Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is often viewed as a quick way to get traffic to your website. After all, the advertising itself is just a few words so it shouldn’t take too long to put it together, get it online and wait for the customers to be delivered to your website on a silver platter. Right?
Maybe not.
Many businesses use most of the words available in their word count to place the name of their business and they don’t take advantage of researched keywords. PPC advertisers could be paying more money for their ads then they need to because they haven’t investigated less popular keywords that are just as effective and provide a similar return on investment (ROI).
In most cases you can even take advantage of a negative keyword. What this means is if you have a company that sells a variety of nuts, you might consider placing a ‘- cashews’ if you don’t actually sell cashews. Essentially this eliminates the PPC advertising to show up on any sites that feature cashews.
If you fail to use the negative words effectively you could have a significant number of cashew fans clicking on your ‘nut’ advertising only to be disappointed that you don’t carry their favorite. The end result is that you had to pay for clicks made by potential customers who found themselves disappointed.
You should also err conservatively on the cost of attracting new customers on your ROI estimate. Don’t bid higher on PPC advertising, on an overall basis, when it seems you are not likely to gain a return on your advertising investment.
You should also take your time in the development of the language for your PPC advertisement as well as effective using both positive and negative keywords. You should keep in mind that PPC advertising should be viewed as a short-term solution to your long-range objectives.
By utilizing strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategies you are likely to see much better site visitation and a more motivated customer base. The reason for this is that when you improve your SEO strategy you also tend to improve your site ranking. Most people use search engines to locate the products they want. If they can find your site easily in a web search why would they need to pay attention to peripheral PPC advertising?
PPC advertising can be effective, but the need for this type of advertising should be short-term and used in moderation.
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