Showing posts with label PPC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PPC. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Advantage of Organic SEO over PPC

Despite the fact that both organic SEO and PPC are part of the same system (Search Engine Marketing), there are a few essential factors that distinguish organic SEO from PPC and make it much better. Some of the benefits organic SEO has over PPC are discussed below.

Provides Long Term Solutions

Organic search results might be slow in listing the websites, but its listing is a much more stable and helpful in long run. The search listing which appears through organic search is a more permanent one than PPC which generally runs for a specified time span after which it dissolves and disappears.

Higher CTR

Research proves that the end users to have a tendency of clicking on the organic results more than the paid listings that appear on the search engine result pages. This makes the click through rates (CTR) of organic SEO almost 70% higher than those of the paid search results.

Quality Traffic

Since the organic SEO are mostly dependent on keywords, that are selected after a proper research and survey on user tendency and demographics is conducted, it suggests that the traffic too will be saturated and of good quality too. The search engine techniques is entirely based on keywords, the end users type in a keyword relevant to their search and the search engines display results that match with their requirements. This makes an evident that the users will only type what they are looking for, and will land into your page only if it is relevant to their search. Therefore, the possibility of having low quality traffic is comparatively low here.

More Sources of Traffic

Unlike PPC campaigns that only depend on keyword bidding, the organic SEO also involves a number of other techniques of attracting traffic as well which makes it double effective than the PPC. The natural or organic search also includes article submission, blog posting, link building, directory submission and many more off page promotions to help enhance the traffic flow to a website.

Low Cost Marketing

The last and the most important difference between organic search and PPC is that the former is a no cost search promotion technique. Organic SEO does not require you to spend any many on marketing, unlike PPC where, one has to keep paying the search engines every time a click is generated.

I would say Organic SEO is the best way of optimizing websites. You bring in traffic by using content that works and also by adding value via interactivity and a great user experience.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Black Hat Pay Per Click Techniques

Black hat PPC is rarely discussed in the Search Engine industry, especially not as much as black hat SEO Techniques, but we should be aware of black hat pay-per-click methods as it's possible your competitors could be applying them. In this post you will get to know how you can duplicate a competitor’s ad text to replace their ad by outbidding them.

Pay-per-click is a competitive process simply by design. And that is the reason why the people choose to use dirty tactics rather than having to pay the higher bid prices which is also have some biggest risks. Black hat PPC mostly consists of using flaws and weaknesses in systems such as Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter to your advantage.


Non-Compliant Ads
One such flaw is the lack of pre-moderation on the AdWords system, allowing changes that meet a set of automated rules to go live instantly 24/7. Unfortunately, the human side to moderation doesn’t seem to work 24/7, giving a time period in which non-compliant ads can be published.

One of many reasons affiliates use this technique is that it allows them to show a different display URL to the actual click-through URL on the ad. This means that over the weekend, their affilaiteredirect.com site can now appear to be amazon.com/music - resulting in a substantially increased CTR from the brand recognition.

You can use this trick in many different ways, as long as it doesn’t hit an automated rule such as trademark infringement. Bringing this to an in-house scenario, you may want to outbid your competitors on their brand terms or use ad copy that a human editor would normally decline. The key to doing this is to test what times and days an editor declines non-compliant copy, plus re-instating the original ad before the end of your blind-spot timeframe. (Some bid management tools can do this for you.)


Same Search Term Multiple Ads
A big restriction on most PPC networks is the inability to have multiple ads from one company displayed for the same search term. You may want to do this in order to advertise multiple products or to flood the ad space and push your competitors off the first page of the search results.

Getting around this restriction is a little trickier, as a new PPC account will be needed for each additional advert you wish to display. This could be achieved by creating a number of phantom companies with a unique bank account, credit card, and address, or you could get a little help from your friends. In either case, it’s often a good idea to use pre-paid credit cards so your phantom company or helpful friend never gets into debt. You’re then ready to start bidding, although be careful not to leave any footprints that associate the accounts to one another.

It’s best to use the first trick I mentioned so you can link directly through to your main site out-of-hours without fear of getting caught. You can also flood the search results for your competitors’ non-trademarked brand terms so they don’t have a single brand name PPC listing.

Its best not to be too evil toward your competitors though, as someone will eventually find out, and you may get reported to Google. Your best line of defense when this happens is to use your existing affiliate program (or create a fake one) and blames it all on a maverick affiliate of yours. (Remember to use different affiliate IDs for each ad’s click-through URL.)


Copying Competitor Ads
A final example of playing dirty is to copy a competitor’s ad (title, copy, and display URL), and run it on your account with a different click-through URL. As Google AdWords doesn’t allow duplicate ads, you can wipe your competitor from the paid search listings simply by using the same display URL. As long as you bid more than the competitor’s maximum bid, your campaign should replace theirs.

The user will be expecting to land on your competitor’s site when clicking through, so it’s best to create a landing page mentioning the competitor, perhaps in the form of a damning review, e.g., “Product A has been proven to be inferior to Product B...” If doing this on a large scale, try to do it on weekends; once again, so it’s harder for your competitor to monitor and analyze.


Remember, all these examples could risk your PPC account and should therefore be used with caution.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Search Engine Marketing

Having top search engine listings is important for any company. A good search engine ranking results in many visitors and sales! SEM (search engine marketing) can provide an effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to your web site.

The following is a simple guide to search engine marketing. Although it is meant for beginners, it can also be very useful for more advanced search engine marketers as a reference source.

Keywords & Search Terms
The first step is to learn about the search terms that your target audience is using when using search engines. These search terms are the keywords and keyphrases that will be used to market your web site.

Keywords are the specific words that internet users type in the search engine fields to find the information they need. If your website contains these exact keywords, in their proper density level, you’d have a great chance of appearing in a good position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Whether you’re selling your own products, or promoting your affiliate links, or inviting people to subscribe to a membership program you have developed, you would need a website to carry out your marketing approach, and you will need visitors to come to your website to experience the success that its potentials promise. And the key to generating a lot of visitors for your website lies in the selection of the correct keywords.

Keywords take on a more important role when it comes to online endeavors enrolled with Pay Per Click (PPC) programs. Keywords would attract the ads that the PPC programs can assign, and once your visitors would click on such ads, you will earn a specified amount. There are some ads that pay a measly $0.05 per click. But there are also some ads that pay as much as $50.00 per click. How can you secure for yourself the latter option? Well, you must be able to determine the most profitable keywords beforehand.

Finding profitable keywords isn’t really difficult, for as long as you know what you’re doing. There are three ways by which you could accomplish this.

1. Go to http://www.adsensearena.com . This is, by far, the easiest as well as the most cost-efficient approach. The said website has long been a secret of people in the know. No one knows how the website came about. No one even knows who maintains its pages. But everyone agree that the information it contains are pretty much accurate, save for some entries which are a little bit dated. The website http://www.adsensearena.com contains a comprehensive list of keywords together with their corresponding Cost Per Click (CPC). Simply do a manual search and look for the keywords that command a high CPC. Then build a content website based on what you will discover.

2. Create an AdWords account. AdWords is Google’s service for PPC advertisers. Creating an account won’t cost a single cent, but it would give you access to a control panel where you could view the bidding for certain keywords. All you have to do is to find keywords that command very high bids. This would give you an idea about how much the CPC of those keywords could be. Interested with this approach? Visit http://adwords.google.com today.
3.A number of online marketers offer keyword lists of the hottest topics today. These are subjects that have little competition, and which can be profitably exploited for your AdSense PPC campaigns. Often, these lists come with reports detailing the expected CPC of each of the keywords in the said lists. The online marketers who distribute the same would require a fee, of course, but if you have made content sites the engine of your online enterprise, these keyword lists could prove valuable for your endeavors.

There are three basic components to a successful PPC campaign. These are your website’s page impressions, or the number of unique visitors who get to load up your pages; your website’s Click Through Rate (CTR), or the number of visitors who get to click on the ads displayed on your website; and your ads’ CPC. The right keywords would attract ads with high CPC, and you’ll be able to solve 1/3 of the equation. The other 2/3? This is where marketing strategies would come in.