Quick apology

Things have been a little nuts around here, so I haven't had time to study or blog. Here's a bit of info I received from Wordtracker.com. I haven't checked it out or tried it, but until I can, at least you can play with it! Feel free to email me your thoughts and questions - I promise I'll do my homework and report back!

Squeeze Every Bit Of Value From Pay-per-Click

PPC advertising now makes up a substantial share of search marketing spend. Paying for an advert when someone clicks on it reduces the up-front cost associated with traditional advertising and brings a powerful, revenuegenerating machine within the grasp of any size of business.

As with organic search, keywords are at the heart of PPC campaigns but the dynamics are different. Organic search is frequently perceived as free and while there is no payment
to the search engine, there is a very definite cost in creating the content that must accompany each keyword if it is to have any chance of success. Therefore the number of keywords you optimize for is limited by the resources you have to create content around them. And of course, you will not start to see the results until many weeks have elapsed.

On the other hand pay per click is easily controllable and measurable. Success depends on finding the keywords that attract the most click-throughs and the highest return on investment.

• If a keyword doesn't attract traffic, it doesn't cost you money.
• You'll start getting results quickly and can see what works and what doesn't.
• A keyword that isn't working can be discarded instantly.

So a popular strategy for PPC is to start with a large number of keywords and test their performance through the detailed analytics provided by Google AdWords for example.

The higher the number of keywords you start with, the higher your chances of quickly finding the ones that are going to bring you the greatest return on investment. Wordtracker is an ideal tool at this early stage. The database will allow you to identify hundreds if not thousands of relevant keywords with just a few minute’s work.

Many people start their campaigns with just 30 or 40 keywords but according to PPC guru, Perry Marshall, any site needs a minimum of 200 keywords to start with. Of course, the search engines provide their own keyword suggestion tools, but Wordtracker allows you to go further. Here are some important ways:

(i) The ability to suggest related terms and dig into the long tail of search terms is a perfect complement to the search engine's own tools. Many of your less savvy competitors may not use Wordtracker and you will have access to information that they do not have.
(ii) Once you've found profitable keywords in your PPC campaign, you can use Wordtracker to dig deeper and give you similar keywords that are also likely to be profitable.
(iii) For PPC campaigns that are failing to deliver profits, running all the keywords through Wordtracker will help to uncover where the real money terms lie.

There is great synergy between PPC and organic search campaigns. PPC keywords that get high impressions but do not convert well may be ideal candidates for organic optimization. So someone searching on 'digital photography' probably does not want to buy a digital camera immediately and would be a poor PPC target. However, it is probable that in the future they will want to buy – so would be an ideal target for content optimized around 'digital photography' designed to build an opt-in mailing list.