» Mastering pay-per-click search engine marketing

Mastering pay-per-click search engine marketing

Pandia takes a look at pay-per-click text ad promotion and a book on PPC search engine marketing.

There is regular, organic, search engine optimization, where you try to improve your rankings in regular search results. Then there is pay-per-click search engine marketing, where you buy your way to click throughs and a good rate of return.

All search engines now sell pay-per-click text (PPC) ads, presenting ads that are relevant to the search query topic side by side by regular search results.

Why PPC can be useful

For companies, this kind of contextual advertising can be extremely useful:

It can be used to compensate for lackluster rankings in regular search results. You can literally buy yourself a top 10 position.
Sponsored results can be used for campaigns that demand immediate or seasonal results.
PPC ads can be used to lead visitors to the landing pages you (and not the search engines) prefer.

PPC text ads have to be relevant

The fact is that a majority of searchers do not know the difference between sponsored text ads and regular search results. They will click on a well written and relevant text ad. And why shouldn’t they, as long as you lead them to something useful?

Google put a lot of emphasis on forcing advertisers to write relevant, non-hype ads. Google knows that searchers will stop clicking on ads if they do not deliver useful results. The search engine companies cannot allow that to happen, as PPC is their major source of income.

PPC builds general SEO competences

What people often do not realize, is that running a pay-per-click adverting campaign entails learning that can be used in regular, organic, search engine optimization.

Google Adwords reward well targeted ads that perform will click-through wise. By learning how to write relevant and attractive headlines and description, you develop competences that may be used when optimizing regular web pages. You know what makes people click!
Pay-per-click text ad programs give you access to statistics that can be used to measure the effects of various variants of ads and keyword phrases. You can use this knowledge when selecting keyword phrases for regular web pages.

But make no mistake about it. Pay-per-click advertising is not an easy trade, and you may soon find yourself using a lot of money with few results.

For instance: A click-through is not a sale. Too many advertisers find themselves paying for visitors that do not find the product or services relevant to their needs. There is, in other word, a discrepancy between the expectations raised by the text ads and the products or services given.

Moreover, the learning process described above takes time.

Learning from the pros

You can, however, shorten this learning process by listening to those that have been through it before you.

Boris and Eugene Mordkovich has written a book that might be the medicine you need: The Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook. Yes, Boris Mordkovich is the man behind the Search Marketing Standard SEO magazine.

The book is full of practical tips that helps you develop efficient PPC search engine marketing campaigns.

We found it to be comprehensive, systematic and well written. It is easy to read, even for SEO beginners, but contains enough detail to be of use to many professionals.

Moreover, it guides you to relevant online PPC services, tools and informational sites. All in all, it is the kind of book you should read through before you start any serious pay-per-click ad campaign.

Among the topics covered are:

book cover