SEO - PPC - Webdesign - Ten Thousand Things

Second tier search engines are commonly defined as any search engine that draws less than 10% of the search traffic. I define second tier search engines as search engines other than Google, Yahoo and MSN. Even though they are such a small part of the entire search volume they still can be a useful tool when running your PPC campaign. Here are some of my tips that I can suggest to use the second tier:

Test, test and then test some more- I can not stress this enough, take a small sample of campaigns and ad groups that work on the big three and try them out on the 2^nd tier network. Run them for a week, if you get bad traffic (clicks with only one page view) yank the campaign. If you measure online success through a conversion metric (online sales, phone call, or other desired behavior) track your cost per conversion (amount spent divided by the number of conversion) and will determine the worth of the traffic. There are a lot of second tier engines out there, don’t be afraid to pull the entire PPC spend from that engine if you are not getting the desired results.

Develop relationships with your account reps- Just how we manage relationships with our clients we do the same with all of our search engine account reps. I have found that there is a lot more negotiation that can take place in regards to refunds, billing and account maintenance. Almost all second tier search engines will accept Adwords Editor .csv files for bulk upload. Their willingness to create your campaigns for you is based on the relationship and how much you spend with them! Work with the people you like, don’t work with pushy reps that align their sales strategies with used car salesmen.

Spend as little time as possible working on 2^nd Tier Campaigns- The second tier will almost never deliver the quality of traffic that the big three does, so don’t expect to find a second Google. Second tier engines should only be used to supplement your first tier traffic, quite honestly a lot of time on the second tier is a waste. Spend the majority of your time working with the first tier engines, it will always payoff more.

The second tier search engines often go ignored, however, to maximize your performance they can be a great asset in your PPC tool box.

I say kinda, because PPC should be the last part of anyone’s online strategy. The goal of pay per click is to get users to your website with proper key word selection and compelling ad copy. I have always told clients that the goal of PPC is to get people to the party; it’s not up to PPC that makes them stay. That is the responsibility of good design and proper search engine optimization. Let me explain how this all works.

Good design is, well, good design. This means that a site is easy to navigate, with relevant and congruent content that makes users view multiple pages, spend more time on the site, and hopefully produce the desired out come (a conversion metric such as - a purchase, phone call, leaving a comment, etc) while differentiating its self from the competition, if necessary.

Well executed search engine optimization will ensure proper messaging when being indexed by search engines. This means that the messaging of the site (a product of good design) will match how the site is read by the search engines and then ranked in order by keywords. Once design and SEO is in place only then should proper Pay Per Click advertising tactics should be used.

When all three elements come together this is what a search experience should look like:

1. An internet user types in a the keyword that is targeted by both PPC and SEO
2. The ranking of the site appears in both the organic and paid search listings of the search results page, thus increasing the chance of a click through.
3. With good design, the user finds what they are looking for and a conversion metric is triggered
4. Search engines reward the PPC advertiser because the high relevancy with lower cost per click and higher ranking

PPC rocks but it isn’t the end-all be-all that so many people incorrectly believe it to be. SEO, design AND PPC are all required for the most effective online branding strategy.

When you’re just starting out in the pay-per-click (PPC) arena there are some very important terms you need to know and understand. Since we are going to be talking about these terms a lot in more advanced PPC posts in the future we thought it would be a good idea to write a referance that we will be able to link back to to help those who may not be as search savvy.

The following are the basic terms that are used every day in the PPC world:

Impression- When an ad displays on a search engine results page, but the advertiser does not click on the ad that would link off the results page.

Clicks- Well, a click is a click. Please don’t use the term, “hit” that is so 1998

Click Through Rate- The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions will result in the Click Through Rate also know as the CTR

Cost Per Click- The amount search engines charge for a click off the results page and onto the Landing Page. Cost per click is set at the Keyword level and is often referred to as CPC.

Keyword- What is typed into the search query and what is search marketers bid on in PPC buying interface such as Google’s Adwords

Quality Score- A system used by Google to help determine the price of keywords. Google will reward advertisers with lower a CPC and higher position on a results page when Keywords have high a CTR and strong relevancy to the search query.

Landing Page- Where advertisers decide to send traffic when a user clicks on an ad. The landing page does not have to be the home page.

Pay Per Click or PPC is a type of search marketing where advertisers pay every time their ad is clicked by an internet user. Users will see PPC ads on every search engine results page, often across the top or the right column. All of this space is up for grabs by bidding on what people type into the search engine also known as Keywords. At first glance PPC advertising seems extremely simple, and at first glance, it is. All of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) allow anyone to sign up for accounts and bid and buy keywords.

Several of our clients, at one time managed their own PPC accounts but turned them over to us because when you get into it the following concepts can be rather difficult to get right:

Bid Management: Knowing how much to buy keywords for, on what engines and when to run the ads.

Keyword Research: Which keywords to buy, which keywords trigger a success event, (for example someone buying a product on a website) and knowing which keywords to eliminate.

Copy Writing: What do you write in your ads? Often there very tight limitations to what an advertiser can write. Google limits its ads to 95 characters including spaces; also there are strict limitations on what can be said, also know as editorial guidelines.

This is just scratching the surface of what PPC is and what it takes to run an effective campaign. The internet is a living, breathing, thing and PPC campaigns need to be constantly adjusted, tested, and optimized to get the highest return.