Tutorial 5. Pay per click for testing and profit

Transcription

1 Tutorial 5. Pay per click for testing and profit In this lesson we ll explore the role of pay per click in getting more people to your site both for direct sales and for more passive uses like list-building and testing out new marketing ideas. As we mentioned in a previous lesson, when you do a basic search on Google you have organic or free listings here Profit from keywords video series transcript 1

2 and sponsored listings here. Pay per click or PPC advertising lets you bid on advertising positions, yet only pay each time someone actually clicks on your ad. The beauty of PPC is that you can get to the top of search engine results today, without having to wait weeks or months for the search engines to recognize or respond to your beautifully optimized pages. Profit from keywords video series transcript 2

3 The negative side is obviously that you have to pay for the privilege. With PPC search services like Yahoo search engine marketing or Google Adwords you just open an account, write some copy, choose the keywords you want to bid on... and you can have customers arriving at your site within hours or even minutes. Profit from keywords video series transcript 3

4 However, keep in mind that there is a danger inherent in these instant access top rankings, which is that if you re not very careful you can end up spending a lot of money without much return on your investment. So, let s learn how to avoid that with the Keywords tool. The first step is to find keywords to bid on. These keyword groups are similar to the market niches you learned to identify in a previous lesson. Profit from keywords video series transcript 4

5 Take a look at this site. We have limitless possibilities for market niches that include just about every major sport in existence. But let s find some interesting niches based on the seed keyword sports science as that really is the major theme of the site. For this, we turn to the Related keywords tool. Profit from keywords video series transcript 5

6 Look at what we get stuff like nutrition, sporting goods, supplements, body building, biomechanics, strength training, conditioning etc. Profit from keywords video series transcript 6

7 These are all awesome keywords that we could do a lot with, but unlike SEO we really only need to focus on one or two words per niche. For example with the swimming niche we might just have swimming, swim or swimmer. This works because with PPC you can create individual ads for each closely related keyword group within a niche and also because you can directly control how precise a user s search must be in order to trigger your ad. In Adwords for example, you can select any of the following match types. For broad matches like this one your ad will appear for any search that contains your keyword for example if you bid on baseball your ad would appear for those searching for baseball cards, baseball bats, major league baseball etc. As you can imagine this is rarely a good idea as your sports science ad copy will be poorly targeted for almost all those individuals. You ll end up with a lot of unproductive, in other words non sales-producing clicks, and you would soon go bankrupt. Profit from keywords video series transcript 7

8 Now, exact match Google allows you to place square brackets around specific search terms, so your ad will only appear if that exact term is searched on. It s generally wise to have a mix of several exact-matched keywords, as well as perhaps one or two very specific broad keywords. Phrase match is very similar letting you specify an exact term for an ad to appear, even if the term is part of a broader search. For example, this ad would come up even if the person searched on the phrase How to safely bulk up. Profit from keywords video series transcript 8

9 Finally we have negative match. This is for filtering out those broad matches where you definitely don t want your ad to appear. For our sports science site we would probably want to eliminate steroids, as you don t want athletes who are looking to dope up clicking on your ad. A more common negative match search for ecommerce sites is free since they don t want to waste clicks on users who are just looking for freebies. Negative keywords can save you a lot of money. As we ll see, the Wordtracker Keywords tool is perfect for finding them. Once you ve got some ad copy in place, just turn it on for a set period of time and daily budget Profit from keywords video series transcript 9

10 and then analyze the results. You can see which keywords generated a response. Using this information, refine your niche with more bids on separate keywords and keyword groups. For example, if your marathon keyword is generating few clicks, you can try more specific broad matches in the next round. If some are failing to entice users, you might want to think about breaking one or more terms into a separate group with more targeted ad copy. Profit from keywords video series transcript 10

11 And Wordtracker can help in other ways, such as bidding on your competitors brand names and URLs. Use the Related keywords tool to find negative words you don t want to bid on. For example if we type in a couple of running magazines, we get both good phrases as well as some obvious negative keywords. Bear in mind that you can save these negative keywords to a separate list for each campaign, for later entry into your adwords account. Our sports science site could then create a group of magazine brand keywords with customtailored ad copy. Also, don t forget to use the Find keywords tool to pull up common misspellings and plural forms of keywords, letting you appeal to users your competitors missed. The bid price is usually lower for these terms as well. Profit from keywords video series transcript 11

12 To recap, group the keywords you want into market niches, then use the Related keywords tool to find somewhere between 10 to 20 niches to target. Next, set up a PPC account and set up broad and specific match keyword bids, with some negative keywords and the keywords from your campaign s negative keywords list, to stay away from undesired matches. Finally test your bids, refine them and test again until you have 10 to 20 separate bids that are all profitable. Make sure you use the Related keywords tool to pick up any newly emerging or previously missed niches. A couple of parting thoughts. First, keep in mind that good keywords themselves are nothing without excellent keyword-specific ad copy Profit from keywords video series transcript 12

13 and a benefits-driven landing page. If a particular bid isn t generating results, this might in fact be the reason why, so try split-testing your ads before scrapping a poorly performing bid entirely. Second, PPC is an excellent research tool for organic SEO. Since achieving a high organic ranking requires a considerable investment of time and money, consider using PPC to test out the desirability of a niche s keywords before making that investment. In our next tutorial we ll be talking about how to use keyword-rich internal and external links to increase your search engine rankings. Profit from keywords video series transcript 13