Bob's Home Business Blog

This is how it usually happens: You’re new to Internet marketing and you’ve just set up your home business website and you want to drive the most traffic you can as quickly as you can to your home page using one of the most popular methods being employed online today, pay per click. The main problem with this scenario is that it’s made up of a dangerous combination of  factors. You’re a so called newbie, you’re anxious to get started making money online and you have a little knowledge of PPC, and we all know what they say about possessing a little knowledge. 

These three things merging at once provide a recipe for financial disaster. This leads to the number one mistake made by home business owners and Internet marketers in general online today when it comes to PPC; and that is jumping into the deep end of the pay per click pool without having educated yourself on the nuances of this Internet marketing strategy in order to be able to compete successfully for your keywords at minimum cost. You must make sure you’re equipped with the knowledge you need or you could pay dearly, financially speaking, while showing little or no return for your investment.

The second biggest blunder made by marketers on the web when it comes to pay per click is not completing a comprehensive research of their keywords. This is a necessity so you’ll have a better idea about the degree of competition there is for these words and how much they are going to cost. This also helps you establish a back-up plan using keywords which aren’t in such high demand. This plan B approach can be just as effective in terms of driving the traffic you need to your home business website while at the same being a more cost effective strategy. 

Next, Internet marketers sometimes don’t realize or recognize when it’s the best time to leave a sinking ship. Staying with a pay per click campaign too long which is both costly and ineffective will lead to high costs and low page rankings which is something no one just starting out on the web needs. Accept this failed strategy as a learning experience and move on to your next challenge.

Another error made by PPC strategists is failing to set a budget for their promotion. It’s best to set a daily amount and don’t give into the temptation to increase your investment until you start seeing a return. Once again this is a tactic to help avoid going over budget with your plan.

Finally, pay per click enthusiasts sometimes fail to be consistent when using a particular keyword. If you’re competing for it be sure to use it through out different aspects of your advertising campaign. Use the same keywords you use in your ad as you use on your home page. This provides continuity for your potential customer and also makes your ad more recognizable.

By avoiding these five faux pauxs the odds of conducting a successful pay per click Internet marketing campaign for your home business should increase significantly.

Bob Withers

Because of the growing popularity of the Internet all types of businesses both offline and online have had to modify their marketing strategies in order to stay in touch with their markets. More traditional kinds of advertising (Outbound Marketing), such as trade shows, telemarketing, and print advertising where advertisers send out a message hoping that it attracts a few customers, is starting to decline. The main reason being people are becoming more educated on how to avoid such media by using caller ID to avoid telemarketers and TIVO to skip past television commercials. As a result business has had to conform to the times.

Today the vast majority of consumers are beginning the buying process online and industry has had to transform their whole approach to marketing in order to adapt. To stay competitive companies have to make sure they’re found online by people searching for their products. This has led to the development of a whole new form of advertising called inbound marketing. Inbound marketing techniques include search engine optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), and blogging.

Because of these changes one of the top priorities for any type of venture is being found on the Internet. If your customers and potential clients can’t find your product or service online then staying competitive will be nearly impossible in today’s new environment. Search engines now play a vital role in directing people to your website. When someone is searching online for a certain product and enter a specific phrase in a search engine then your home page must come up at least on the first or second page of search results in order for them to find you and your site.

There are two ways to get ranked by the major search engines online such as Google and Yahoo. One way is to pay for the results by using pay per click (PPC) listing. Using this method you pay every time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement. The key, pardon the pun, to PPC listing is your advertisement must contain certain key words contained in the search phrase. The search engine recognizes these keywords and the price per click increases with the popularity of the keyword. The search engines then rank your site based on keywords and page content and inbound links.

The second ranking method is based on organic search results which are calculated by the relevance of the search terms, the extent of the keyword match and the number of links into your website. There are two advantages of organic results: they are free and they are more popular because people click on them 75% of the time as compared to 25% for paid results.

When trying to get ranked by employing keywords use phrases which your market seems to be using to search for your product. Also place keywords on your website in the page text, url, title, and heading. Link building is also a very effective means of attracting search engines. Inbound links from other sites into your site and links from trusted sites also provide an advantage.

Another method used to get ranked by the search engines is blogging. A blog, also called a web log, is a site that you regularly update with content such as articles. If you’re into article writing, for example, you can publish to different article directories with links to your website contained in the biography box of each article you write. This is an excellent method of driving targeted traffic to your website. You can also visit other blogs similar to yours and leave a comment containing a link back to your home page.

Make sure your articles are related to your website’s main interest or overall theme. Also try to attract readers by writing compelling titles to peak your visitors’ interest. Try to establish yourself as an expert in a particular field by concentrating on a certain topic such as Internet marketing for example. If people view you as an authority they will come back for more and often recommend your website to others with similar interests. Finally, be sure to promote your blog to family and friends and anyone else who will listen especially on social media sites.

These are just a few ways to get found online and in order to survive and prosper on the web today you must treat the search engines as your best friend and feed them what they want on a regular basis.

Bob Withers

Pay Per Click Advertising is a Search Engine Marketing tool used to get maximum exposure to a website through a key word rich advertisement. PPC stands for Pay Per Click and, as reported in Forbes magazine, accounts for 2 billion dollars a year in online advertising. It’s called Pay Per Click because the advertiser pays for each click to the site from the search engines or from other websites.

It’s a cost effective way to generate highly targeted visitors to your site and is one of the fastest ways to attract prospective customers to your business products or services. Pay Per Click advertising is a critical success factor for any website that needs to attract suitable web visitors and it is an excellent way of driving business your way almost immediately.

PPC spotlights your business to potential customers, and turns browsers into buyers. It is the latest craze in cyberspace today, and gets great results if you have the marketing knowledge to set up and manage this type of campaign effectively. However, it can be a very tricky endeavor and PPC advertising, unlike other forms of targeted advertising, has one major drawback, keyword bidding.

By doing such targeted advertising there is a chance that you can lose a lot of money if you aren’t managing your campaign carefully. Before embarking on any PPC advertising campaign you must be knowledgeable and well versed in keyword research. You also must stay on top of any PPC campaign by constantly monitoring your results and your budget because key word bidding can sometimes get out of hand.

PPC advertising provides laser targeted visitors to any website making it one of the best paid online marketing techniques in use today, if done correctly. It also provides the opportunity to recast your advertising in a very short period of time and its advantages far outweigh any drawbacks to using such a system. PPC advertising provides an instant view into the mindset of your customers in an extremely cost effective manner.

It’s great for special promotions since you can turn the campaign on and off whenever you choose. Pay Per Click ads are shown along the right hand side of search results, typically labeled “Sponsored Links”. PPC search engine advertising is determined in cost per click, as in how much you are willing to pay for a visitor. This strategy allows you to attract targeted visitors while at the same time control your marketing expenses, as it lets you set a daily maximum budget on your search word advertisement.

PPC search engine marketing lets you bid on keywords that are relevant to your site and is a guaranteed way of getting relevant search engine traffic to your website. Pay Per Click advertising is ideal if you are looking for a search engine marketing strategy that delivers targeted traffic, fast.

It’s also a great way to secure a spot for your web site at the top of search engine rankings. PPC Advertising can be critical to your success when used correctly and is probably the most focused and effective marketing method used online today.

Bob Withers