How PPC Marketing Works
There is a big difference between pay per click marketing and SEO. Neither of these sections are intended to be a complete how to guide, but are designed just to give you a brief intro into both topics.
What is PPC?
Pay per click ads usually appear in a colored box on search results pages and are separated from the regular search results on most major search engines and portals. Some portals (such as Ask Jeeves and AOL) are not clearly separating the ads from the regular search results.
Many of the larger PPC networks have many search partners and broad sweeping contextual advertising networks.
Who Owns the Largest PPC Networks?
This is a rough estimate, but between 10% and 30% of purchases which originate from search come from pay per click ads. Currently and Overture are the two largest pay per click search engines. Google AdWords
Risk Involved with PPC?
Pay per click search engine marketing has no risk involved other than the money you are spending buying the clicks. This means that you do not need to worry about your site getting banned from a search engine for PPC services.
The recurring costs for PPC marketing can be expensive since you pay for every click. Some competitors may click on your ads to cost you money (this is more prevalent in high margin industries). It is important to track your ads and report suspicious behavior.
How PPC Works
With pay per click marketing you buy search engine traffic based on relevant keywords bought in an auction model. (Some smaller pay per click engines charge by category.) You pay for every click so targeting is important. You can view Overture click costs for your primary keyword phrases using the Overture view bid tool. Google hides bid prices and factors ad clickthrough rate into click cost.
Overture VS. Google AdWords
The trick to doing well in Google AdWords is encouraging a high clickthrough rate which will lower click costs. Google created a free PDF report offering tips on how to use AdWords effectively. Overture also recently created a free “how to” PDF.
The trick to doing well in Overture is to use many different variations of your keywords since they place exact match listings before broad match listings. This means if you bid on the exact term someone is searching for and someone else bids on a different variation of a similar term your ad will appear before theirs, even if your bid is significantly cheaper.
Some people will do better with Overture and other industries are better using
Google AdWords.
Many PPC Ads Lose Money
Like anything else there is a learning cycle associated with PPC marketing. Many people who use pay per click marketing lose money, so you should not assume your competitors know what they are doing (especially if they are a large corporation like Wal-Mart). Many business models cannot support pay per click marketing, while others rely on PPC marketing.
Many successful marketers and webmasters use both PPC and SEO with each other. The only way to be sure of the value provided by each is to test and track the results.
PPC VS. SEO
Pay per click marketing may provide a quick cheap alternative to investing in a full service SEO program. This will help you test your business model before investing into quality SEO services. Over time good SEO is likely going to be cheaper than most pay per click marketing, though the value of each depends on a market. A person selling a report about using Google AdWords would find Google AdWords as a great place to market their product.
Good practices for site navigation
• Create a naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:
• creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site
to every other page
• going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep content)
• Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:
• having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or
animations (many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site,
but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve
the accessibility of your site; more on how Google deals with non-text files)
• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom
of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root
page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first,
left-most link and list the more specific sections out to the right.
Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site
• Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file - A simple
sitemap page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have
hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your
site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.
Avoid:
• letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links
• creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for
example by subject
• Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL - Some users might
navigate your site in odd ways, and you should anticipate this. For example, instead of using
the breadcrumb links on the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes of
finding more general content. He or she might be visiting
http://seobench.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-get-top-10-ranking.html, but
then enter http://seobench.blogspot.com/2009 into the browser's address
bar, believing that this will show all news from 2009. Is your site prepared to show content inthis situation or will it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up a
directory level to http://seobench.blogspot.com/2009?
• Have a useful 404 page - Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 pagethat kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.
Avoid:
• allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your
webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent
pages are requested)
• providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all
• using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site
• Create a naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:
• creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site
to every other page
• going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep content)
• Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:
• having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or
animations (many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site,
but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve
the accessibility of your site; more on how Google deals with non-text files)
• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom
of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root
page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first,
left-most link and list the more specific sections out to the right.
Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site
• Put an HTML sitemap page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file - A simple
sitemap page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have
hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your
site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.
Avoid:
• letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links
• creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organizing them, for
example by subject
• Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL - Some users might
navigate your site in odd ways, and you should anticipate this. For example, instead of using
the breadcrumb links on the page, a user might drop off a part of the URL in the hopes of
finding more general content. He or she might be visiting
http://seobench.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-get-top-10-ranking.html, but
then enter http://seobench.blogspot.com/2009 into the browser's address
bar, believing that this will show all news from 2009. Is your site prepared to show content inthis situation or will it give the user a 404 ("page not found" error)? What about moving up a
directory level to http://seobench.blogspot.com/2009?
• Have a useful 404 page - Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 pagethat kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.
Avoid:
• allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your
webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent
pages are requested)
• providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all
• using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site
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