Not long ago, Forbes magazine has reported that pay per click ad sales are expected to increase to at least $8 billion by 2008.
There are three fundamental elements that form the basis of a successful pay per click ad program and they are constant monitoring, response analysis, and refinement.
Pay per click search engines offer a way to buy your way to the top of search results for any term you wish. With proper management, and a clear focus, pay per click search engines can offer some of the most well targeted and economical advertising on the Internet.
Pay per click advertising works through a bidding process, and the ads appear prominently on the results pages of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. The highest bidder for a particular word or phrase receives top placement, and depending on the engine, the top three to five bidders also generally also receive placement on the first page of unpaid search results.
Fundamental questions to be addressed when formulating a pay per click search engine strategy include the following:
When is the top pay per click bid necessary for highest conversion, and when will bidding for a second or third place position create a more attractive return on investment (ROI)
How can you keep your PPC bids from cannibalizing your search efforts on other (non pay per click) search engines
What percentage of your pay per click budget should go to each search engine
Does either Google Adwords or Overture work better for your particular product or service Or, perhaps neither one is appropriate from a return on investment (ROI) perspective.
It is of critical importance to focus sharply on identifying the search terms that convert most frequently for your particular site, eliminating those that dont perform, and most importantly, calculating and maximizing your return on investment.
The cost structure of pay per click is action-driven and each time a user clicks your ad, the pay per click engine deducts the amount of your current bid from your account. Pay per click offers a high level of assurance that your ad is reaching the proper target.
Pay per click campaigns, however, are not perfect. Without CONSTANT monitoring, you sometimes risk incurring advertising costs that can spiral out of control, focusing on terms that dont convert well for your product or services, or falling way down in position during a bidding war.
PPC advertising can be a great help to a sites success, but only with very close supervision and a thorough knowledge of the unique characteristics of each PPC search engine.
Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more details.
Improving Adwords Campaign Management
Adwords Campaign Management - Naming Schemes
Keep your campaigns and naming schemes simple and readable.
Dull as ditchwater it may be but when you expand your Google Adwords advertising you will as a matter of course have multiple campaigns and within each campaign multiple ad-groups.
Google Recommended Limits
Googles recommendations/limits are as follows:
Although you will have a theoretical total of up to 5,000,000 keywords, you will never get anywhere near that.
Why
This is a performance and scalability issue for Google - the more keywords in an account, the more processing power is required to see what keyword/advert combination should be shown.
If Google were to allow everybody to utilise their full complement of 5,000,000 keywords, Adwords quite simply would not work, screeching to a halt due to excessive load placed on their servers.
This is why in practical terms you will be limited to a fraction(perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 - somewhat more if your account is a good performer) of the possible total.
Regardless, even 50,000 keywords can lend itself very quickly to a lot of complexity so always rename your ad-groups and campaigns from the provided defaults to reflect their nature.
Campaign #1 tells you exactly what it is but what you want to know is what it does. Adwords Campaign Management becomes proportionally more difficult the more campaigns and ad-groups you construct.
Some people maintain a spreadsheet with notesindicating what each campaign and ad-group relate to. This iscommendable but unnecessary.
Having the discipline to do this every time you construct a new ad-group/campaign doesnt take much time or effort but will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.
Tom OBrien is a certified Google Adwords Campaign Management Professional.To find out more profitable Adwords Tips or get help with your Adwords campaign visit: