Internet
Marketing News Flash Google Desktop Search
LaunchedOctober 14, 2004
Google released a new Google
Desktop Search tool that allows people to scan their computers for information
in the same way they use Google to search the web. Its ease of use, plus how it
enhances the Google search experience, make it a compelling product to use. Click
Here to Read the Entire Article...
Overture's
New Advertiser Service EnhancementsOctober 14, 2004
Overture
launched three new advertiser service enhancements designed to simplify sponsored
search marketing and increase qualified leads for advertisers worldwide. By utilizing
these enhanced services, Overture advertisers can more easily target additional
customers, manage their daily spend and track their sponsored search campaigns
to maximize their return on advertising spend. Click
Here to Read the Entire Article...
Search
Engine For WomenOctober 12, 2004
KaZaZZ launched its all
women's search engine called WaZaZZ! The new search engine takes all the traditional
search engine tools and caters these tools to the interests of women. Click
Here to Read the Entire Article...
Yahoo
Launched Personal SearchOctober 5, 2004
Yahoo announced
the availability of the My Yahoo! Search beta developed to help users better find,
manage, and share search engine results. Click
Here to Read the Entire Article...
Paid
Search Advertising Campaigns that Delivers Maximum ROI
Paid Search
Advertising (also Pay-Per-Click, PPC) has gained a significant influence in the
search engine industry over past couple of years. Whilst a traditional search
engine optimisation still remains the online marketing strategy number one, more
and more e-marketers discovering the potential of online advertising campaigns.
Properly designed and managed, PPC campaign can deliver highly qualified visitors
to your online shop. Quick Overview
Pay-Per-Click
(PPC) Search Engines are built on the similar principle as auctions. The difference
is that you bid on keywords -- terms people use when they search for stuff on
the internet. The concept of PPC bidding is rather simple: you buy (= bid
on) keywords that relate to your product. The highest bidder gets placed at the
top of the search results, the second highest bidder gets the next listing and
so on. Every time someone clicks through to your website, you pay the amount you
bid on that particular search term. Advertising with PPC search engines
basically gives you two key advantages: » Cheap and Highly
Targeted Traffic With bidding on keywords that relates to your product
or service, you actually pre-qualify the type of visitors you wish to attract.
You determine how much you are willing to pay (bid) for the click and you only
pay when someone clicks on your ad and. This implies that PPC search engines can
cheaply direct qualified visitors to your website. » Fast
Exposure, Immediate Profits Traditional search engines usually take
few weeks (sometimes even months) to list your website. If you are having problems
to get your website indexed by search engines or if you would like to get a quick
results from the search engines than PPC is the best alternative. Most of PPC
search engines will set your website live within a couple of hours (maximum few
days) and the impact on your site traffic and sales is practically immediate. »
Guaranteed Top Position Search engine optimisation is the classic method
of getting your website on the top of search results for free. Simply said, the
process of optimisation involves choosing keywords that are directly related to
your website and placing them meaningfully within your pages. However, as easy
as this sounds, for an average webmaster this is usually a quite daunting task
without any guarantee on the success. This again brings me to PPC as the best
solution to gain high rankings on the search result list. Often, by spending just
few cents per click, your website can get to the top three positions within 24
hours! The best-known and most popular PPC Search Engines are Google AdWords
(www.google.com/ads) and
Overture (www.overture.com).
Advertising with those two industry leaders will get your website lots of exposure
and traffic. Furthermore, top 3 listings in Google AdWords and Overture appear
on an extensive network of sites (including Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, Excite, and
many others) so you can reach up to 80% of all active Internet users. However,
at the same time be prepared that their top listings tend to be rather expensive
and you need to pay quite a bit. Generally, the more popular keyword you
choose for bidding the higher is the price. You can start your bid from 1 cent
per click and finish paying $5.00 (or more) for very competitive keywords. Designing
Successful PPC Campaigns
The golden rule of PPC bidding
is: “Attract highly qualified buyers and keep your bids as low as possible”.
Since you are paying for each single visitor landing on your website obviously
you wish to maximize the effectiveness of your PPC campaign. Let’s take a
look at some basic guidelines to help you optimise your campaign and ensure your
ROI: » Determine your bid cost The calculation
of the bid cost (also cost per click) requires a rather complicated formula. For
the purpose of this article I mention just a baseline that helps determine how
much you can afford to bid: - Firstly, you need to know the conversion
rate of your web site. That means how many unique visitors you need to close one
sale. For example, if you need 50 visitors (= clicks) to close 1 sale then your
conversion rate is 2%. If your bid is 10 cents per click than one sale has $5
of bidding cost.
- Secondly, you need to know your profit margin. If your
profit margin is high enough to justify the cost you can consider increasing the
bid and getting a higher position for your ad. This way you may increase the number
of clicks through your website and acquire more
sales. - Finally,
calculate if the extra sales justify the extra cost and adjust the bid accordingly.
»
Focus on highly targeted keywords As mentioned earlier, PPC Advertising
can deliver cheap and highly targeted traffic to your website. To use this advantage
to your benefit it is important to choose wisely the keywords you wish to bid
on. The key is to be specific. For example, instead of bidding on “skin care”
you can consider bid on “anti ageing herbal treatments”. More targeted
keywords attract more qualified buyers. It is easier to convert them into paying
customers because they found exactly what they were looking for. This strategy
is also a big money saver -- more specific keywords tend to be less expensive
than the general ones everybody is biding on. » Customize
your advertisements You will attract more attention from qualified buyers
by writing ads specifically for each of keywords you bid on. Speak directly to
the type of visitor you want to serve. For example, instead of writing an ad for
“pies” you can write “home made meat pies”. When tailoring
your ads to a specific audience, be also sure that you direct your visitors to
a page on your website where it's easy for them to buy these items. »
Use less popular PPC search engines
Overture and Google AdWords are
clearly the PPC market leaders. However you can still benefit from the less popular
ones such as: Bids
on these less popular PPC search engines are much cheaper and you can purchase
your listings for as little as one cent per visitor. Even though you may not get
the same exposure as you would get with Overture and Google, you still generate
a decent amount of traffic. And while you only pay for actual clicks to your website,
you never waste your money. » Choose the best position for
your advertisement To be listed first on the search results is not always
a smart move. It certainly helps to attract lots of visitors, but may cost you
lots of money at the same time. People usually visit first 5 top listings before
making a final decision about their purchase. Therefore, it is more profitable
to have lower ranking for highly competitive keywords. Managing
PPC Advertising Campaign
You have designed a killer selling
ad copy, chosen highly targeted keywords, calculated the maximum you can afford
to bid on each of search terms and determined which spot on the search results
you wish to secure. Yet, there is no guarantee that your ad always remains on
your desired position. The key to managing the desired position is to adjust
your bids correctly in accordance to the PPC market conditions. It’s like
monitoring shares on the share market -- to get the best deal you need to constantly
watch prices and react immediately to any change. The main factor influencing
the price of the bids and your position are your competitors. Let’s make
few examples of bidding strategies you can consider using in your PPC campaign:
assuming, your maximum cost per click is $1.00 and your goal is to secure position
#3 at the most effective cost. (a) Maintain Target Position Your
aim is to target the position #3 however your ad appears on the position #10.
Knowing that the current holder of the position #3 pays $0.51 per click you can
improve your position and take over his place by bidding $0.52. This strategy
sometimes tends to drive up the keyword prices so be aware you don’t cross
the limit of spending $1.00 per click. (b) Remove Bid Gaps Overture
defines the bid gap as “the difference between the amount you are currently
paying for a click and the minimum you could be paying to still remain above your
next highest competitor in the search results.” For example: You pay
$0.70 per click and your next highest competitor pays $0.60 per click. You can
pay just $0.61 per click and still be placed above your competitor. By closing
this bid gap you save $0.09 per click which in 1,000 clicks is saving of $90! (c)
Control your Maximum Cost per Click As mentioned earlier in this article,
the calculation of your maximum bid cost (cost per click) requires you to collect
a list of statistics about your website. Based on our assumption, you are willing
to pay maximum of $1.00 per click. Therefore you should not pursue any positions
where the bids are over your $1.00 limit. Wait till the price falls under $1.00
to prevent any possible losses. To get the most accurate bidding results
without having to baby-sit your advertising campaign, I would recommend relying
on one of the automated bid management software available on the market today.
In general, those tools constantly check your bids and adjust them accordingly
to maintain your desired position so that you don’t have to be alert 24/7.
The more sophisticated tools allow you to set your daily budget to prevent
spending more than it is efficient for your business. Below I have listed the
main features you should be looking for when choosing the bid management software
for your campaign: - The ability to create and identify targeted keywords
and phrases that convert leads in sales.
- The ability to set the maximum
amount your want to bid.
- The ability to fix bid gaps so you don’t
pay more money than is necessary
- The ability to set your desired position.
- The
ability to compile comprehensive reports on your keywords, bidding cost, bid position
and
current bid for each keywords. - The ability to monitor competitor’s
activity by checking competitors ranking and current bids.
If you
would like to download a demo version of bid management software, there is one
available for free at website http://www.keywordbidmaximizer.com/bidmaximizer.
It will help you to better understand the whole process of designing and maintaining
PPC campaigns so you always manage to cost-effectively allocate your budgets and
increase your revenue. Paid Search Advertising presents an excellent opportunity
to immediately address your offers to the proper online audience. Focus on identifying
highly targeted keywords that convert for your website. Calculate your bids so
your sales justify the cost. This way you will maximize your return on investment
and ensure your website’s success with PPC advertising.
How-To
... Tips, Tricks and Expert GuidesQ: I am advertising on Google
AdWords. My question is what are the benefits of using BidMaximizer Advance for
Google AdWords and how does it save me money? A: To answer this question,
firstly we need to understand how Google works: Google Adwords works differently
than most of the other PPC search engines such as Overture, FindWhat etc. Typically,
you can not really control the position of your AdWords listing and when it will
be shown because the position is not only depended on the amount of money you
are willing to pay per click. Your ad's position is also determined by many factors,
the most important factors are: - your daily cap
- maximum cost-per-click(MaxCPC)
-
your ad's actual click through rate(CTR)
- and your average position.
You
can not directly control your ad's actual click through rate and position, so
that in order to manage your keywords on Google AdWords is a big challenge and
consume a great deal of time. If you do not manage your keyword bids properly,
you will waste a lot on your advertising money on Google Adwords. OK, now
let's take a look how Bidmaximizer Advance for AdWords can save you money: Basically,
the software will set your CPC properly in a best value to achieve your desired
position. We have developed an intelligent bidding formula in Dynamic Bid
Maximizer™ that allows you to control what position you want to bid and when
it will be shown. By using Dynamic Bid Maximizer™, you will save up to 80%
of the advertising cost on Google Adwords and increase your ROI. It will also
save you a lot of time compared to managing your keywords manually. The
bidding formula for Google AdWords is very complicated. Basically, Dynamic Bid
Maximizer™ will control your position by increasing and decreasing the bid
amount according to the bidding formula below: MaxCPC = (Current position
- Desired position) x Preserved Bid Value For example if your desired
position is "1" and current position is "5" and the preserved
Bid Value is 2 cents, then the program will increase your bid by 8 cents in order
to obtain the desired position in this situation. After the bid increased, the
program will check what position you currently in and change the bids according
to the new keyword lookup results until either you have reached the desired position
or the upper limit. However, during certain times, your current position may be
above your desired position, in this case, the Dynamic Bid Maximizer™ will
lower your MaxCPC amount to save you money while maintaining your current position.
Step by step of Dynamic Bid Maximizer™ bidding process for Google
AdWords: » Step 1. Check your current position in relationship
to your desired position, if your current position is equal to the desired position,
do nothing, otherwise go to step 2. » Step 2. Your
site is currently not displaying, this means your ad is not in the search results
that currently shown by Google for this particular keyword. In this situation
Dynamic Bid Maximizer™ will increase your bid by the "Preserved bid
value" until your ad are shown or you have reached your upper limit.
» Step 3. If your desired position is lower than the positions
that are showing, then the program will attempt to bid you to the last position
that is showing for that particular keyword by utilizing the steps described in
step 2 providing that the bid did not exceed the upper limit. »
Step 4. If your ad is already showing but still different than the desired
position, then the bidding formula described previously will be applied to calculate
the bid changes. » Step 5. Because your position is
also depended on your CTR, at certain time, even you do not increase your MaxCPC,
Google AdWords may raise your position automatically base on your CTR, so that
your current position may be higher than your desired position. In this situation
Dynamic Bid Maximizer™ will decrease your MaxCPC to save your money while
maintaining your desired position. To summarize Google's bidding algorithm,
Dynamic Bid Maximizer™ will attempt to make your ad show first under
any circumstance providing that it did not exceed your upper limit setting, then
it will apply the bidding formula described above. The important point to remember
here is that your position is determined by more than just your bidding price.
You may be paying more than the ad that ranks above yours and still showing at
a lower position. Conversely it can also be true that you will be showing at a
higher positions with a lower bidding price than the people who are under you. To
see how this bidding formula works in real world you can download free demo version
at http://www.keywordbidmaximizer.com/bidmaximizer.
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