Catherine’s note: before I met Mike Williams of www.coastalclicks.com I’d hear the words “pay per click” and my eyes would glaze over. It’s one aspect of on-line marketing I figured I just didn’t need to know about. But now that I am working with a number of businesses who ask me about PPC and SEO in addition to their social media campaigns – it just makes sense to know about all the tools in the online marketing bag. Here are four ways that Mike uses his PPC know-how to get you in front of the people who want your product or service, without wasting your hard-earned marketing dollars. Go Mike!
If you know anything about pay per click (PPC) marketing, you know that it’s more than just keywords.
Many inexperienced marketers using PPC search marketing put heavy weighting on keywords. Don’t get me wrong, keywords are important, but you can get a lot of traffic and conversions without any keywords at all.
Consider these other aspects of PPC:
Content Network
Google has an entire network of sites displaying their ads on publisher sites. It’s called Google Adsense. Google takes the groupings of keywords in your PPC campaign and places your ads on relevant sites. And, since it’s based on your keywords the traffic is still highly relevant and targeted. Oh, and the clicks can be cheaper and convert better than search driven traffic!
Site Placement
A few years ago Google introduced site-targeted ads. You can now choose sites for your ad to appear on by selecting the URL’s that you want to display your ad. The entire system is built on the Google Adsense platform. So when you find sites through the content network you can then choose them in the site placement system and manage your ads directly on that site.
Landing Pages
Beyond keywords, content and placements (among many other elements of a campaign) there are landing pages. Most people who perform PPC don’t take landing pages seriously and don’t look to this as an area to improve their campaign. But, it is by far the most important part of your campaign and delivers the best possible percentage increase in ROI. Also, you need to give users what they are searching for, so your landing page should match what they’ve searched for or a site they’ve come from. Oh, and don’t forget the quality score improvements you’ll receive with relevant landing pages!
Negative Keywords
I’m not sure who said it but “He (or she) who has the best negative keywords, wins!”. This couldn’t be more true. Take for example if you wanted to advertise on the keyword “dice” to sell playing dice. Just type “dice” into the search box and Google, but don’t hit search, and see what Google suggests. Do you really want to advertise on “dice.com”, “andrew dice clay”, “dice lyrics”? Probably not, so add these as negative keywords. Stop wasting ad spend on keywords and sites that aren’t relevant, ad them as negative keywords and avoid that traffic.
PPC is more than words and its more than what I’ve described here. So, don’t just “dabble” in PPC, find out how to dominate!
CC
Mike Williams is Co-Founder of Coastal Clicks Media Inc., an online marketing agency in Victoria, BC focused on PPC marketing that delivers leads, sales, branding and results for clients.
