Thursday 31 January 2008

Pay Per Click Advertising



Internet Marketing is quite easily the fastest growing method of advertising for your business. With the world of the internet changing on a monthly basis it is becoming far more difficult for those in the know to not only keep up but be successful at promoting their products for sale online.

There are several ways you can market your business over the internet, such as Search Engine Optimisation, email marketing and Banner Advertising. Most of these forms of Internet Marketing are affected by the ever changing world of the internet. The only form advertising that is never likely to change is Pay Per Click, which is more commonly referred to as PPC.

In order for people to find your site there are several avenues you could take! Both of which revolve around traffic. Now obviously we mean website visitors not roadside traffic! Of which there are 2 types, paid traffic and free traffic. Initially before your site is optimized, paid is the only way to get buyers to your site.

Paid traffic is any form of paid advertising. The most obvious being ‘Pay Per Click’ also known as PPC. If you search anything on Google there are 2 listings on the page the thin column on the right and the other on the left. In a nutshell the right hand side is all about PPC advertising. This form of advertising is provided by all the major and minor search engines.

As with anything for people to know you exist, you need to get your name out there. PPC does this for you as you bid how much to pay per click for specific keywords related to your site in order to drive traffic there with the view of buying. This is far more effective than free classified advertising.

Although there a lot of seasoned pro’s making very good money from this method alone, it can be a mind field and has bankrupted many uneducated people.

The primary reason being people’s ignorance and lack of proper research, along with ‘Greedy Google’. Although Google are a household name doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best value!

They are widely renowned for having the best volume and quality of traffic but unfortunately for the uneducated marketer at the worst price!

Once you have mastered the art of profitable PPC campaigns it is essential for business survival to find other more cost effective alternatives. Although Google Adwords has a very user friendly interface, who cares if it’s raping your bottom line. If we are going to be honest with ourselves that’s the only reason we are all in this game!

In my search for reducing advertising cost whilst still maintaining effectiveness I have taken it upon myself to devise a list of what I would consider to be the top ten PPC programs. They are all ranked in terms of cost effectiveness, traffic quality and usability.

1) Yahoo Search marketing

The biggest Search Engine! Enough Said. Although ‘search’ has changed hands several times they still provide very high quality volumes with some deals still to be had.
• Cost Effectiveness 8/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 8/10
• Total 25/30
• Overall 8.3/10


2) Google Adwords

Widely referred to as the top dog! However as it stands not with Alexa Yahoo still rank higher! As Alexa monitor and rank sites on traffic volumes this says it all. Sorry ‘Greedy Google’ close but yet so far.
• Cost Effectiveness 5/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 9/10
• Total 23/30
• Overall 7.6/10

3) MSN Adcentre

One of the biggest Search Engines. A rapidly emerging big player with lots of leverage. Arguably the best quality traffic. Be sure to look out for the fantastic keyword research tool as part of the package.
• Cost Effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 6.5/10
• Total 22.5/30
• Overall 7.5/10

4) Enhance

This one is a little gem! It gets straight into Yahoo Search engine due to it’s partners. Fantastically Cheap Quality Traffic at minimal prices. Enhance is quickly breaking through as one of the up and coming PPC providers. A must have in anyone’s arsenal
• Cost Effectiveness 10/10
• Traffic Quality 9/10
• Usability 3/10
• Total 22/30
• Overall 7.3/10

5) Miva

Probably one of the best but vastly underrated PPC provider
• Cost effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 7/10
• Usability 7/10
• Total 21/30
• Overall 7/10

6) GoClick

Reasonably cheap traffic with a growing following of users
• Cost Effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 7/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 20/30
• Overall 6.6/10

7) Search123

One of the originals! Excellent customer support and ok traffic
• Cost effectiveness 7/10
• Traffic Quality 6/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 19/30
• Overall 6.3/10

8) 7Search

A very small Search Engine with limited traffic. Although what traffic they do get is ok quality
• Cost Effective 5.5/10
• Traffic Quality 7/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 18.5/30
• Overall 6.1/10

9) Searchfeed

Good value for money with regards to ROI, some good features such as limited geo-targeting but not masses of volume
• Cost Effective 7/10
• Traffic Quality 6/10
• Usability 5/10
• Total 18/30
• Overall 6/10

10) ABC Search

Decent traffic sources with some good customer service
• Cost Effectiveness 6/10
• Traffic Quality 5/10
• Usability 6/10
• Total 17/30
• Overall 5.6/10

In summary, I guess the point I am trying to make here is that there are other good quality options available to us. So, yes the big guns do send high quality targeted traffic! But at what price? Would you not be better to target some smaller niches with less competition and drastically improve your ROI.

An important factor to try and remember here is that most of our traffic will be coming via our optimisation and the PPC campaigns are purely as a top up and to ad some initial and ongoing credibility.

My preferred alternative to Greedy Google is Enhance. Although the user interface isn’t the best I put up with it for the level of quality, highly targeted traffic it delivers via it’s partners and mainly Yahoo. Enhance effectively acts as a cheeky little back door into Yahoo for under a third of the cost!!

Arpanet Marketing Tools


Arpanet UK Ltd are dedicated to ensure that our customers receive the highest quality training and support in order for you to achieve success. As with any business, especially a new start, the more you put in from the onset the better results you will see. It is solely for this reason that we advocate you allocate specific time regularly on a weekly basis to market your new venture.

As with every successful business there is a proven blueprint for success, within this Blog we enclose all of the necessary tools and strategies required to catapult you to success. You’ll find that during the course of this you’ll become to realize that you are not the only web entrepreneur to use these tools.

The simple reason for this is that they are proven to succeed and help to automate the amount of physical work required. After all the whole point of having a home based business is to minimize costs and capitalize on profits. As a result low overheads and minimal initial outlay is a blueprint for success.

Research is paramount to success! Whether it is on keywords or sourcing the best content for articles. The main problem being that it is very time consuming, so if you are spending your time wrapped up in research when will you find time to market your new website?

“ I’ll only ever ask you this once! What’s the point in having a new site if nobody can find it?”

I can not emphasize enough how important it is to take advantage of technology when it’s productive and available. So for this reason alone we urge to automate as much of the leg work as possible. Essentially there are two ways to get traffic to your site, paid and unpaid traffic. We will cover both during the course of this Blog

Paid Traffic

In order for people to find your site there are several avenues you could take! Both of which revolve around traffic. Now obviously we mean website visitors not roadside traffic! Of which there are 2 types, paid traffic and free traffic. Initially before your site is optimized paid is the only way to get buyers to your site. Paid traffic is any form of paid advertising. The most obvious being ‘Pay Per Click’ also known as PPC. If you search anything on Google there are 2 listings on the page the thin column on the right and the other on the left. In a nutshell the right hand side is all about PPC advertising. This form of advertising is provided by all the major and minor search engines.

As with anything for people to know you exist, you need to get your name out there. PPC does this for you as you bid how much to pay per click for specific keywords related to your site in order to drive traffic there with the view of buying.

Although there a lot of seasoned pro’s making very good money from this method alone, it can be a mind field and has bankrupted many uneducated people. Primarily, the reason being people’s ignorance and lack of proper research along with ‘Greedy Google’. Although Google are a household name doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best value!

The main factor to achieve success once again is ‘RESEARCH’. Finding out which keywords are relevant and successful for your niche market. Now there are several tools available on the market which can do this for you. Although I personally use more than one, we have found that WordTracker to be the most effective.
The main reason being that it takes your keyword and compounds it into many different keywords and phrases that you probably wouldn’t even think of! Not only does it save you a huge amount of time compiling a keyword list it even scores them based on the level of competition and search frequency. The end result being, that you end up with a quality list of keywords perfect niche markets. As with anything in life quality costs! If it falls outside your budget just let us know and we can compile a list for you.

I also use Keyword Elite which again is a keyword software program that generates lists for you. On top of this it also has some rather funky features, my favorite being “spy on adwords competition”. Basically this software enables you to not only analyze PPC listings, it publishes your ads as well as analyzing your competition. You can find your best competitor in adwords watch their campaign, identify their successful keywords and copy them ensuring your success. Not a must! but an extremely useful tool.

The other form of ‘paid traffic’ is buying visitors to your site from any of the traffic providers on the internet. There are hundreds just Google the word ‘traffic’ and you’ll see what I mean. They offer both targeted and non targeted, geographic and non geographic. If you are desperate to loose money then go to a Casino instead at least you stand a chance of winning! Why on earth would a buyer sign up to somebody like this if they could look for themselves???

Of course there other paid forms of advertising for you to explore in order to gain traffic, but some will only be relevant to certain sites. So for this reason alone these will only be covered on a one to one basis with our customers.
There lots of PPC manuals available to help you not only write great ads but more importantly increase the success of your ads. Please feel free ask for a copy.

Un Paid Traffic

Now we are talking, everything you have done up until now has cost money in the hope of making money, and to be fair when done correctly it is extremely lucrative as we have shown you

This is the important section where every single sale means all profit goes straight on the bottom line!! That’s my kind of language. So buckle up and let’s get ready to make some real money!!

Again this involves the search engines, but this time we trying to make them realize why our site is so important to them for our keywords. These keywords may or may not be the same as your PPC campaigns it is essential that you identify what we are going to look to get ranked for before we actually do it. The old cart and horse scenario! So make sure you do your ‘RESEARCH’. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is paramount to the success of your business and should do on a very regular basis, weekly is best.

If you want to be really cheeky and give yourself a boost an easy way to enhance your chances of ranking well is to copy your competitor’s keywords. Just compile your list of keywords and then Google them for the top ranking sites. Visit each site and simply steel your competitor’s keywords from their page source. Make yourself a file and send us the list and we’ll load them in for you.
All search engines, Google especially are only there to serve their customers not the website owners, which in business terms is fine. However, it’s now your business and we need to convince these engines that we are important to their search customers.

As with any new start business the biggest thing is gaining both visibility and credibility in your market place. These are both key to achieving the successful optimization and profitability of your site. We have covered some visibility with the paid methods of advertising, which we do advocate you maintain doing as well.
So the first thing you need to do is submit your site to all the major search engines. Now there is software to automate this for you, but in this case we strongly recommend that you do it manually to the main search engines such as Yahoo, Google, AOL Search, MSN, Lycos, Alta Vista etc. Otherwise how are they going to know that your site exists?

In order to increase credibility with search engines we need to ensure that 3 things are regularly happening to our site. These are incoming links, updated content and backlinks. This next section of the Blog is vital to your sites success and more importantly your wealth, so I urge you to focus and religiously follow the protocol outlined.

Depending on the type of site you have will depend on how you can influence the above. The key factor here is making sure we update content and more importantly gain backlinks.

So I guess your asking “what are backlinks”? Backlinks are simply a link from one website to another. The search engines focus a lot of weight on backlinks when assessing the importance of any particular website. One of key things here is to ensure quality not quantity! Why would a search engine see value in a site for tennis equipment that has backlinks from a kid’s toy shop? They must be relevant and focused.

There are several methods of acquiring backlinks, all of which will be covered in due course. These are directory submissions which are simply an internet resource book of different categories such health & beauty etc. Article Marketing, Blogging, Video Sites, Universal Search, Social Bookmarking, to name a few. We will go through all of the methods needed to ensure you receive quality bakclinks.

Backlink generation can effectively come under two categories, Content Marketing and Non Content Marketing. Please remember that we are only after free links. Initially when linking became important for SEO several companies started to sell links, these businesses are still available now but you do not want any bought links as it can be detrimental to your rankings as Google and alike see that they are from ‘link farms’ and actually add less weight to them as a result. Don’t do it!!!

The only paid inclusion worth considering is Yahoo. It costs $299 and basically if you get listed which they don’t guarantee it will be very beneficial to you as Google are interested in sites that get listed with Yahoo. A popular misconception is that Google are the Number 1 search engine! Wrong! According to Alexa Traffic rankings Yahoo are the number 1 not Greedy Google!(who are number 2) Google may make more money as a business but still don’t receive as much traffic

Non Content Marketing

Non content marketing is exactly what it say’s, you market your site in order to generate backlinks using methods that don’t really involve writing content.

Directory Submissions

After search engines website directories are probably one of the best sources for getting quality backlinks. By far the best and most authoritative is The Open Directory also known as DMOZ

DMOZ is by far the most authoritative directory and as a result also the hardest to get into. That being said it is still definitely worth a go though. You can follow this link to sign up and apply DMOZ

A lot of the directory sites have very good page rank, this page rank can be added to your site by submitting your business to the directories for inclusion. I am not going to lie to you, this is by far the most laborious job anyone could imagine! It’s very time consuming and exceptionally mind numbing.

There are 2 ways you can get around this boring but essential exercise! Firstly you can buy software such as Directory Submitter or SubmitEaze which we find alot more user friendly. Remember whenever you can save time automate do it! The age old adage of “time is money” does come into play and if spending $100 or so means that you aren’t tied to the computer for 5 hours and free to get on with more productive stuff it’s a no brainer!

Secondly you can pay somebody be else to do it for you. There are lots of submission services on the net. Always be sure to choose one that is reputable. Mass submission of several hundred a week will look unnatural to the search engines your ranking will definitely suffer! Time released is the best method. A company who I have personally used, and found to be very good and professional are Submit Elite
Whether doing your submission manually or not, you need to ensure that you write good titles and excellent descriptions targeting your top keywords.

Social Bookmarking

I can hear you thinking “what the hell is social bookmarking?”, “does that mean I have got tell me mates down the pub?”. Well sort of yes! It doesn’t mean that you have got to save your friends to your favorites or bookmarks in your web browser! What social bookmarking actually involves is bookmarking your favorite sites on a public website and attaching keyword tags to them so others can share that valuable information. If you want to have a look at a video on how it’s done Click Here
As with most SEO ‘chores’ the process of social bookmarking can be quite time consuming. Again there are two methods of doing it, either manually or finding some software to do it for you.

If you want to do it manually you register with a social bookmarking site, and began creating your own collection of bookmarks using your keywords as tags. Thus creating a classification structure for things you either like or enjoy searching for. You can make these bookmarks both private and public to share.
As a result providing users with a focal point for organized information and categorized resources of useful websites. When the “bookmarker” created it they ‘tagged’ the resources enabling others to use it to find and share sites and information.

It becomes social purely because people who have similar interests and have searched for similar sites can all meet in one place where there is both useful and relevant info.

How you as an internet marketer can use these sites is simple! People have created these keyword targeted resources are all looking from something specific and what that means for you is keyword targeted traffic specifically interested in what your selling! Great News free targeted traffic but more importantly by bookmarking your sites you are creating multiple backlinks to your site enhancing your SEO.
It’s entirely up to you whether you do it manually or decide to invest in some software. We strongly recommend Book Marking Demon due to its multi faceted arsenal

Video Sites

You can get some additional exposure by publishing videos on all of the major video sharing sites. There are 2 main benefits to doing this, firstly get free traffic from the video sites customer base, most of which are extremely specific and niche targeted and secondly you get your all important backlink to a high ranking site. The use of video sharing sites to increase rankings is now common practice. There have been many good Traffic & SEO books written but one of the best and most informative is Traffic Manifesto

Make sure to use anchor text for labeling any videos etc. as this will also help your organic search ranking for those particular keywords. Probably the most commonly known video site is You Tube, but there are many, many more and these sites are extremely powerful in enhancing your credibility to the search engines. Others include Google Video, Buzznet, Kwego, MySpace and the list goes on.

Content Marketing

There is widely used expression in the world of SEO “content is king”. Those who use it are both referring to content on their website and also content to get people there!

Article Marketing

Article Marketing is the process of writing articles and publishing them on Article Sites. Obviously the content is the actual article itself. The importance of Article Marketing is huge as it is widely regarded as one of the most powerful link buildings exercises there is.

If your article content is good then you stand a fair chance of other sites picking it up and using it on there page. Obviously if you combine this with the power of some of the ‘Authority’ article sites then you can very quickly build up some good quality links. Thus improving your importance to the search engines. Other benefits include that people reading these articles are all potential customers are they are searching for information on something. There isn’t anything better than free traffic, except ‘captive free traffic’ which is exactly what these visitors are!

There are several methods you can use to get content for your articles. You can write them yourself, pay a ghost writer to do this for you or alternatively use some software do it. I have used ghost writers and done some myself, the important thing is that you can’t just copy someone else’s, as all of the article sites don’t except matching content as it’s blatantly plagiarized! Although it would be a lot easier for everyone if they did! Sometimes I use Content Infinity to find useful content from articles that a free to share and make any necessary amendments. It saves time as to write powerful articles you need to research write and then publish the article and with all of the other SEO tasks I find this to be time efficient.

Most article sites allow you to put a few keywords into your article. The key is to not over do it! Many of them refuse to publish the article if they think you “keyword stuffing” as they call it. It is important to use your keywords as anchor text in the content. By anchor text I simply mean using html tags such KEYWORDS to emphasize the relevance of your site for that particular phrase. Most sites allow you to put 2-3 links to your site within the text, but remember that one of them will be in your resource box!
The pros far out way the cons when it comes to article writing! The pros are that article are excellent for backlink and generating some free captive traffic. Where as the cons are how long you have spent registering with all of the article sites, of which there are about 600!! Talk about a headache.

Don’t panic though, as again there is software which helps do this for you. The two we would recommend are Article Submitter which automates a lot of the sign up process for you and Article Post Robot lets you post to specific categories thus increasing the chance of the article being published as well as having a randomized feature.

One of the keys to maximizing your coverage with each article comes back to duplicate the content I mentioned earlier, be sure to re-arrange the article, vary text and headlines so you will get full credit from the search engines for your work.

As with most things on the internet there are authority sites! Definitely the best one for articles is Ezine Articles. Before using any software to post your articles you should submit them here first. As once they are accepted by these guys the rest should be gravy!

Another way to get the most from your article is post it on your website or Blog. This is only suitable for certain types of sites. If yours is one of these then just ask us and we’ll upload it for you giving you fresh content keeping Greedy old Google happy.


Blogging

If you are new to internet marketing the term Blog may well be unfamiliar. It stands for “Web Log” which is basically just a site that has lots of information on them. There hundreds of reasons why people have a Blog. Some people just use them as a personal diary others use them for political promotions etc. Many use them for promotion of affiliate marketing products or simply a journal of their own thoughts, the list is endless!

We are only interested in Blogs because they are good for promoting backlinks to our sites. You can place your sites link in your Blog and you’ve automatically got a backlink to your site! That simple. Google and other engines see Blogs as ‘Authority Sites’ as they contain lots of relevant information for a particular search term, and as a result any link gained from this exercise can be considered of good quality.
Blogs tend of a very similar format as most of the Blogging platforms are based on very similar software. They tend to take the following structure the will be a main content area, categories of articles, archives, a Blogroll of related sites, comments & message boards, and finally RSS feeds.

We recommend using the platform Blogger! Why? Not because it’s pretty or simple to use! (which it is) but because who owns Blogger.com? That’s right Google! So if they are not going hold any value in links gained from one of their own sites, what are they going to put value into?

You can also use other people’s Blogs to cleverly gain more backlinks to your site which are keyword related. This is great news for us as it means we can get some additional free keyword targeted traffic form readers of these Blogs, we gain lots of quality backlinks and last but least Google absolutely loves Blogs. More importantly it’s own Blogs if you use Blogger.com!!

To be able to place your links on other Blogs and gain more backlinks you are going to need to find them. How? We use Instant Blog Links to find a subject or keyword related Blog and then post comments with a link to our site. It couldn’t be simpler! Get targeted traffic, and good quality backlinks.

You’re Guide To Blogging Success

You’re probably thinking right I understand the Blog bit now but how do I create one? It’s that simple with all of the Blog platforms that a 5 year old kid could do it! Luckily for me!

Follow these quick steps and you can’t go wrong!
• Fire up your web browser and load up Blogger.com and open a Blog. Shouldn’t take you more than 10-15 minutes
• Create a sitemap for your Blog. These help the search engines find your site easier. You can do this here
• Then copy and paste this into your Blog
• Now go to www.pingomatic.com and enter the site URL for your Blog, select where you want to send it and press go. This basically informs all of the search engines that you have added new content and them over to take a look. This is known as “Blog & Ping”.
• Every time you have a new article post it on your website or Blog and then ‘ping’ it.

Right we have now established the path to success! All we need to do is follow it and the money will come rolling in. This basically falls into 2 categories Starting Up and Ongoing.

Starting Up

• Search Engine Submission
• Compile your list of high ranking keywords
• Try & Get 100 links from directories – Like Yesterday!
• Register with over 200 Article Directories to market with
• Start Your Social Bookmarking
• Do a Blog
• Create a sitemap
• Blog & Ping Baby!

Ongoing

• Register with 10 Directories
• Register with 10 Article Site
• Do a minimum of 2 articles per site and submit to be published
• Update your Blog with these and Blog & Ping
• Post comments on 30-40 or so Blogs with your URL embedded in

Your Road To Success!

• Put simply! As you have now read this and all of the other info we have sent you, you are now 95% more educated than the average Jo fighting for a living online
• By maintaining your PPC campaigns using your new found knowledge you are well down the road to achieving wealth
• By buying these tools and being committed you will do very well
• Absorb everything we have gone through and seek more info then you are the only one holding back the reigns to fortunes
• As with everything in life, you only get out what you put in!! Be dedicated, Be Strong and be Successful

WordTracker

Keyword Elite

Directory Submitter

SubmitEaze

Book Marking Demon

Content Infinity

Article Submitter


Article Post Robot

Instant Blog Links