Is Pay per Click Placement In Your Control? Yes, If You Follow These Strategies

Do you need your pay per click ad to be the number one position? Maybe, maybe not. Pay per click placement can have a lot to do with the success of your search engine marketing. What follows are some of the best strategies for getting the maximum results for your search engine dollars.

1. Bid through the roof. If ROI is no concern and you just want your ad at the very top of the page, just bid high. If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur reading this, don't follow this strategy unless you are very confident that it will be worth the investment in name building.

Businesses with big budgets who are obsessed with keeping their brand at the tops of their customers' minds. McDonalds. Companies with very large marketing budgets. And businesses who bid at a primarily local level.

2. Test lots and lots of ad copy. There are lots of things considered in determining an ad's position. The number one thing is still the bid. But the second most important thing is generally the click-through rates of your ads. If two advertisers bid the same for a keyword, the advertiser with the higher click-through rate will usually be positioned higher.

The point is obviously that you should try to have a higher click-through rate for your ads than your competitors. How do you do this? By testing lots and lots of different ads, you can find the ones that generate the most clicks. Fortunately, the search platforms make it easy to test different ads by automatically rotating the ads that are displayed.

There is a science to split-testing. Rather than always testing random ads against one another, in the long-run you can learn a lot more by testing ads that are very similar but have some slight difference, such as different headlines or different calls to action. Testing ads that are only slightly different helps you isolate those elements that determine an ad's success.

3. Raise your total budget. Depending on how your pay per click accounts are configured, the search engines may position your ads low just to keep your ads running all day. The alternative is for your ad to only display part of the day. If you are going for maximum exposure, neither option is what you want. Raising your budget will help fix the problem and keep your ads positioned high, and active more of the day.

Unless your top priority is branding, or just getting your company name in front of as many people as possible, then you may not want to use this strategy. It just depends on your goals and what your marketing budget is.

4. Avoid Google. Maybe you don't want to avoid Google altogether, but don't think that you don't have alternatives. You do! You can use Yahoo!, MSN, Ask, or any of a number of second tier pay per click platforms that may have high quality traffic available for a fraction of the cost. Certainly, Google has the most traffic, and the traffic tends to be high quality. But if you're going broke trying to use Google, you owe it to yourself (and to your business) to look elsewhere.

There are quite a few second tier pay per click options, but here are a couple for you to research to get started: Marchex, which is divided into Marchex Adhere PPC, which is for pay per click ads, and Marchex Adhere Site-Specific, which deals with national branding campaigns; SearchFeed, a content network dealing with industry-specific web sites; and Turn, which is a pay per action model.

If you follow these strategies, you should be able to achieve better pay per click placement. If budget is not a concern, then you can just out-spend your competitors to place your ads where you want. If you're like most businesses and ROI is a concern, you will have to be a little smarter by writing better ads, managing your budgets, and exploring Google alternatives. Work Media, LLC, a Nashville search engine marketing company can help you maximize your budget. The company has written a book currently for sale on Amazon.com, Scientific Search Engine Marketing: Strategies for Maximizing Your Pay per Click Return on Investment, that will teach you everything you need to know to be a pay per click marketing master.