Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay Per Click (PPC) offers companies the opportunity to reach their online targeted audience and cost-effectively extend your reach. With traditional advertising (such as newspaper) you advertised to a broad audience based on readership with the hope some readers may be in the market to buy your products or services. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising helps web advertisers zero-in on targeted audiences that are actively searching for a specific products or services.

The two major online companies offering PPC advertising today are Google and Overture. Both companies have an extensive network of syndication partners' web sites which they power the search results for. When a person types in a word or phrase in the search box located on one of these web sites a sophisticated software application controlled by the search engine than pulls from their huge data warehouse the web sites that best match the searcher's request. Along with the listing of web sites PPC ads may also appear in various places within the page. Generally the Pay Per Click advertisements appear at the very top of the page and along the far right side and are referred to as Sponsored Links. Whenever a PPC ad appears it is called an ad impression. The advertisers never pays for impressions, only when the person searching clicks on an PPC advertisement is the advertiser's bid amount charged to the advertiser. Thus, it is referred to as Pay-Per-Click Advertising.

Google Adwords

The three syntax forms available for Adwords:

Broad Match (wild card)
1. Example: auto parts
2. Ads will appear with all variations of the specified keywords
3. Ads will appear for singular and plurals variations of the keywords
4. Ads will appear with similar verb terms, common misspellings and synonyms
5. Generates more ad impressions (widest reach) with less effort, but can become pricey fast
6. Least targeted form of the three Adword formats
7. Use caution when bidding on single keyword words in broad match
8. Consider adding negative keywords to filter broad match and deliver more targeted results
Phrase Match (place double quote marks around each term)
1. Example: "auto parts"
2. Ads appear whenever those exact keywords appear in that exact order
3. Ad will appear even if the person searching includes additional words before or after your phrase
4. Useful when individual keywords have multiple meanings and may target the wrong audience
  1. "steering wheel cover" - cover by itself could have many meanings and appear to people searching for blankets, boat covers, etc
Exact Match (must surround the keyword terms with square brackets)
1. Example: [auto parts]
2. The most precise matching form (highly targeted) of all three Adword formats
3. User must type the exact phrase with no addtional words
4. Good cost-saving format, but you will sacrifice reach
Negative Keywords (filtering the matching results)
1. Example:
  
  "auto parts"
  -used
  (the above will exclude showing your ad to people searching for used auto parts)
2. Your PPC ads will not appear if the person searching types in any of your negative keywords.
3. This allows for greater reach than exact match but ensures people searching for the something you don't feel will lead to new business won't see your ad and waste your money.

**Note: When inserting keywords and keyword phrases in Google's Ad Groups you insert one phrase or negative word per line inside the textbox. Google considers plural word forms different than in a word's singular form (except with Broad matching). Where as Overture lumps both the plural and singular form of keywords together.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do Google and Overture determine ad positions?

Google uses a formula to calculate your PPC ad position which is calculated by multiplying your bid amount by your ad's click-through rate (CTR). In many cases ads with a higher click-through rate may appear higher in the "Sponsored Listings" than other ads with a higher bid amount. Writing very revelant PPC ads that are very appealing to your targeted audience for each keyword term each essential for improving your CTR.

At this time Overture uses your bid amount as the determining factor for position within the sponsored links. You can actually view the top five bidders for any given bid term. By brainstorming variations in search terms used by your targeted audience you can find less costly search terms to bid on and still acheive outstanding results. Overture uses checkboxes to allow advertisers to refine keyword matching.

How do I find the best keyword terms to bid on?

It's important to remember the keywords you choose should be search terms that your targeted audience uses when searching for your products or services. When targeting consumers avoid industry-specific keywords that only professionals within your industry may use and understand.

There are several online tools available for researching keyword terms.

http://www.wordtracker.com **
https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion **
http://www.gorank.com (Keyword Density Analyzer Tool)

** Be aware these tools are strictly estimates and generally the numbers you see are based off of impressions and the results can be skewed by a variety of factors. Use these tools for determining the variations in keywords not as a quantitative analysis of how often keyword phrases are searched by people on the Internet.

Tip: You might also try a 1 or 2 day broad match ad campaign just to collect variations for a keyword phrase. Remember you can turn your ad campaign off at any time.

How to write effective ads?

Your PPC ads are comprised of a short title and a brief copy. The titles should be based around the keyword terms (or keywords within a specified Ad Group) and be very enticing to the targeted audience. The text copy should also be tailored around the various keywords. Be sure to put lots of thought and marketing into your ads. Each PPC ad should link to a relevant landing page that will be very appealing to the targeted audience and contains a clear, easy to follow "call to action".

It is important to keep your ads revelant to the keyword terms and appealing to your targeted audience. Remember, besides your bid dollar amount the better your Adword click-through rate the higher your ad may appear for a given keyword term. Also, be sure your landing page is the best match within your web site for your keyword term, combined with a compelling "Call to action". Specific product pages generally should be used in conjunction with Exact Match phrases. Your home page is best suited for more general terms. Don't make the potential buyers have to drill down through numerous pages to find what they were looking for. Chances are your sales conversion rate will improve if you take the user to a page that has exactly what they wanted to find.

How do I track my PPC results?

Tracking your post-click results is best done by appending tracking code to your landing page URLs. The tracking code is added to the landing pages URL as parameters in the form of a HTTP querystring. You can create whatever parameters you want but the most common are parameters that define the PPC source, actual keywords you bidded on and maybe the format (broad, phrase or exact match). This ends up looking like this (blank spaces are not allowed in querystrings):

http://www.some-site.com/a-landing-page.htm?source=gaw&kw=auto-parts&match=ph

?source=gaw (gaw = Google AdWords)
&kw=auto-parts (keyword term = auto parts) (use hypen '-' to separate keywords in terms)
&match=ph (match format = "phrase match")

See also our PPC Tracking URL Creator Tool

When a user clicks on your ad for "auto parts" the entire tracking URL will be captured by your web server's log files as well as any 3rd party PPC reporting tools you may be using. This means you will know where the user came from, that the user clicked on your ad, what keyword term you had bid on and the type of match format you had used with that term.

There are several 3rd party tracking applications that you can use to track your users and the results. We also offer our own version:

Another useful measurement is called the Click-Through Rate (CTR).

(Total number PPC Click-Throughs/Total Number of Ad Impressions) x 100 = CTR %

All of these applications require a small Javascript code to be inserted into each page within your web site, including the thank you page after a purchase is made. You can also track users through various other action pages, such as a contact page, order sample page, locate a store page, save to favorites page, etc...

On an e-commerce web site it is very important to measure how many people clicked on your PPC advertisement and than actually placed an order. This is commonly called the Conversion Rate. To determine the conversion rate percentage for any given ad campaign (keyword term) for a month period use the formula below:

(Total number of Sales from PPC Clicks/Total Number of PPC Clicks) x 100 = Conversion Rate %

This will show you which keyword terms and advertisements had the highest conversion rates. If you also accept telephone orders your actual results may be somewhat skewed by people who clicked on your ads and then called you to place their order.