Market IQ manages pay per click (PPC) campaigns for many different clients in many different industries. Inevitably, the question is “how much will it cost when a potential customer clicks the link?”
There is no easy answer.
Google Adwords is sort of an auction. However, the Adwords “auction” has several unique characteristics.
PPC keywords and terms are bid on with the goal to achieve one or more three outcomes. These include:
- Ad placement on a specific particular search results page.
- Where or how high on the page the ad appears.
- How much the advertiser will pay for the click relative to the page and position placement.
Up until recently, landing on page one was mostly straightforward: if the bid is highest and the keywords, geographic location and time of day match account settings, preferences and requirements. There are as many as 15 ad spaces available on a page. The highest bids claimed the top three spots immediately above the organic search results.
The highest bidder no longer claims page one, position one.
Ad Rank was added to the mix. Purportedly to improve the user experience by returning more useful and meaningful results, Ad Rank is calculated by multiplying the advertiser’s maximum bid by their Quality Score (QS). Google then ranks the ads from highest to lowest based on Ad Rank.
Advertisera with the best quality score pays the least amount. In some instances, advertisers with better quality scores can pay less than other advertisers to have advertisements appear higher up on the page.
Google AdWords success requires more than simply outbidding the competition in an online auction. It is important improve Quality Score and Ad Rank for both economic and performance reasons. As a website development company and Internet marketing company, Market IQ and other similar companies are tasked with continually producing quality content both within the Adwords sphere and on the client websites and pages. Simply setting and forgetting PPC accounts costs money and opportunity.
You may have remarkable insight to share with the world, but simply writing a great blog post is not enough. Unless people can find you it all so much hot air. Here are a couple strategies we employ at Market IQ to get your business blog found and indexed by the search engines and to drive readers – and hopefully customers – through your business website.
First of all, understand that great advice and content is not enough. The content must be written in such a manner and the blog structured in such a way so that readers and the search engines find you.
First: conduct keyword research
When writing your incisive screeds, be sure to include appropriate keywords in your posts. Every post should get noticed by search engines for the right reasons and those reasons are defined by the specific set of keywords. Do not be too general though. If you are a water filtration specialist, simply dropping “water” and “water filter” throughout the post will not cut it. Consider what are called long-tail keywords such as "reverse osmosis 2000 well water filter" or "UV water filters for sinks." Good keywords and keyword phrases should generate a small, but well-defined and targeted amount of search traffic. There are many keyword research tools you can use and you should be seeking out those keywords and keyword phrases that generate between 500 – 1,000 exact-match searches each month. While you will not be capturing the millions of users searching for “water” and “water filter” you will be tapping into a clearly defined clientele and audience.
Second: Get quality sites to link back to your blog posts
Backlinks allow you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to your blog posts. Backlinks play an important role in the indexing of your business blog. The search engines consider backlinks and endorsement of your blog posting. If you generate numerous, high quality, relevant sites backlinking to your page, the search engines assume your blog is useful for users and is a quality source for information.
A great strategy to improve your business blog’s rank in search engine results is to make guest posts on relevant sites and participating in industry forums. The goal is to have these posts link back to your site, and boost your search rank.
Three: Share and share alike
Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the other search engines are now taking notice of the number of times your content is shared on Facebook or the number of links back to your site from Twitter. You must incorporate social networking into your business blog strategy. Be selective in the social forums you participate. Maintain an active presence on the social networking sites that are popular with your clients and customers. Include tools that will allow them to share the content on your blog with others.
Four: Consider your site structure.
The navigation structure of your business blog can draw in and drive away potential readers and clients. As well as influence how it is indexed and crawled by the search engines. A couple of structure tips:
- Every page should be accessible within three clicks.
- Scrub duplicate content from your blog. When pages on your blog have the same content, search engines may display only one page of the content in their results. You should rewrite any duplicate content to make the pages and posts appear different and distinct from each other.
- There should be internal links in every post and page on your business blog. While helping users find other content, this also increases the search engines' ability to reach every page on your site.