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How to get targeted traffic to your site NOW

Written by: Paul Lock

Article Overview: An introduction to pay-per-click advertising

How to get targeted traffic to your site NOW

Pay-per-click (PPC) is another way of attracting people to your site through the search engines. It allows you to bid for certain words or phrases. The size of your bid affects your ranking in the sponsored section of the pages. In Google, for example, the PPC ads are those down the right margin and above the natural listings.

The great thing about PPC is that you only pay for the people who visit your site, not for people seeing an advertisement. And you can set a limit to the amount you’re prepared to spend.

The important thing to get right with PPC is your return on investment (ROI) analysis. You need to measure your conversion rate – the number of people who click on your ad divided by the number who buy. You then calculate the cost per sale – provided the cost is lower than the value of the sale, you’re in gross profit.

Small increases in conversion rates can have a dramatic increase in profits. That’s a subject for another time but conversion strategies are key to online profits.

PPC can be an excellent way of giving a short term boost to your search engine rankings. It shouldn’t replace the positions you achieve through optimisation but supplement them.

To learn more about how to use PPC profitably I highly recommend this FREE e-book. You can download it from http://www.payperclickexplained.com/freebook/

You can hire people like ourselves to organise a PPC campaign for you or do it yourself. We identify the most cost-effective words and phrases to bid for, write the advertisements, place them and monitor the results. Call me on 44(0)1453 873638 or mail paullock@incisecomms.co.uk.

Or you can deal with the search engines yourself – the main PPC engines are www.overture.co.uk and www.google.co.uk/adwords. But they’re not the only ones and certainly not the cheapest. You’ll get lots of traffic with both but you’ll pay top dollar. See www.payperclicksearchengines.com for details of cheaper and geographically focused engines.

The first step with Google Adwords is to identify a large number (preferably 300 or more) of low-cost but highly targeted keywords/ keyword phrases. Here are some free tools you can use to generate keywords and key phrases:
Good Keywords
Misspelled Keywords
WordTracker (Free trial version)
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions tool
7Search.com's Keyword Suggestion Tool
Use the 'Keyword Matching' option to better target your ads. Unlike conventional pay-per-click models, AdWords ads are ranked based, roughly, on a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) X Click-Through Rate (CTR) formula.
Keyword matching helps you achieve a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR) for your ads and therefore, a higher ad ranking, without increasing the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) of your campaign.
For example, a phrase match keyword like "website designer" will show up for the search query "best website designer" but will not display for the search query "design a website".
So, using the 'Phrase Match' option will minimize 'untargeted' impressions and result in Click-Through-Rate (CTR) improvements.
The two most important factors of a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign are the ads themselves and the amount you bid per click.

Writing Your Ads for Google AdWords

Writing good ad copy is part art, part science. You need to express a benefit that gets people to click on the ad. If your ad is the same as everyone else's, it won’t do well. To determine your best ads, you need to test different approaches.

Start by identifying your target market and keyword selections. If your company focuses on a
specific market niche, target your ads to that niche.

The ads you write should include your main keywords in the title or near the start of the text. Get attention by using phrases and words that get people excited and curious like "Save on holidays," "Get cars cheaper," or "Join now for 15% discount,". But be truthful. If you
advertise something that you don't offer, Google will ban your ad.

Now start writing different ads – say three more. Test them and compare with the performance of the first ad. Over time you’ll learn which ones pull and CONVERT best. It’s essential to monitor both response and conversion to ensure you’re attracting the right audience.

Getting your bids right with AdWords

When you enter your maximum cost-per-click (CPC), Google will show the estimated average position for each keyword.

However, with Google there’s no way to see what the competition is paying so you won’t know how much to pay to get a good top three position. It’s probably best to start with a max CPC slightly higher than you would like to pay. This should ensure a higher ranking for your ad and improve your chances of getting clicks. If your ad does well, your rank will increase. Once you’ve got a good click through rate (CTR), you can reduce your max CPC to get the position you want.

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Related Forum Posts
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - Of course, the quickest way to get targeted traffic to your site is PPC ads. However, before jumping into PPC, make sure you have a strong landing page that is "on message" and gives the targeted traffic what it wants and a reason from wanting it from YOU.
Re: Making Money in 2011 - Hi GT Yes I did make some improvement in my traffic generation but not nearly where I want to be, still have a way to go. Generating targeted traffic is not as easy as some people say it is. Yes you can get traffic, but unless it is targeted it does not serve much purpose and is really just a waste of time and effort. MichelleJ
Re: Google updated page rank - [quote="Trent Brownrigg":kvod5gp2]Getting traffic is easy. Anyone can spend hours per day on social sites and get a ton of traffic. The difficult part is getting targeted traffic that actually converts into money in one way or another. That's exactly why most people fail. They spend all their time getting as much traffic as they can without going for the right kind of traffic. When they realize they aren't making any money they just quit.[/quote:kvod5gp2] Well said, Trent. I was just talking to a guy last night who focuses a lot on getting traffic from social sites like Reddit and Mixx. He makes all his money off of Adsense, but it's dwindling because that traffic knows not to click on Adsense ads. I told him he needs to focus on natural search traffic, that of course, is targeted. I also told him to start promoting some affiliate products geared towards that niche, which will help greatly with his income.
Re: Traffic! How do you get it? - There is the quicker and easier way out of this predicament of striving to get more visitors to your website. If you buy website traffic, you can get targeted traffic for a price. This entails either paying top sites so that you can put a link or an advertisement in their site. You can also choose to do Payperclick or PPC. This is the Google Adsense system that post adds on billions of websites and blogs. This is tough to master though, and if you do this wrong, you will end up wasting money. Finally, you can simply use third party companies that let you buy website traffic from them. This is perhaps the fastest way to get traffic.
Re: Google updated page rank - Getting traffic is easy. Anyone can spend hours per day on social sites and get a ton of traffic. The difficult part is getting targeted traffic that actually converts into money in one way or another. That's exactly why most people fail. They spend all their time getting as much traffic as they can without going for the right kind of traffic. When they realize they aren't making any money they just quit.


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