Posting adverts with a PPC (pay per click) campaign can be a very good way to drive highly targeted traffic to your website. The great thing about writing and uploading PPC adverts onto an affiliate network is that they are so cheap to post. You can simply offer a few cents per click. You may not have the fastest response if you are only paying a few cents per click, but eventually your adverts will be seen and clicked. You can offer to pay dollars for your clicks and have your adverts featured highly and prominently, but it is not absolutely needed (only on occasions may it be deemed necessary, such as at Christmas).
1. Pick the right keywords for your product
You need to pick the keywords that suit your landing page and the products/services that it sells. Some people make the mistake of optimizing their PPC campaign for their business or their entire website, but that will cost money for no real benefit. You need to target the person who is going to look at your landing page and convert into a buyer/customer.
2. Pick keywords that are more specific
There are lots of popular keywords out there, but they are often popular because they have numerous meanings. For example, even a rarely used word such as “flipper” may refer to a piece of snorkelling equipment, a fish, a famous dolphin or a person who fixes up houses. If you are more specific, such as “flipper the dolphin” or “Dolphin flipper”, you will have a lot more success.
3. Pick keywords that are long-tailed and take a chance
Long-tailed keywords are ones that are only used by a very small group of people. But, more often than not, they are the ones you are trying to target. They may not gain many clicks on your PPC adverts, but the clicks they do get are more likely to convert into customers.
4. You are looking for customers and not traffic
This is a very important rule that lots of people ignore. Traffic costs you money, so getting lots of traffic is not the goal. Getting lots of customers is the goal. Your keywords may be driving a little bit of traffic to your website, and you may be tempted to use related phrases, but be wary if you do.
For example, keywords relating to “DVD series” sales need to be very targeted and specific. If you start using related keywords such as “episode lists” then you are going to attract people who are downloading TV series and are not buying them on DVD.
5. Use phrases that are hard to optimize for on your website
This is a clever little trick if you use it correctly. Some popular search terms are hard to squeeze into a website’s content because they mess up the content sentence syntax and grammar. Plus, sometimes these keywords cannot be added in without turning a sentence unreadable. So, instead of optimizing your website for them, you add them into your PPC campaign and catch the traffic that way.
6. Set a daily budget limit on your PPC campaign
This is of paramount importance because you may accidentally attract a lot of traffic that is not relevant to your website. If you do not set a PPC daily budget limit then you will unwittingly spend lots of money for no return.
7. Learn from your conversions, not from your traffic
Just because you are getting more traffic does not mean your PPC campaign is doing well. It is only doing well if people are converting from viewers to buyers. Do not forget that your PPC campaign is supposed to pay for itself by sending profitable sales your way.
SEE ALSO: Top 5 SEO Ranking Factors
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