You probably already know about pay-per-click internet marketing but in case you don’t, think about when you do a search on Google. You’ll type in the phrase (keyword) you’re searching for and a list of website results will show up in the middle of the page.

But you’ll also see 2-3 highlighted results at the top of the results plus a list of different looking results running down the right side of the page.

The results that show up in the middle are called “organic results” from SEO (search engine optimization). The rest of the results are pay-per-click internet marketing ads, which is what we’re focusing on today.

What website advertisers, like yourself, will do is set up a Google AdWords account (or Yahoo, or MSN or any other search engine that allows pay-per-click internet marketing ads) and write up a couple of short ads, which will appear as I explained above.

The website advertiser will then pick some “keywords” that they think prospects would search with if they were looking for a site like theirs. They will set the price they’re willing to pay Google or Yahoo or MSN if someone who searches with those keywords actually clicks on their ad and goes to their website.

How much you are willing to pay for each click will determine how high up you are on the search results. You can bid whatever price you want. But bid too low and your ad will never appear. Bid too high and you could be wasting a ton of cash.

After you pick some keywords and set your bid amounts, the pay-per-click system you’re using will tell you where you’re ranking in the results. This way, if you’re ranking 20th or not even ranking at all, you know you need to increase your bid price if you want to appear higher in the results.

The nice thing about most pay-per-click internet marketing accounts is they let you set a daily spending limit. This way, you can set the price you’re willing to pay for each keyword as well as the total amount you’re willing to spend each day.

So if you reach your limit half way through the day, your ad will basically stop showing until the following day and your daily budget starts all over again. This keeps your financials under control.

One of the keys to a successful pay-per-click internet marketing campaign is selecting enough keywords. You don’t typically want to compete with other advertisers for the “mainstream” keywords like “Seattle real estate“. It’s a bit broad and very competitive. You’d probably have to pay a few bucks per click just to get on the first page of results.

So one solution is to use a good “Keyword Research Tool”. Google has one of their own, which is great to use. The problem with Google’s keyword tool is that it won’t give you many “long tail keywords”, which are keywords with about 4 or more words in the phrase.

For example, instead of “Seattle real estate“, you could bid on the long tail keyword, “Ballard real estate condos for sale“. It’s more obscure and therefore, less competitive.

Of course, at the same time, that particular keyword won’t get as many searches as “Seattle real estate“. But if you have hundreds of these long tail keywords that you’re bidding on, the volume will add up and your budget will thank you for it!

A great long tail keyword research tool I use for my pay per click internet marketing is the one by WordStream. It’s free and gives you a bunch of great keywords that I don’t see with other keyword tools out there. It’s a good idea not to rely on just 1 keyword tool so get used to a few and see which ones you like best.

Other solid ones would be Traffic Travis and the famous WordTracker Keyword Tool.

Another area of pay-per-click internet marketing you’ll want to focus on is the ad that you write. They’re typically pretty short, in terms of the space the pay-per-click company gives you, so you need to make the most of it.

Headlines are the big key! Make sure you’re writing eye-catching headlines that people want to click on and that are relevant to your site or blog.

The beauty of writing these ads is that you can write several and test them against one another. Google, for example, will create a test for you and display your ads evenly to see which ones are performing best.

You’ll want to stick with your ads that have the highest click-through-rate (number of people clicking your ad vs. the number of times your ad appears) and stop the ads that are performing poorly.

Test, test, test! I can’t stress that enough!

While you can set your pay-per-click campaign on autopilot, for the most part, you’ll need to maintain it from time to time.

• You’ll want to see which of your keyword bids need to be adjusted higher or lower, depending on the ranking you’re getting.
• You’ll want to check your ads and delete poor ones but also create new ones to try out.
• You’ll want to add keywords until you have a gigantic list, preferably in the thousands if you can get there. The more low cost keywords you have, the more clicks you’ll get. Plus you’ll get a bigger bang for your buck.

It really all comes down to testing, as it is with any marketing weapon. Just have patience and tweak aspects of your marketing to get better results. It’s not magic; it’s just hard work and diligence. Pay attention to the numbers and you’ll be successful.

Google and Yahoo have put together some fantastic tutorials for their pay-per-click programs, which I recommend checking out. It’ll make the whole process very clear for you.

Also, if you have the cash but don’t have the time, you can have a company handle your entire pay-per-click campaign for you. They’ll set it up, gather all the keywords, select the bid amounts based on your budget, etc.

Yes, they charge a monthly fee but if you want to be hands-off and have the money to spend, it’s worthwhile. There are a number of these companies to choose from but I’d recommend looking at the services WordStream offers.

WordStream is the company I mentioned earlier that has the free keyword research tool. They also have search engine optimization and pay-per-click services. Check them out, if that’s what you’re looking for.

In the end, pay-per-click is simple in that you write some ads, set the price you’re willing to pay and start seeing traffic hitting your site, sometimes in a matter of minutes.

But in some ways it’s not so simple because you need to select a large number of solid “keywords” that people will search for in order for your ad to pull up. That process can be tedious and time consuming but it’s not as bad as weeding the garden in your backyard.

Like I said, as with any other marketing weapon, you’ll want to test, test, test. It takes a little time to learn how all this pay-per-click stuff works but it’s well worth the learning curve.

Pay-per-click is cheap because you can pay as low as a nickel per click. But it can get expensive if there are a lot of other advertisers vying for the same keywords you are.

If that’s the case and you’re trying to get in the top position in the results, you could end up paying through the nose. Some keywords cost $14 PER CLICK just to get on the first page of the search results! Go with long tail keywords and watch your pennies. Again, WordStream’s Keyword Research Tool will help you do this.

Pay-per-click is extremely effective because you can set up your account and start seeing traffic to your site in minutes. It’s not so effective, though, if you’ve picked poor keywords or keywords that aren’t relevant to your website or blog. It’s ok because you won’t get billed for anyone clicking on your ad but not so good because you also won’t get any traffic.

But if you’re looking to save some cash and target your market like crazy, try using Facebook’s pay-per-click advertising. It’s relatively cheaper than Google and Yahoo and you can really drill down on the demographic information to target your audience super-duper well.

You can target prospects by age, education, geographic location, language, keywords they have in their Facebook account, etc. Google and Yahoo allow you to do some of this too but Facebook let’s you go further.

Facebook also has a different kind of audience. It’s all about being social with your friends so people aren’t exactly searching for a certain topic, as they would with Google or Yahoo. That is probably one of the reasons why the “click-through-rate” (CTR) with Facebook is quite a bit lower than Google.

But even with a lower CTR, you’ll still get a TON of “impressions” (having your ad show up on a person’s Facebook homepage so they see it). If nothing else, it’s fantastic branding for you. Repetition is a HUGE part of any marketing weapon.

This way, even if someone doesn’t click on your ad the first time, they’re likely to see it again and click or at least have your name/logo in their head. And remember, you can target your audience down to geographic location so branding really comes into play here.

As with Google and Yahoo, you can usually find promo codes on the web for a “$50 credit” to start your Facebook pay-per-click campaign with. Just do a Google search for it. It’s free money, take it.

Bottom line, pay-per-click is awesome! But like any other marketing weapon, there are pros and cons. It has the potential to send rivers of visitors to your site. But you need to learn how to use it properly or else you’ll flush a bunch of cash down the toilet.

It’s not that hard, you just need to take the time to learn and play with it. And frankly, the time you spend learning pay-per-click marketing will pay you back a million times over (hopefully literally!).

Josh F. Sanders is a Real Estate Broker and the Founder of Shiloh Street University in Seattle, WA, an online marketing school designed specifically for Realtors and agents.

SSU’s purpose is to “Create Wealthy Agents through World-Class Marketing” by providing step-by-step video marketing tutorials, lead-generation lessons, tips, articles, recommended marketing vendors and much more.

Get your FREE 5-DAY SNEAK PEEK of SSU’s “The Marketing Toolbox” at http://www.ShilohStreetUniversity.com

Author: Josh F. Sanders
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Gadget reviews

One of the first things I tell contractors who want to generate more business online is to start creating content. The new customers who find you online will typically do so as the result of a search on Google, Yahoo, Bing or some other search engine. The more content you have online–either on your site or on unrelated sites that may link back to your site–the better your chances of being discovered by that potential customer. For example, a video on YouTube about “plumbing repair in Macon” could lead someone right to your website. An article titled “Shopping for Air Conditioning in Tempe” could likewise bring a new customer right to your door. And fresh content added directly to your domain every day will make the search engines positively giddy. Those are proven methods for attracting shoppers and increasing your search engine placement results. A blog can do the same thing, and often do it much better.

A blog is really nothing more than a really easy way for one or more people to add to content to your website, without having to mess with navigation issues or sitemaps or any of the regular things that come into play when you add a page to a website.

Adding a blog to your site shouldn’t be difficult. I always recommend WordPress because it’s easy to install, easy to customize, simple to post to and it has an endless supply of ready-made plugins that can make it even better. Especially when it comes to search engine optimization.

If you’re unable to add a blog to your site for technical reasons, or don’t want to take a chance on installing something that won’t get used, you can install it on a new domain. That’s even easier and can sometimes be better. Putting your blog on a new domain, for example “PlumbingRepairinPodunk.com” or something similar will allow you a little more freedom than you might have otherwise. If it’s hosted someplace other than your main website, it can also provide a link back to your site. That’s not a big deal but every little bit helps.

So where do you get content for this blog? I often hear people say they don’t know what to write about or they don’t have the time to write or they’re not good with a computer. All those things can be overcome, and should be, especially if you understand the power of the blog.

For example, I created an air conditioning blog for a client that targeted an affluent suburb outside of a major city. After putting up a home page, about us, contact us and about 5 blog posts, he started getting traffic to the site. Since then, he’s averaged about 70 visitors a month (for the last 9 months). That may not sound like much,  but consider this. Using pay-per-click, he spends about $15 per click for major keywords in that area. If each of those 70 visitors had clicked on his ad instead of finding him organically, it would have cost over $1,000 per month. Doing it for the last 9 months would have cost him over $9,000. Not bad for a 10 page blog. If he was more diligent about posting to the site, those figures would increase dramatically.

This particular contractor is one of those guys who can’t type and is very uncomfortable on the computer. Because of that, I developed a hands-free blogging system. It allowed him to call a voice mail box and leave a message from wherever he was. That message was then transcribed and uploaded to his blog. Simple and effective.

So what should you blog about? Everything! Every day there are interesting stories taking place in your company. Think about the things you tell your husband or wife when you get home. Think about the funny things that customers do or say, or that technicians see on the job. Have your techs email photos from the job site that can be posted online. Have them email videos. Still stumped? Try making a list of frequently asked questions and then post them with your answers online, one at a time. Just write something, but when you do, be sure to include your main keyword in your title every once in a while, and throughout your text. You main keyword will be the search term (actually terms – don’t focus on just one) that you’d most like people to find you under.

One of the most useful features of a blog is that you can set it up so multiple users can post to it. If you can’t update it yourself, assign a few people to take turns. Have your dispatcher post some quick thoughts once a day – maybe tips for making the service call more convenient. Have the install manager highlight some great jobs you’ve done. Run a poll. Do a survey. Ask a simple question. You can add pictures, videos, links, podcasts and whatever else you can think of. It’s not hard, and it can pay off big time.

Think of your blog as a social media tool. Use it as a way to touch base with your customers in a less formal way. Once they get used to seeing new info on a regular basis, they’ll start coming back more often and they’ll share it with others. Of course it’s now a 2-way tool for you. Be sure to engage your customers and don’t forget to acknowledge them if they leave a comment.