with PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns (on Yahoo then on Google) was simple. Link Building (to improve Google page rank) was less selective.

Latest developments in online Marketing now mean that Internet Marketing is far more complex and even in-house teams can now benefit from the advice an Internet Consultantcan give: For example an Internet Marketing Strategy and  integrated campaign will include all of the following elements:

E-mail Marketing
Landing Page Development
Conversion Analysis
Website & Web Page Optimisation
Social Media Marketing
Pay Per Click Marketing

and more..

Indeed any of these elements can be broken down into discreet strategies by the consultant, for example Social Media may cover such elements as:

♦Social Media Monitoring
♦Social Media Advertising activities such as: Facebook Advertising; MySpace   Advertising; Linked In etc
♦Social Media Portal Personalisation on site such as:

•FaceBook
•Linked In
•MySpace
•YouTube

♦Profiles and entries on Propeller & Squidoo
♦Questions and Answer Sites
♦Wiki Entries
♦Blogging
♦Article Writing
♦PR & PR Distribution
♦Mobile & FaceBook Applications
♦and of course Twitter!

It is therefore vital that in selecting a consultant that you know that they have the tools to analyse your website with such tools like the WSI Webscan , and that they have the expertise to advise and execute as required, whether it is overarching strategy or detailed execution of the strategy.

Clients must no longer be satisfied with the one trick ponies who do a bit of PPC or a bit of SEO. Internet Consultancy is now a fully integrated marketing science, but this space is developing so quickly University Courses are out of date before their intake has started.

So some pointers in choosing a consultant might include:

♦The pedigree of their clients
♦The pedigree of their testimonials
♦Do they practice what they preach?
♦What tools do they use?
♦Can they explain each element of the strategy clearly and non technically?
♦All elements of any campaign should stack up. Does what they say make sense?
♦If you feel uncomfortable or it seems too god to be true, follow your instincts.
♦Look at a selection of their campaigns is it one size fits all? It shouldn’t be, each clients’ campaign should be unique.

Anyone looking to expand their business should look online, identify a great Internet Consultant who can help and guide them through the maze of Jargon, and will deliver a an Internet marketing strategy to match their budget and ambitions and that they will be accountable for.

After all Internet Marketing when done properly is the best value for money investment, but it is down to clients to make sure that they get value from their Internet Consultants by holding them to account on the results, nearly every aspect of Internet marketing is provable, and the deliverables should be quite easily demonstrable.

Make sure you have a documented, probable Internet Marketing Strategy developed for your business by your chosen Internet Marketing Consultant

WSI based in Huddersfield, Yorkshire operates nationally throughout the UK, even though our primary client base is concentrated into Leeds & West Yorkshire, Sheffield & South Yorkshire, Manchester, Cheshire & Lancashire. We aim to provide real value for money marketing to large multinationals and SMEs who believe that their future success and survival  is online. WSI is an Internet Marketing Consultancy providing all leading edge Internet Services.

Christmas: Web Design

Christmas shopping is one of the British nation’s favourite pastimes. It’s an important part of the festive experience, helping people relax and get into the festive feeling. Online shoppers expect a similar experience and a few Christmassy images or a banner can be all it takes. The extent to which you’ll want to use a Christmas themed web design will depend on the products and services you offer. For instance, an ecommerce website selling Christmas gifts would need significant design changes, whereas a top right banner wishing visitors merry Christmas would be suitable for most businesses.

SEO: Optimising for Christmas

Christmas themed content optimisation is more specific to online retailers – not every business has a reason to optimise for Christmas – but there are few that won’t benefit from wishing visitors a Merry Christmas.

There are various opportunities for Christmas search engine optimisation on retail websites. High Street retailers such as W.H. Smith, Tesco and Marks & Spencers capitalise on new SEO opportunities by launching a Christmas section. Search behaviour undergoes various changes on the run up to Christmas, keywords such as “gifts for him,” “xmas gifts under £20,” “stocking fillers” and “gifts for teenage girls” see significant growth. By implementing new navigation options to show “gifts for him” for example, ecommerce websites can be optimised for Christmas and improve the user experience. Improving the on site visibility of popular Christmas gifts is also a great way to search engine optimise them and increase conversions.

Christmas Landing Pages

Having appropriately themed your web design with a Christmas theme and optimised content you’ll be well on the way to having optimised landing pages for Google Adwords or other PPC advertisers. The core function of PPC landing pages is to convert traffic into customers. Further Christmas landing page optimisation should be focused on getting the call to action right. With clicks costing an average of 30% more on the run up to Christmas it’s even more important work hard to achieve a positive return on investment. The optimised content should include information about special Christmas offers and deals.

Christmas Advertising with Adwords

An increase in the cost per click and competition makes it difficult to advertise in the optimum positions without sacrificing value for money. The best way to overcome this is to work towards improving click through ratio. Lower positions and a higher click through ratio is a great way to maintain traffic volume and improve value for money.

Echoing the content on the Christmas PPC landing pages use information about promotions and deals to increase click through ratio (as well as discouraging irrelevant traffic). Also make use of the words such as Christmas (or if you’re struggling in the character count xmas) , Christmas Gifts, Gifts for Him and Gifts for Her. Users looking for Christmas gifts will consider your adverts more relevant because of the use of festive keywords.

It’s important to remember that keywords used in your adverts should be reflected on your PPC landing page to improve the adverts quality ranking and further improve the campaigns value for money.

Christmas is a very competitive time of year, not just for retailers but companies in the service sector too. Optimising for Christmas by improving web design, search engine optimisation, conversion architecture and careful PPC managment can help you get a competitive edge. If you need to optimise for Christmas, act now or miss a great opportunity!

Further & more detailed anouncements about how we will be delivering these services to our customers will be communicated in our next e-mail newsletter. In the meantime we will be contacting some of our customers directly to get them started with this service as soon as possible so that they have first strike advantage.

An easy way to check this is to search on “Toys” and look out for the + to open up the image results.

Unlike most standard forms of advertising, PPC search-engine marketing enables you to target potential customers who are looking specifically for your service. If done right, a PPC campaign can pay for itself many times over.<!–more–>

Sharpening the PPC Saw
Pay Per Click is now a fundamental part of the online marketing mix of many SMEs. This doesn’t mean the paid search arena is saturated, or that many of these companies achieve a maximum return on their investment.

The PPC market place is huge, and provides ample opportunity for advertisers of all sizes; and just because your top key terms are beyond your budget doesn’t mean you cannot have a successful, cost- effective PPC campaign. Here are four tips for taking your paid search marketing activities to the next level.

1. Plan Your Campaign
The straightforward tools for setting up a paid search advertising campaign make it easy to get started. But taking your time with a more planned approach will allow you to apply tools that will optimise the effectiveness of your campaigns.

A well-prepared campaign will include the following elements:

• Keyword research
• Organising the selected keywords into ad groups
• Preparing creative, targeted ad copy
• Tailored landing pages that relate to your ads
• Tracking
• Analysis

While you can be up and running with your ad campaign in minutes, you will achieve the best return on your investment by working through these important managed steps.

2. Pre-qualify Your Visitors
One of PPC marketing’s strengths is the ability to pre-qualify those who click on your ads: Craft a well-worded ad to include your keywords and some details about your product. Done well, this will deter the ‘tyre kickers’ and encourage those who are ready to buy.

You may also consider offering a free download, White Paper, email course or webinar as an incentive for clicking on your ad. This will capture contact data from a high percentage of those clicking on your ads.

3. Boosting Your Budget
Bidding to have your ad positioned at the top of the search results is not always the best strategy. More traffic often comes from the second, third or even fourth position, which will save you a significant amount of money.

You can also make your budget go a little further by setting up conversion tracking. This not only allows you to identify what keywords are working best for you, but also demonstrates to the search engine that your content is relevant. This can result in your ads benefiting from better positioning without increasing your bid amount.

4. Don’t Suffer from Analysis Paralysis
Web advertising provides excellent visitor activity tracking, allowing you to achieve a greater return on your PPC advertising investment by identifying what is working and what needs tweaking.

Be careful, though, the wealth of website data can be overwhelming, especially if you are not well versed in the technology, tools and terminology of PPC marketing. The key is being able to hone in on the important stats, and then understand how to interpret them.

If you would like more help implementing successful PPC marketing campaigns, please call us on 01484 690430.