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Expanding Your Reach With The Big 3 In Pay Per Click
If you are looking to get involved in pay per click advertising or expand the current reach of your existing pay per click advertising, where do you turn? Here are our recommendations on where your ad spend is best used ... and a few tips to optimize your accounts.
The Big Three in PPC
In the PPC search marketing world, the best results come from Google, Yahoo and MSN. These days, the Big Three share a lot more common ground, offering close to the same sort of PPC services -- geo targeting, setting adds to switch on and off during optimum times, splitting test the copy on your ads, optimizing quality scores, and so on. Google remains dominate in search traffic, but Yahoo and MSN are major players.
Google AdWords
Quality traffic is important and Google AdWords remains on top in delivering high-volume clicks that count. However, don't sleep on Google's success -- you still need to monitor your results with frequency. With enough the time, knowledge and the right tools, you can do this yourself, or you can outsource all that to a professional PPC management company.
One of the main problems with Google is that it is not only becoming more and more competitive, it is also getting more and more difficult to master. With "Quality Scores" playing a more important role these days and more bids coming up "Inactive for Search," it introduces more variables into the equations. If you are willing to put in the time to continually test and monitor your keywords, you can maintain a healthy Google account. If you don't, you get penalized. You'll see bid minimums raised or forced to pay higher prices, or even be purposely priced out. The good news is that with consistent effort, you can actually fine tune and tweak your ad campaigns to the point where you are actually paying lower prices, but getting higher ranks than your competitors.
With Google as with any PPC engine, you should always track your content network advertising and your search network advertising separately. You may be losing money on bad keywords as you read this, especially if you are not making adjustments in tracking and monitoring your content network advertising.
Again, Google produces results, but you must be constantly vigilant, especially if you are an advertiser with a high-end budget. Spending more time, dedicating more staffing and hours or outsourcing your PPC campaign to a professional management company will pay off.
Yahoo Search Marketing
Yahoo Search Marketing (Formerly Overture, which was formerly Goto.com) underwent a major change early in 2007 with their Panama update. This overhaul was in direct response to what Google had done in the PPC marketplace. While they no longer dominate the pay per click arena as they had years back, they are still a very worthwhile place to invest.
Like Google, Yahoo has its own quality algorithm called "Quality Index." Once again, it's important to monitor and tweak - scores must be dialed up with continual testing. Frequent split testing will help refine your ad quality. While you won't like get slapped as hard as Google does, Yahoo has been increasing their efforts here.
With ad copy testing, you want to focus on the three C's: Customer, Competition and your Company. What makes you special from your competition? What makes you more relevant to your customers? Test different ad concepts. Then, when you find a winner, use that as a control and refine your ad with small changes to variables. The key is to consistently test to crank up that Yahoo Quality Index.
MSN AdCenter
MSN came late to the party, but they shouldn't be ignored. We have seen some superb quality traffic and they even have some unique targeting capabilities. You can create the same geo-targeting type of local PPC campaigns as the others, but you can also take it a step further and target demographics of users. For instance, if you notice you have high conversions on your site for a certain type of visitor, MSN will allow you to crank up your bids when it identifies those potential customers using their search services.
Need to import your PPC keywords and campaigns from Google AdWords? MSN recently introduced a new method to do just that. Your expansion is now easier than ever. You'll want to be certain your Google account is refined and optimized, or you will be making the same mistakes with MSN's program as you did in Google. Break down those large Ad Groups with big lists of keywords into tighter and more relevant groups. Doing so will let you target the keywords with more effective, relevant ads. Once again, test and re-test those ads repeatedly.
The Rest of the Pack
We've seen mixed results with Ask and Looksmart. You can find some traffic that will pay off one week, then next week you are flooded with bad results and your Earnings Per Click go south for the winter ... and sometimes the other three seasons, as well. Miva can also be hit or miss. If you are doing a poor job managing your other PPC accounts, we definitely suggest you don't push your luck into any of these others. There is some good traffic there, but you have to double your efforts on tracking and keep a tight eye on results since things can turn sour fast. Avoid all the other pay per click engines.
You'll find that the PPC programs of Google, Yahoo, and MSN are probably more than enough work to keep you occupied -- especially if you are playing the game correctly. If you are not doing daily ad split tests, if you aren't keeping track of sales results down to the keyword level, if you are not searching for the money-making keywords that your competition is using, then you are not using the Big Three to the fullest potential. Invest your time, effort and money there before pushing on to others...you will get a better return on your investment.
Protect Your Investment
If you are not taking care of the daily management needs of your PPC accounts, bad keywords are probably draining your funds and effectiveness. At the same time, the prices of good keywords keep going up because your quality scores are lower compared to your competition. Make sure you get more from your investment by closely supervising your account or hiring a professional pay per click management company to do this crucial work for you.
Article Source: ArticleZones.com
About the Author
Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and PPC Expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a pay per click management company. Visit his site now to discover more info on improving your PPC advertising accounts and results.
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