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Daily Limit
The first thing to know is that it is absolutely vital to set a daily limit on both Google and Yahoo. This is a daily budget that controls how long your ads appear each day. For example, let's say that you want to spend $300 per month on Google. You set your daily limit to $10 per day. Your ads will appear and people will click on the ads, and each time they do, your account will be debited. Once it reaches the $10 limit, then your ads will be shut off for the day. Without setting this limit you can spend a fortune in just a few days. So definitely use the daily limit.
Low Clickthroughs = Change Your Ad
If you are getting low clickthroughs, i.e. not enough to even use up your daily limit each day, chances are that you need to change your text ad. This is the ad that gets displayed on Google or Yahoo when people enter the keywords you have selected. If you have market research surveys done for your business, review these and rewrite your ad to better reflect what the surveys show as what your public needs and wants. If you don't have any surveys, go to Google and Yahoo and enter the keywords for your campaign, and look at what other vendors are saying in their ads. This will give you ideas on what to say that might work better.
Once you make changes to your ad, make sure you record the change and the date you made the change, in a folder. Then review the statistics every couple of days and see how the new ad is doing in terms of clickthroughs. Compare it to how the previous ad was doing.
Low Conversions = Change Your Landing Page
Once people click on your ad on Google or Yahoo, they land on a page on your web site. This I cleverly call the "landing page." The percentage of people that land on this page that actually do something that you want, such as fill out the form to buy something or become a lead, is known as the conversion ratio.
By the way, this landing page should NEVER be your home page. The landing page should be specifically set up so that it:
a. Does NOT include your standard navigational links to the rest of your site.
b. Contains sales text and pictures of your product or service
c. Contains a form at the bottom for people to either fill out the form and become a lead (giving you their contact info) or buy something
Get the idea that your landing page should only give the person one choice, i.e. to fill out the form and become a lead or buy something. If you give them your whole navigational button structure on that page, they will wander all over your site and the percentage of those that will become a lead or sale will be MUCH lower.
Also, your landing page can offer some kind of free item, often an informational product such as a "free report," something you can make into a PDF and send to them for free. This usually increases conversion ratios.
Often people ask me what kind of conversion ratio is good or acceptable. I have gotten as high as 10% conversion, meaning 10 people out of every 100 that come to the landing page do the desired action such as filling out the form to become a lead. However, not every campaign has that kind of potential. A lot depends on your offer, and how well that connects with the public. Also the various markets using Google and Yahoo paid search have changed a lot in the last 2-3 years. I would say that a 2-5% conversion ratio is acceptable today. 10% is really stellar.
Google vs. Yahoo
In the course of managing several paid search accounts for clients, I have noticed within the last year that people going to Google tend to convert to leads or sales at much higher conversion ratios than those going to Yahoo. For this reason I actually recommend, especially to people with limited budgets, that they start on Google. A few years ago it was just the opposite. My theory on this is that the demographic of people that go to Google is different than those who go to Yahoo. Google just has that one line. Everyone going there is going to search for something. Yahoo has news, sports, celebrity gossip, etc. So the person going there is slightly different.
Bidding
On both Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing, in their online account management interface, it will show you your ad's average position. In other words, it will have a number like 1 or 1.7 or 2.5 or 63.7. This represents the average position your ad appears in for that keyword. In other words, does it appear at the top (in 1st place), or in second, or third, or way down the list?
Both Google and Yahoo use a very arbitrary and secret system to determine your position, based on, first of all, your bid, and secondly, your ad's "quality." The bid part is pretty straight ahead. The higher you bid, the higher your ad will appear. That used to be the only criteria that determined your ad's position on Yahoo, but they recently changed their system to make it like Google, based on your bid and also on "quality."
Your first question will likely be "What do they mean by 'quality'?" And you're right - that is exactly the question. Unfortunately this is all very arbitrary and secret, which has the effect that one tends to bid higher and higher to try to raise one's position, which of course is great for Google and Yahoo as they make more money. The quality issue is supposedly based on the idea that your landing page is relevant for that keyword and contains good information, and of course again, that's all pretty subjective and arbitrary (i.e. based on one person's decision or judgment.
So my advice is not to worry much about the quality issue. As long as your ad and landing page are relevant to the keyword that's pretty much all you have to worry about.
As for bid levels, in general if you have a keyword that is getting lots of impressions (number of times someone searches for that keyword in a given time period) and your average position is low, i.e. below 3 let's say, then you may want to bid higher to move yourself up in the ranks. But you also have to use judgment here, based on the current bid amount and the price point of the thing you're selling. You obviously can't afford to spend $3.00 per click if the thing you're selling costs $10.00. Because not everybody who clicks is going to buy.
Another aspect of bidding which is helpful to know about, is the phenomenon of the expensive keywords using up your whole budget quickly. Take this scenario: You have 8 campaigns up on Google. Your bid amounts are mostly between $1.00 and $2.00. But one of your campaigns has a max bid amount of $4.00, because there is more competition for those keywords. And those keywords get lots of impressions. And your daily budget amount is $12.00, or $360 per month. So you can see that 3 clickthroughs from your expensive campaign can chew up your whole budget for the day.
Beware of this phenomenon, because your goal is to either get leads or sales. And not every person who clicks through to your site is going to become a lead or sale. So you've got to drive volume clickthroughs to the site. So if a certain keyword or group of keywords has a much higher bid level, you might want to skip them. Go with keywords or groups of keywords that are more affordable. I have often found that those expensive keywords are not necessarily the best ones for conversions anyway.
Good luck with your Google and Yahoo paid search campaigns.
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) definitely refers to both advertising and optimization methods. Internet advertising to most marketers is primarily about having control over position, keywords, listing copy and visitors' landing pages. Optimization, on the other hand is about coming up with a website design that can easily be crawled, indexed and well-ranked by major search engines.
There are several types of SEM services including search engine advertising, paid submission for directories, search engine optimization marketing and aggregators marketing. Search engine advertising includes the Paid-For- Placement (PFP) or the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) program as well as contextual advertising. A placement on the result pages of the search site and within its distribution network is guaranteed upon payment. The key factors of this type of advertising are keyword research and selection, bid price, effective ad copy and traffic landing pages.
Paid submission actually applies to directories. In this type of marketing program, the website owner pays for a human based review of its site although inclusion is not always guaranteed. The site is usually included from 7 to 14 days depending on the directory. The success of paid inclusion is largely determined by the selection of the category as well as the title and description of the business.
Search engine optimization aims to produce organic and natural results through the design and creation of spider-friendly websites. It is basically a science of keywords placement, content enhancement, site structure and link popularity campaign that is expected to maximize the probability of attaining top ranking. It is considered the heart of all SEM campaign notwithstanding the fact that more and more business developers tend to forget its importance. Although it is not impossible to achieve very swift results, an optimization process usually takes a few months to have its goal realized.
The aggregators or price engines have made it a lot easier for online shoppers to get the information they need about required products and their associated price. They are able to offer a broad range of pricing and features. Chances of success are maximized through pricing strategy, product availability, product description and shipping rates.
Online businesses are facing tough decisions on setting a budget for online marketing specifically for organic search engine optimization. Paid advertising is very much in demand which accounts for quickly eaten up budget. More often than not, depleted advertising budgets are readily remedied by providing a new budget. The same cannot be said for SEO budgets as campaigns tend to end as budgets are exhausted. SEO is apparently not getting the respect it deserves since the success of organic optimization is a lot more difficult to measure. The real value of the keywords that make the rank will be better seen as more improved and cheaper analytical tools become available.
Statistics would show that there are at least two offline sales generated for every online sale that occurs. Research reports reveal that a large percentage of searchers complete their purchases in offline retail stores. This is considered a direct result of their search activity.
Telemarketing and other forms of leads generation have been sending signals of a saturated market. This has prompted many companies especially the manufacturers to turn to the web to get new leads. Finding a prospect usually starts with a paid search strategy which eventually evolve into SEO. Maximum results are obtained from the combined strategies only if companies commit to make SEO a part of their long term marketing strategy. The ultimate measure of success of Search Engine Marketing is generating leads and closing sales.
The Search Environment Under SEM Strategies
Majority of the marketing budgets from small businesses are dominated by paid search. The smaller a company is, the higher its reliance on paid search and the higher the percentage of total spending. SEO is quickly overtaking spending on banner ads for manufacturers as focus is shifted to training existing web team staff and education on the creation of content that is optimized for search engines.
The first half of 2006 can be considered a period of expansion, growth and significant change in search marketing. Never have there been as many online options available to advertisers and their agents like now. Search has become a part of the mainstream marketing consciousness, but there remains much room for innovation and invention. This development has presented a dilemma for the traditional search marketing sector.
There are at least three major search related marketing venues existing: the traditional organic search results, the paid search advertising market and the social networking sphere. Each of these venues use some form of search as a distinctive guide towards finding information while a tremendous amount of integration and interaction exists between them.
The SEO sector is being overshadowed by the PPC market and at the same time being challenged by social networking. Major search engines constantly strive to improve and innovate on methods that would correctly rank web documents. This is the very reason for the fundamental changes seen in organic search engine optimization.
SEO focuses on a myriad of on-site and off-site issues such as hosting, link acquisition and competitive research. An increasing number of applications are being added for organic search results. The dozens of on-page elements which SEO works on makes it more complicated due to the time involved. However, fresh and focused content remains the single most reliable element of a successful website.
Paid search advertising has been experiencing a rapid growth as a sub-sector of the industry, propelling Google and Yahoo! to the front of the pack. It continues to undergo several forms of expansion to allow more and newer options for advertisers. The distribution of paid ads to third party web properties is a very interesting aspect of paid search advertising. Click fraud detection and advocacy is closely associated with this particular venue.
The social networking atmosphere is touted to be the most fluid search marketing venue. It is expected to be a preparatory step towards transition in web-interactive development. It is currently taking place in an environment that is tagged as Web2.