By Deep Arora

To get started advertising your website, a good way to generate traffic is to get involved in pay per click, also known as PPC advertising. There are a few important factors that you begin by considering if you are looking to get involved in this particular advertising movement. To being with you should understand exactly how PPC works and what measures you should be implementing to keep track of how your return on investment or ROI is progressing.

To start out with PPC advertising you need to know about the way in which this particular advertising system works. In the simplest terms, PPC advertising incorporates the elements of keywords, ad and bids, which are combined together and then placed in search engines, portals and websites that receive revenue for having the advertising posted on their pages. The placement is an important element in this mix, as the relevance of the ad to the page on which it appears is crucial to the success of the advertisement. To ensure that advertisements find their way onto relevant sites there is a process of keyword analysis of the page that is vital for this.

The keyword element is one of the most vital elements, as if you are not utilizing the correct keywords the whole thing may start to unravel at that point. To ensure that you have selected the most appropriate keywords, make sure that you select targeted words that express the products or services that you wish to most closely be identified with. Following this you will then need to consider the copy for the ads and this is another important factor, as correctly written copy is the key to a high conversion rate, which ultimately produces a high number of buyers.

Now that you have your keywords and ad copy written, you are going to begin dealing with the next element which is bidding. The process of the actual bidding can vary between search engines, but basically you are going to nominate the maximum amount usually in US dolloars that you are willing to pay for the keywords that you want to include in your ads. Lastly the element of placement comes into play. Placement is determined by the amount of money you are willing to pay for your keywords, and if you pay more or less than competitors then you will find your advertisements will be placed higher or lower in the search engines accordingly.

Lastly you will need to implement some form of tracking on your keywords. There are people who are online window shoppers. These are the people that click on every ad that comes up but rarely actually buy anything. You should have some good tracking tools to follow this. When you track your keywords effectively you are best able to find out which words are brining in positive sales and which keywords are those that are bringing in the window shoppers. This leads into you ROI, and the success or failure of your advertising strategy over time.

It is relatively easy to start bidding and get going on PPC advertising, but to really succeed you should look at the bigger picture. Make sure you approach this as a step by step process and work to fine tune your advertising campaigns by tracking and evaluating your keywords for their real benefit to your over all sales numbers. By analyzing and correcting, you will see genuine results and an increase in quality traffic flows that will make it time well spent.

About The Author

Deep Arora is an Internet marketer with over 7 years of online experience and he teaches internet marketing from his blog at HowIDid.com. Check out his blog for some amazing techniques today..

By Jerry Work

Google is pushing harder and harder into the content arena, as evidenced by its recent business activities and changes to the AdWords interface. This shift in focus to content as an equal to search engine results pages is probably due in large part to Google’’s acquisition of DoubleClick, a massive advertising network. Our discussion here will focus on Google’’s changes to the AdWords interface that make it easier to set up and manage content network-based advertising campaigns.

After logging into your Google AdWords account, there is a new link on the bar labeled “Online Campaigns”. The link says “New online campaign” and clicking it displays a dropdown list with three options: Start with keywords, Start with placements, and Help me choose. Keywords and “placements” (which used to be called “sites”) are now on equal footing. Google seems to be agnostic as to which method of advertising the customer uses.

When setting up a content campaign, you have all of the same options you have with a search campaign and more. Clicking the link to change targeting displays an interactive map that you can use to precisely target your campaign to specific geographic areas. In addition, you have the ability to target by demographic profile. Certainly, the system isn”t perfect, and demographic profiling works based on information voluntarily provided by the content network web sites. But using AdWords” demographic profiling options will at least increase the odds that your marketing message will be displayed in front of the right audience.

Another advantage that content network ads have over search results page ads is that content ads can be graphical and dynamic in nature. Flash ads that display smooth animation and even interact with the web site visitor are now common. But you can”t pull that off on search results pages (at least not Google). Google insists on maintaining a clean search results interface, free from distracting ads. When you look at the success of the company it’’s hard to argue with their decision to keep their bread and butter product the way it is.

Another interesting feature of Google’’s network ad setup process is the way available web sites are displayed on the page at which you specify your placements. If you mouse over the icons in the Ad Formats list, a popup will be displayed for each site showing the size of ads the site accepts and other relevant information. If you already have ads created in a specific size, this can save you some time by only selecting web sites already configured to accept your ad size. You can also filter the list to only bring back sites that conform to your ad size.

Historically, Google required content network advertisers to bid on a cost per thousand impressions basis, but Google now allows advertisers to bid on a per click basis. This is good news for advertisers who are careful in using performance data to manage bids or who are just more comfortable biding on a per click basis. You can even set your campaigns to use preferred cost per click and let Google automatically manage your bids for you.

If you have eschewed content ads because of lack of control and poor performance in the past, you should give it another try. Google is constantly improving its content advertising platform, making it easier for advertisers to fine-tune their campaigns and improve performance. If you are in a very competitive category, you may find content network ads to be much more cost effective.

About The Author

Jerry Work is president of Work Media, LLC, http://workmedia.net, a search engine marketing firm based in Nashville, and author of Scientific Search Engine Marketing: Maximizing Your Pay per Click Return on Investment.

By Andrew Shiveley

If you are in the web business for profit or pleasure, your number one concern is generating traffic. Traffic is the life blood of your website and every website could use more. Pay-Per-Click programs have been around for a while now, but they have also changed a lot as well. These programs were very simple when they were started and have become far more powerful as their applications have advanced, resulting in even more exposure and traffic generation for those who employ them.

Today, pay-per-click programs have advanced quite a bit. Programs today now allow people to segment their advertising and run multiple campaigns. This allows for the campaigns to be far more effective than those of the olden-days.

You can segment your campaigns by using key phrases. This means that you simply find a list of keywords that are at least two words that are similar and then place them in related groups. This allows you to create campaigns that are strings of words instead of just one. Key phrases means those two words are in bold in your advertisements instead of only one, increasing the likelihood of your advertisements receiving clicks.

Another technique in the implementation of pay-per-click programs is using longer keywords. Generally, most advertisers have been using highly competitive keywords or phrases, costing thousands of dollars to have the rights to. These tactics are no longer necessary, as research has concluded that 50% of searches that occur in search engines are completely unique. Thus, the more unique your keywords, the better you will do in attracting that traffic. The power behind this is that if you use longer and more developed lists, you will be able to generate more traffic than short lists with highly competitive keywords.

To set-up your PPC campaign, all you have to do is find a provider to get started. There are several providers, including Google AdWords, Yahoo Advertiser Network, and Overture. Google AdWords is the most popular because it generates the largest amount of traffic, but either of the three will generate results. The next step is to use the keyword tool in AdWords to generate your keywords. This tool is so great because it shows you how often certain keywords are searched and how competitive they are. The idea is to develop a large list that will allow you to use every similar word or permutation that is offered.

After you have your list, you then want to break it down into several groups. Use two to three keyword bases for each list, then add similar keywords on to those lists. Many experts will recommend having at least 40 of these groups to maximize your efforts. Now you can create campaigns for each of your keyword groups. In each campaign, you will want to optimize your advertisements to display a root keyword or key phrase. This will give you two words in bold instead of one so that they are more noticeable and will, ideally, attract more clicks.

Implementing pay-per-click programs to generate traffic to your site is a phenomenal way to increase revenue and put more money in your pocket. Now is your opportunity to implement this time-tested traffic generation technique and start running your website like the pros. Happy surfing.

About The Author

Want to learn more about time-tested traffic generation techniques? Hear from the experts and learn more about how to bring success and traffic to your website. http://Traffic-Generation-Techniques.com

By Tim Grice

There is simply no better way to get highly targeted profitable traffic to your website than through google adwords. Of course you will have to pay for each click but if you use google adwords effectively your profits will far outweigh what your google adwords advertising costs are. In this article I really want to cover some tips that will help you maximise profits when using google adwords and help to keep your advertising costs to a bare minimum.

Targeting on google adwords is something that should always be selected carefully. If you feel a product will sell better in a certain country then ensure you select that country. If you feel you have a product that can be sold world wide than make sure you cover each country. Ebooks are regularly marketed through google adwords and always sell well when targeting a world wide audience.

Tracking is something 95% of users will not do, so if you can get this one down you will be in a better position than 95% of the people who use google adwords. You need to plant the google adwords tracking code on your payment page or if you are an affiliate you will need to email the webmaster and ask them to insert the code for you. Most sellers will not have a problem with this. Tracking will allow you to see which key words convert and which dont.

Site targeting is another great way to get hold of the traffic ready and willing to buy. However I would only suggest you do this once you know which keywords do the selling and which ones dont. Once you have keywords that sell type them into googles search and see which sites appear at the top of googles organic list. If the site has google adsense on you can then go to your google adsense account and target that particular site. If you have an ad on googles search results and on the top website the sales should role in.

Google adwords and google in general is all about relevance so my last piece of advice would be to always use your choosen keywords within your ads in the title and in the body of the ad. When relevancy is increased so is your google adwords quality score, hence your cost per click is reduced. Using these tips will see your google adwords advertising costs slashed, leaving you to pull in massive profits from your campaigns.

About The Author

2 Tim Grice runs a successful online home business and gives people advice on genuine online business opportunity. If your looking to work at home or for a work at home job visit entrepreneurs who can show you how to make money now!

By Roy Sutanto

Tools for Internet Marketing have been rising to popularity these days because of cost-effectiveness and the possibility of measuring increase in profits and sales.

Pay per click (PPC) is a means to advertise business through the use of keywords/phrases in the search engines. The advertiser is required to only pay for each click that sends a visitor to his website. Search engines such as Overture, Google Adwords, Search Yahoo and Miva are just some examples of search engines. They offer top positions among the sponsored listings for particular keywords/phrases you choose. The idea for bidding is you have to buy/bid on keywords/phrases relevant to your business. The highest bidder gets to be on the top of the search result listing and the second highest bidder, of course, gets the next top listing and so on. Every time a visitor clicks on your website, you will have to pay the same amount that you bid on that particular keyword.

PPC can be very costly, time consuming and sometimes not worthy. But if you know how to go about the step by step procedures, PPC is a welcome change to traditional advertising.

If you do your searches for products, articles and auctions in the net, you usually type in a keyword or a set of phrase to guide you in your search. Either you use Google or Yahoo Search depending on where you are most comfortable at and where you usually get the best results. As soon as you key in the search button, immediately a long list of keywords or phrase will be displayed containing the keywords you key in. The first or the top link that you saw is most likely the one who bids the highest for that keyword you type. In this way, businessmen will produce the desired results; they get to be advertised, at the same time, saving and spending only for the clicks they need that might translate to potential sales.

The way to start PPC bid management is to identify first the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. CPC varies from time and even search engine to search engine too. Maximum CPC can be measured by averaging the current costs of bids (bids range from $0.25 to $5). Average of these bids is to be used as the maximum CPC to begin with. As your ad campaign progresses, the actual conversion rate (visitors turning to potential buyers/sales) will be determined and you may have to adjust your CPC (bidding rate) accordingly.

When you start to bid, see to it that you adopt different bidding strategies for various search engines. Search engines have their own PPC systems that require different approaches. It is also worthy to identify different bids for the same keyword phrases in various search engines.

Another thing, it is wiser not to bid for the top spot for two reasons: 1) It is very expensive and impractical, and 2) Surfers usually try different search queries in various search engines before they settle on the right one that fits to what they are looking for. This hardly results to conversion. Try to bid for the fifth spot instead and work your way up.

If you are now going steady on your PPC biddings, it is time for you to develop your own bidding strategy accordingly. It is important for you to track down which sites bring the bulk of your traffic and identify the ranking of your paid ads. This will help your bidding strategy to be effective and you should also decide where you want your ad to be positioned. Usually your maximum CPC will limit your choices.

Bid gaps (e.g. $ 0.40, 0.39, bid gap, 0.20, 0.19, 0.18) occur when there is a significant price increase to move up one spot in the PPC rankings. It is best if you take advantage of the bid gaps by filling them in so you can save up your cents to other bidding opportunities. Often there are keywords worthy of lesser bids to get the appropriate ranking on the list and produce a good number of clicks and higher conversion rate rather than bidding higher but having a poor conversion rate. You have to put in mind that overbidding too is not good but rather the best position for the most effective bid.

Using pay-per-click bid management in promoting your website will only be successful if you take time building many lists across many engines and studying the performance of every listing. In this way, you can make the most value from what you spend in the bidding process. The key is to use the necessary precautions to stay ahead of the competition.

Bid Management Tools

In ensuring best results, you may use bid management tools. There are accepted and approved management tools that will help you in your bidding. They are categorized in two different types:

- Web based (services by monthly subscription) or,
- PC based (a purchased software)

Monitoring tools too may help in the tracking down of your keywords/phrases and search engines as to which among them often generate sales, overall and in relation to your cost per click. This is what you call return of investment (ROI) monitoring.

These bid management tools may include additional functions that may not get from online marketing tools that are readily available. Other tools can monitor competitor’’s bids, produce reports for different parties and offer the ability to interface with multiple PPC engines. This is particularly helpful to those who manage more than a hundred keywords across several PPC engines to boost productivity and save time.

Pay-per-click bid management is ideal for the effective promotion of your business online without the hassles of draining your financial keeping too much. It is now fast catching up as a means used in marketing your goods and services to reach to as many consumers as possible.

About The Author

Roy Sutanto is the author and can provide more information on free pay per click advertisement. Save your money now. Read real customers” testimonial at GetGoogleAdsFree.info

By Kevin Sinclair

When you advertise with pay per click, Google gives you as the advertiser two options. You can have your advertising in search results, advertising in website content, or both. If you advertise in search, the results are displayed in Google under searches, and also in distributors” search results. Google content advertising is for those who want to incorporate AdSense into their websites. As AdSense rapidly grows, it now exists on millions of webpages throughout the Internet. However, many advertisers do not use AdSense and simply use advertising in search results instead.

There are several reasons for this, the first of which is trust. Because many smaller websites have chosen to embark on what is called “click fraud,” those who choose AdSense options in webpages are far more vulnerable to click fraud than are those who choose search only. Click fraud does exist in search, but it is far less common. If one chooses to commit click fraud in search, they want to negatively impact a competitor’’s return on investment. This is also true in that sense, and website owners may want to increase revenues using tactics that are similar.

Website owners are also choosing to market out with content because they are utilizing a buyer’’s motivation when he or she is on a website. If someone is on a different website, he or she might be there for different reasons. For example, if a website discusses what the disadvantages of AdSense are, the search results might actually return results on “AdSense websites,” or those selling them, for example. Even though people might click on this particular advertisement, they won”t buy after they read a negative review. It can also be true that someone on the AdSense website was looking for what best color palette they should use for their setup. For this reason, the person would not find that particular advertisement relevant, but might still click on the advertisement just to see what it’’s about.

The advertiser also often rejects AdSense websites because oftentimes, it’’s thought that these websites require more administrative care. This is because websites need to be checked through to see how relevant they are, and bids must be edited to ensure that they still appear on a page. Some words have a network of over 500 websites, so it must be time consuming and expensive to keep up with them. This is the case, but there are many who find that AdWords accounts return websites that don”t even seem to be supporting their particular keywords. For example, of particular concern are the phrases “terms and conditions” or “privacy policy.”

Many are rejecting content advertising, but many still feel it provides a similar return on investment as the search does. One of the reasons this is true is because more and more advertisers only choose search. As this continues to occur, the advertiser will have less competition, so that the word price itself reduces. Advertises also find a good return on investment from a publisher’’s website if they decide to actively promote advertiser services within content. For example, if someone is discussing printing services, he or she can also recommend the advertiser’’s services.

This can be positive for both the publisher and advertiser, and can be a good way for publishers to move toward. In spite of this, publishers have to keep in mind that they can”t be too obvious when they do this, or buyers will definitely understand what’’s going on and will avoid it.

Advertisers are also opting for content because it increases their scale, but this can be done across other search engines as well. Still, those who wish to utilize content advertisement should choose Google AdSense’’s network. It is far and away the best as compared to Yahoo or other competitors so far. In addition, its network of publishers is superior, which means advertisers will benefit from being able to spread their message through many different types of websites.

AdSense is the best pay for click content distributor, but it doesn”t compare to search for the advertiser. With the search, leads are more qualified, are usually less fraudulent, and are more regulated. Advertisers therefore consistently choose search versus content. In spite of this, advertisers should still check out AdSense and see if you can provide the return on investment they want. Some advertisers say that content provides a better return for their particular business than search does. This does vary somewhat, but overall, search remains tops for pay per click advertisers.

About The Author

Discover Kevin Sinclair’’s system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

By Matt Elizondo

This seems to be the talk of the town as rumors are now running amok all over the internet that the 2nd most powerful website on the entire Worldwide-Web may file BANKRUPTCY.

This would come as a SHOCK to investors and “Googlers” alike who both profit and benefit from the use of the World’’s largest and most powerful search engine which receives far in excess of 100 MILLION unique daily visitors and well over 300 million individual searches daily - making it perhaps the single most valuable public data resource as an “information bank” online the world over.

But is the rumor true or false?

The origin of the rumor occurred when some savvy Internet marketers began making statements that they had heard “insiders” talk” that the company may face financial disaster with the release of a new system called “Get Google Ads Free” that would allow advertisers to get their otherwise pay-per-click (PPC) advertising completely free.

This, of course, would naturally lead directly (like a domino-effect) to the collapse of Google’’s sibling program AdSense; as its only revenue comes from the direct sales of AdWords “clicks.”

The “new system” in question and responsible for the controversy over getting AdWords pay-per-clicks free is that developed by Dr Jon Cohen of New York City, New York (now retired) who discovered a simple, yet effective means, for getting Google PPC ads without having to suffer the costs involved.

The retired New York doctor and native has a publicly disclosed net worth now in excess of $70 million [US], having generated well over $377 million in product sales from sixteen (16) separate online businesses within just nine (9) years since first venturing online in 1998 (about the same time as Google was founded).

It is estimated by company insiders and leading financial analysts that the “good doctor” (as he’’s called by “all who know him”) has purportedly saved well over $93 million (some estimates suggest closer to $136 million) in otherwise paid advertising at Google and the other major players in the PPC targeted-search arena online - including Yahoo, MSN, AskJeeves, AllTheWeb.com, HotBot, AltaVista, Lycos and Netscape, just to name a few.

When the “secret” became available to the general masses, its release caused such a major sweeping stir among the community of Internet-marketers, affiliate-marketers, webmasters, ecommerce company owners and surfers alike that the site quickly rose to break the top most visited 1,000 websites on the entire planet.

When asked if the “secret” would somehow ruin Google, Dr Cohen revealed almost cryptically that it actually would bring about just the opposite effect, and “stimulate” even more business volume for the virtual giant.

Many people were dismayed to find that Google itself is deliberately allowing the purchase of 100,000′’s of PPC ads offering the secret system to the general public — which indicates to most observers that either they [Google] haven”t caught it, or they simply feel that it somehow is not a threat to their continued operation.

For anyone’’s inspection factual and hard evidence supporting this can be seen by simply looking to the right-hand column when doing a search for “get google ads free” (specifically in quotation marks) at Google.com under the “Sponsored Links” section.

You can also see nearly 100,000 specific results in the “organic” fields index located in the center and which occupies the bulk of the results pages.

One would think that if Google felt threatened by such a release as this earth-shaking “secret” is, they would hardly allow for either paid-ads or organic content to make the top searches regarding it.

However, evidence supports to the contrary - and this being the case now for more then six (6) months.

Mysteriously, within just two (2) hours of its initial release Google itself actually did in fact ”pause” the parent firm’’s attempts at advertising the new system using PPCs on their search engine - only, however, to release the hold after a Review Team consisting of some of Google’’s top executives completed performing an in-depth investigation and made the determination to ALLOW the ads to run.

The secret system was recently revised however to include “major new content” and “more exhaustive instructions,” and is now available at its Home Site.

The most important addition is that of a so called “string of code” (tech-talk for some HTML) that can be added to any webpage(s) that instantly causes the elimination of the page owner’’s AdWords costs right away.

Even a “live” woman spokes-representative (”Rachel”) has been added to the site, and who appears to literally walk out onto the webpage and talk to visitors and explain a bit more how the mysterious new breakthrough system works.

Since the addition of this new “live” spokes-woman has now appeared at the site, company Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Mr Todd Coutrin states that “sales for the system have skyrocketed above 2,430% suddenly and with no limit in sight.”

Coutrin continues: “With the newest revision now in place, plus all the additions added, affiliates for the new system can expect to earn even more than ever before!” (Note: Affiliates make up the bulk of the firm’’s sales generation.)

The refund rate for the new revised version of the secret (named V5.1) has dropped to less than half of what it was before the newer version’’s release; meaning it’’s now even more readily-received and put to use than ever before (perhaps in large part to the newer simplicity of application) - now making it the safest and one of the best resellers for the networks of affiliate marketers who earn their revenues from the reselling of other electronic publishers” stock and digital product lines.

When asked, Google company representatives stated matter-of-factly that the rumors of bankruptcy for the ecommerce giant are simply not true, and that the rumor millings are in fact simply the result of “panics” brought on by the usual hysteria associated with anything large, new or revolutionary - or in this case, all three.

Again, Google itself seems to be the biggest supporter of the “new system” as it’’s allowing more and more advertisers to promote the new system on its search engine before over 100 million daily searches and surfers.

This is extremely good news for those who are seeking a cost effective way of promoting a product or service for FREE using Googles Adwords and having Googles permission to do so.

About The Author

Revised by Matthew Elizondo
Visit “Get Google Ads Free!” Here: http://www.freegoogleadsglobal.com

By Jerry Work

The Audio Ads option in the Google AdWords interface lets you run a radio ad campaign in a very similar fashion as a paid search ad campaign. When you click the tab, you have the option to “Create an audio ad campaign”. Sound familiar?

There are probably a lot of marketing theorists and business school professors who would argue that it is not good for a single company, Google, to dominate so much of the advertising market on so many different platforms. But as business pragmatists, our view is “Who cares?” If it helps us make more money for our clients, and it makes life easier, then we”re all for it.

The first thing you do when setting up a campaign is to set your weekly budget. There are several pre-set options, ranging from $500 to $2,000, but you can set your own budget at whatever amount you want, as long as it is at least $25. The second step is to select your geographic market. The third step is to select your option for specific stations. You have the choice of either running your ads on whatever stations reach the most listeners at the lowest cost, or you can pick stations in particular formats. If you have a definable target market, then your best bet is to select stations that best cater to your market.

Now, this is still a pretty new program, so the number of stations on which you can run your ads at the present is fairly limited. For instance, when we were playing around with setting up a radio campaign, there were no sports stations available in our preferred target markets. But hey, this is cutting edge stuff, so you can”t really expect everything to be perfect yet.

The next step is to set a bid per thousand impressions. Same old auction format - tried and true.

After selecting the days and time blocks in which you would like your ads to run, Google will show you an estimate of how much you will spend and how much your cost per thousand impressions will be.

The next step is to either upload your audio ad or use Google’’s ad marketplace to find a company to create your ad for you. Either way, the end result is that you will be running audio ads on multiple targeted radio stations without the hassles of having to deal with radio sales people. Beautiful!

Currently, all radio ads purchased through the Google system must be 30 seconds in length. There is a slight bit of flexibility - if your ad is within 2% of 30 seconds, Google will compress or stretch the ad. We suggest you just go ahead and make it exactly 30 seconds.

As far as the content of the ads, Google states that the ads must adhere to their AdWords” content policy (nothing promoting violence or discrimination, no academic aids, no anti-drug testing devices, no auto-clicking products, etc.) as well as a set of editorial guidelines specifically created for audio ads, which basically state that the ad should accurately represent your business and emphasize the unique qualities of your product or service. In addition, content promoting sexual content is not allowed, as well as political election or fundraising ads. Ads of a non-commercial nature are also not allowed.

With regards to the technical specifications of the ads, it may be in MP3 or WAV format. If MP3 format is used, the maximum file size of the ad is 1.5 MB. For WAV files, the maximum size is 11 MB. You may get slightly better sound quality from using WAV format, but it could take a lot longer to upload the ad. You”re probably just fine going with MP3.

Given the cheap cost and high quality of today’’s audio recording/mixing equipment and software, you can easily create your own ad or hire a professional to do it. If choosing between spending your time on production or writing compelling ad content, we would advise you to spend the most time crafting your message. If the message is strong and audio quality acceptable, then the ad will be successful if it is heard by the right people.

About The Author

Jerry Work is president of Work Media, LLC, a PPC management and search engine optimization firm based in Nashville.

By Jerry Work

If you are going to be successful running Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns for your business, then you must use analytics to measure the performance of various elements of your campaigns. For instance, you need to know which keywords generate the most conversions. This will allow you to allocate your budget to those keywords that generate the highest return on investment.
To turn analytics on:

1. Log into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account.
2. Click the Administration tab.
3. Click the “Analytics” link on the sub-menu.
4. Click the blue “Enable Analytics” button.

It will serve you well to have some kind of well-defined conversion event on your web site. This gives you something to measure. If you sell products, it’’s easy. You just pass the amount of the sale to the analytics, and Yahoo! will calculate how much profit you are making on your campaign. If you sell services, it’’s a little more difficult. In that instance, what you need to do is assign some kind of value for having a visitor complete some action on your web site.

Conversion tracking like we are talking about here, where you can actually determine with precision the profitability of every keyword in your campaign, is accomplished by placing a snippet of JavaScript code on the page of your web site that signifies the completion of a conversion event. Examples are an order confirmation page for a web site that sells products, and a mailing list signup thank you page. Into the JavaScript code you pass the value of the transaction. So if you sell products, you would pass through the actual amount of money you made on the product. If you sell services, you might pass through a static value like $1 every time someone signs up for your mailing list.

If you have enough data, you can more accurately assign a value to an event like a newsletter signup. For example, if you know that your average customer is worth $100 in profit, and you know that 5% of the people who sign up for your newsletter eventually become customers, then you can assign a newsletter signup a value of $5 ($100 X 5%). This means that every newsletter signup is worth $5 in revenue, because for every 20 you will make $100 in profit. You should be able to come up with a reasonable guess about how much profit you earn on the average customer. After you have generated a few hundred newsletter signups, you will have a good idea what your average conversion rate is for newsletter subscribers.

To start tracking your campaign financially, you need to enable “Conversion Only” analytics.

To enable Conversion Only analytics, tags that record conversion events and revenue:

1. Click the radio button next to “Conversion Only Analytics”.

2. Click the blue “Activate” button.

You will see a section of the page that contains a snippet of code something like:

window.ysm_customData = new Object();
window.ysm_customData.conversion = “transId=,currency=,amount=”;
etc…

As the instructions say, you need to place the code snippet in the header section of the page on your site that represents your converting event.

If you sell items that can be different prices, such as items in an ecommerce shopping cart, you will need to have your web site administrator or programmer place some code that will dynamically insert the price. It should be appended to “,amount=” in the appropriate line of the JavaScript code snippet.

For example, if the sale is for an item that costs $24.95, line 4 of the code snippet above would end:

…conversion = “transid=,currency=,amount=24.95″;

If you only sale a single-priced item, or if you are a service business that is going to assume some dollar value for the converting event, you can always pass the same dollar amount through by setting the “Revenue Value:” dropdown on the Analytics Settings page to “Constant Average Value”, typing the amount in the textbox, and clicking the “Save” button. If you do this, you don”t have to worry about modifying the JavaScript code to pass the amount of the sale through.

When you activate analytics, some new columns of data are added to your campaign summary, campaign detail, and ad group detail charts: conversions, revenue, CPA (cost per acquisition), and ROAS (return on ad spend). This will show you at a glance how well your campaigns, ad groups, and even keywords are doing financially.

If you need some more detailed information about setting up analytics, such as configuring your ecommerce platform to pass revenue data to the tracking code, refer to the Yahoo! Search Marketing Analytics Setup Guide, which is a PDF file that can be downloaded from Yahoo! at help.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com.

About The Author

Jerry Work is president of Work Media, LLC, a pay per click management and search engine optimization firm based in Nashville.

By Matthew Meyer

Pay per click (PPC) is a means to advertise business through the use of keywords/phrases in the search engines. The advertiser is required to only pay for each click that sends a visitor to his website. Search engines such as Overture, Google Adwords, Search Yahoo and Miva are just some examples of search engines. They offer top positions among the sponsored listings for particular keywords/phrases you choose.

The idea for bidding is you have to buy/bid on keywords/phrases relevant to your business. The highest bidder gets to be on the top of the search result listing and the second highest bidder, of course, gets the next top listing and so on. Every time a visitor clicks on your website, you will have to pay the same amount that you bid on that particular keyword. PPC can be very costly, time consuming and sometimes not worthy. But if you know how to go about the step by step procedures, PPC is a welcome change to traditional advertising.

If you do your searches for products, articles and auctions in the net, you usually type in a keyword or a set of phrase to guide you in your search. Either you use Google or Yahoo Search depending on where you are most comfortable at and where you usually get the best results. As soon as you key in the search button, immediately a long list of keywords or phrase will be displayed containing the keywords you key in. The first or the top link that you saw is most likely the one who bids the highest for that keyword you type. In this way, businessmen will produce the desired results; they get to be advertised, at the same time, saving and spending only for the clicks they need that might translate to potential sales.

The way to start PPC bid management is to identify first the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. CPC varies from time and even search engine to search engine too. Maximum CPC can be measured by averaging the current costs of bids (bids range from $0.25 to $5). Average of these bids is to be used as the maximum CPC to begin with. As your ad campaign progresses, the actual conversion rate (visitors turning to potential buyers/sales) will be determined and you may have to adjust your CPC (bidding rate) accordingly.

When you start to bid, see to it that you adopt different bidding strategies for various search engines. Search engines have their own PPC systems that require different approaches. It is also worthy to identify different bids for the same keyword phrases in various search engines. Another thing, it is wiser not to bid for the top spot for two reasons:

1) It is very expensive and impractical, and

2) Surfers usually try different search queries in various search engines before they settle on the right one that fits to what they are looking for. This hardly results to conversion. Try to bid for the fifth spot instead and work your way up.

If you are now going steady on your PPC biddings, it is time for you to develop your own bidding strategy accordingly. It is important for you to track down which sites bring the bulk of your traffic and identify the ranking of your paid ads. This will help your bidding strategy to be effective and you should also decide where you want your ad to be positioned. Usually your maximum CPC will limit your choices.

Bid gaps (e.g. $ 0.40, 0.39, bid gap, 0.20, 0.19, 0.18) occur when there is a significant price increase to move up one spot in the PPC rankings.
It is best if you take advantage of the bid gaps by filling them in so you can save up your cents to other bidding opportunities. Often there are keywords worthy of lesser bids to get the appropriate ranking on the list and produce a good number of clicks and higher conversion rate rather than bidding higher but having a poor conversion rate.
You have to put in mind that overbidding too is not good but rather the best position for the most effective bid.

Using pay-per-click bid management in promoting your website will only be successful if you take time building many lists across many engines and studying the performance of every listing. In this way, you can make the most value from what you spend in the bidding process. The key is to use the necessary precautions to stay ahead of the competition.

Bid Management Tools

In ensuring best results, you may use bid management tools. There are accepted and approved management tools that will help you in your bidding. They are categorized in two different types:

Web based (services by monthly subscription) or,
PC based (a purchased software)

Monitoring tools too may help in the tracking down of your keywords/phrases and search engines as to which among them often generate sales, overall and in relation to your cost per click. This is what you call return of investment (ROI) monitoring.

These bid management tools may include additional functions that may not get from online marketing tools that are readily available. Other tools can monitor competitor’’s bids, produce reports for different parties and offer the ability to interface with multiple PPC engines. This is particularly helpful to those who manage more than a hundred keywords across several PPC engines to boost productivity and save time.

Pay-per-click bid management is ideal for the effective promotion of your business online without the hassles of draining your financial keeping too much. It is now fast catching up as a means used in marketing your goods and services to reach to as many consumers as possible.

About The Author

Matthew Meyer is an internet marketer who manages http://www.thefreeadforum.com where you can post your permanent free advertising to over 50,000 members daily. Click here to visit http://www.thefreeadforum.com