Pay per click - Google Adwords sponsored Links

You may have come here from the page on SEO -how important? so as you will already know there are 2 ways to get ranked in the search engines either organic searches or PPC (sponsored links). Please note that I am talking about small and medium sized sites not large scale sites.

Lets talk basics go to Google and type in letting agent swansea. As you can see in the image and probably on your search there are two differnet types of results the organic results are the results in the main block of the page, and the section at the top and sides highlighted are the focus of this page.

What you want to bid on are keywords which are relevent to your target market with what i like to call buying intent.

There are a few concepts which I will talk about to help you understand how google and other search engines decide where you will be ranked. Remember Google is a business valued in the billions and it makes it money from advertising sites like yours, so you need to be shrewd and know what you want otherwise it can cost you a lot. A good friend of mine says that;

"Google AdWords is a licence to print money or a licence to go broke."

On a very basic level google use this formula to decide where to place your sponsored link

Position = CPC x CTR

CPC - This is the cost per click that you will pay google when a unique visitor visits your site using this link

CTR - This is the click through rate this is the number of times your advert is clicked per 1000 impressions.

So as an example say there are two competing companies and one decides it will bid £1.00 per click and their advert receives 1 click per 1000 impressions, now the second more shrewd company, refined their advert to make it more appealing to their customers and they got 2 clicks per 1000 impressions, and they decided to bid £0.51. Now google will put the second customer above the first even though the 1st one bid £1.00 this is because google will make £1.02 per 1000 impressions, so the more shrewd customer is positioned in first and the other below.

Now lets really talk a bit more specific. You need to decide on your daily, weekly or monthly budget, this needs to be a comfortable amount you are willing to spend on your Internet marketing. once you have assigned this in your google AdWords campaign you need to start thinking about the keywords you will be bidding on.

Now this is really important as a small company with a limited budget do NOT broad match imagine this; if you set your budget to £30 per day and decide to broad match the phrase letting agent, you might think this is a good idea, however imagine you annoyance when you check this at the end of the month and realise that more than half your budget has gone on phrases like starting a letting agent, what makes a successful letting agent, complaining about letting agents. This is the problem with broad match. Wouldn't it be better to have people coming to your site with targeted buying intent keywords.

Don't be shy about how many keyword phrases you come up with, some of my campaigns have 1000's of keyphrases, some of these are so specific they only need a very small CPC there are some good tools out there to help you develop keywords, just find one which suits you, remember to use exact match and use variations on the theme and common misspellings to ensure you capture as many searches as possible.

You then need to assign each of these phrases a CPC, i suggest starting low on the more specific phrases and a little higher on the less specific phrases, you must monitor your results and alter the CPC to ensure that you are in the position you wish to be in.

Finally and probably the most important the advert. This is the part that affects your CTR and remember a high CTR means a low CPC and hence a much more efficient campaign and a large saving for you! Now i here you ask how do i make a click-able advert which talks to my potential customers mindset, the basic answer is talk to your customers, say you have a holiday home, but some call it a B&B some call it a guest house some call it a holiday cottage, you have obviously created a keyword phrase for each of these you now need to create a advert which is in the mind set of the searching customer so if they are looking for luxurious holiday cottages in Suffolk then that's what your advert sells, if they are looking for reasonable B&B in Suffolk (The same place) That's what your advert sells. So the bottom line is:

 "get into the mindset of the searcher!"

I know that this sounds like a lot of work, and the initial start up does take a while however the management and tweaking of the campaign take a few hours a month and a good campaign can generate a large income if you turn targeted traffic into sales. For more information on PPC campaign management see this article

• Search Engine Optimization - How important?
• Coverting A Website To A Site Which Converts
• Adwords PPC Campaign management
• Letting Agents Web design
• Creating A Good AdWords PPC Advert
• AdWords Conversion Tracking