| | Pay
Per Click - Step 1: Key Phrases
Ask Susan - Tip of the Month
November 2003
There are six major steps to effectively use paid advertising
on the Web.
1) Which key phrases (search terms) to use?
2) Which service has the best price for each key phrase
today?
3) What is the most effective wording to bring in customers?
4) How much should I spend and how do I control the spending?
5) What ranking do I want and how to I keep it there?
6) How do I know which advertisements are bringing in
customers and which ones are wasting my money?
Today we look at Step 1: which key phrases to use. The
key phrase (or "search terms") is specified by you when
you create an ad. Then, when a searcher types in a search
that matches your key phrase, your ad will be displayed
along with other ads and listings. Where your ad is displayed
is dependent on factors such as bid price and popularity
(to be discussed in Step 5).
When the searcher clicks on your ad, you pay the bid amount.
So, you pay only for the visitors to your website.
Careful select of the key phrases can mean the difference
between an advertising campaign that makes money and one
that loses money. Some of my clients have successfully
used pay per click advertising instead of hiring a salesperson
to generate sales leads.
Key phrases must:
1) Accurately describe your services or products so that
visitors attracted to your website will be interested
in buying
2) Be specific because these terms are usually lower priced
then general terms and they attract more qualified visitors
3) Be popular - phrases for which people are searching
You know how to describe what you offer. Do you know how
your potential customers describe what you offer, what
words they use when they are looking? Those are the words
and phrases you need: theirs, not yours. Ask them.
How else do you know what phrases people are typing into
search engines? There are some great tools. Wordtracker
andOverture's
Keyword Suggestion Tool are two of them. Visit
my Sept 2002 article
on Key Phrasesfor more information on using these
tools.
Wordtracker can also be used to compare the bid prices
of key phrases in Overture (the pay per click service
now owned by Yahoo!). This can be very helpful in selecting
popular and lower priced key phrases.
I used Wordtracker to research "home loans". These results
show examples of how to be specific and how to determine
what is too specific. It also shows you how to "get the
most bang for your buck" with your advertising pennies.
Here are the current bid prices for the first listing
(#1 position) in Overture:
home loans - $16.97 per visitor!
More specific:
Florida home loans - $11.76 (only!)
home equity loans - $9.79
home improvement loans - $6.94
mobile home loans - $4.24
first time home buyer loans - $4.23
home loans for teachers - $0.99
Countrywide home loans - $0.51
So I decided I could reduce the price even further by
specifying "Countrywide home loans for teachers". Here's
what I got:
"Sorry! No results returned from the Wordtracker database!
To appear here this keyword needs at least three appearances
in the last 338 million searches."
Oooops - too specific!
You can see there are many ways to be specific and the
price varies a great deal. It is really important it is
to do your key word research.
Next month I'll talk about ways to determine
the bid prices in different services such as GoogleAdWords.
No service always has the best prices and, for many of
my clients, we bid on some key phrases in one service,
some in another and some in a third so that we get the
most qualified visitors while staying within our budget.
If you would like further assistance, please contact me,
Susan Hankins at susanh@ask-susan.com.
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