The Big Three In Pay Per Click Search Engines
It’s time to ratchet up your pay per click advertising and you are looking for the most effective way to use your ad budget. Maybe you’ve just begun PPC advertising and need help. Let’s take a look at the most effective ways to optimize your search marketing ad campaigns using Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.
PPC and the Big Three
Google, Yahoo and MSN provide the best results these days. They’ve morphed into more or less the same sort of PPC services. You can geo-target ads, you can set ads to turn on and off during peak times, you can split test ad copy, you’ve got complicated quality scores to optimize, etc., etc. Google still holds the lion’s share of the search traffic, but each has something to offer.
Google AdWords
Google drives more quality traffic than ever, but you still need to be careful about monitoring your results with frequency. Either do this yourself or hire a professional PPC management company.
One of the main problems with Google is that it is not only becoming more and more competitive, it is also getting more and more difficult to master. With “Quality Scores” playing a more important role these days and more bids coming up “Inactive for Search,” it introduces more variables into the equations. If you are willing to put in the time to continually test and monitor your keywords, you can maintain a healthy Google account. If you don’t, you get penalized. You’ll see bid minimums raised or forced to pay higher prices, or even be purposely priced out. The good news is that with consistent effort, you can actually fine tune and tweak your ad campaigns to the point where you are actually paying lower prices, but getting higher ranks than your competitors.
Regardless of which PPC engine your on, making sure you separate out your content network advertising from your search advertising and tracking it separately is crucial. Not doing so in Google will most likely leave you with bad keywords draining your account…and this could be happening to you at this very moment.
Again, Google produces results, but you must be constantly vigilant, especially if you are an advertiser with a high-end budget. Spending more time, dedicating more staffing and hours or outsourcing your PPC campaign to a professional management company will pay off.
Yahoo Search Marketing
While Yahoo no longer dominates the pay per click arena as they once did, it’s still wise to invest ad dollars with them. Yahoo Search Marketing (previously named Overture, which was previously Goto.com) made major changes last year in response to Google’s moves in the PPC marketplace.
Similar to Google, Yahoo has a “Quality Index” … and again, this is something that you have to pay attention to. Continual testing is a must. Yahoo won’t hit you as often and as strongly as Google, but your campaign will suffer if you don’t frequently split test to fine tune your ad quality.
We recommend focusing on the three C’s when it comes to testing that ad copy: Customer, Competition and your Company. Why are you better than your competition? Why are you more relevant to your client or consumer? Try varying your approaches with your ads. Once you’ve discovered one that really works, use it as a control and tweak your ad with little changes. For best results, continue the testing to drive up that Yahoo Quality Index.
High Quality With MSN AdCenter
Even though MSN was late to the party with pay per click advertising, they shouldn’t be ignored. We’ve noticed some high quality traffic to go along with their very useful targeting capabilities. You’ll be able to utilize the same geo-targeting type of local PPC campaigns as the others. Additionally, however, is the ability to target the demographics of users. For example, if you see high conversions on your website for a specific type of visitor, MSN will allow you to raise your bids when it finds those potential clients or consumers using the MSN search network.
Need to import your PPC keywords and campaigns from Google AdWords? MSN recently introduced a new method to do just that. Your expansion is now easier than ever. You’ll want to be certain your Google account is refined and optimized, or you will be making the same mistakes with MSN’s program as you did in Google. Break down those large Ad Groups with big lists of keywords into tighter and more relevant groups. Doing so will let you target the keywords with more effective, relevant ads. Once again, test and re-test those ads repeatedly.
The Rest of the Pack
We’ve found inconsistent results from Ask and Looksmart. Some traffic will pay off for a short term, then tank with bad results a week later. As a result, your Earnings Per Click will die off…sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Another hit or miss, is Miva. Keep your bids low and your management constant. A poor job managing your other pay per click accounts can be deadly with any of these others. You can find some good traffic there, but you have to boost your efforts on tracking and watch your results closely since things can turn bad fast. We recommend avoiding all the other pay per click engines.
Most PPC advertisers find the Big Three to be more than enough work to keep them busy — or, at least they should. If you are not running daily split tests with your ads, if you aren’t tracking results down to the keyword level, if you aren’t searching for the profitable keywords that your competitors are on, then you are missing out on some tremendous bang for your buck with the big three.
Protect Your Investment
Ignoring the daily management needs of your PPC accounts will most likely result in bad keywords depleting your funds. On top of that, good keywords are getting more and more expensive because your quality scores are slipping compared to your competitors. Under-performing campaigns cost advertisers a huge chunk of potential business. It’s up to you to protect your investment with effective, intelligent supervision of your in-house PPC marketing or by outsourcing this essential work to a professional pay per click management company.
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