Search Engine Marketing & Pay Per Click…

Another great marketing show on the Stretch Your Mind And Body blog talk radio show this week!  This week, Connie and I spoke with Don Christie about Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising and how you can use them with SEO.  Don uses SEM for his own affiliate marketing campaigns and for his clients.  I was so impressed by how passionate he was about his work.

I was interested to hear that Don suggests that businesses should use SEM to determine which keywords they should be optimizing their websites for – to achieve great SEO rankings.  Think about this – when you start a new website, you know that you have to do your keyword research and find out what people are searching for.  When you do this, you generally find several keywords that look brilliant on paper – but some months down the track, you find that whilst those keywords generate a lot of searchs, and probably traffic – you aren’t converting any sales!

Now, imagine that you could put between $50 and $200 into a PPC campaign and discover EXACTLY which keywords you should be using for your SEO efforts to convert searchers to visitors, and visitors to purchasers.  I know!  $200 can seem a lot of money, but consider how much time you will spend over 6 months getting your site on the first page of the Search Engines?  Can you see how a well run PPC campaign can actually save you money?

Interestingly, Don doesn’t focus solely on Google as part of his marketing strategies.  Don shared that  MSN gives good value for money and Yahoo has its place as well.

Another thing that Don shared during our talk was that whilst position 1 in the paid ads is obviously the best, sometimes it’s better to accept a lower placement for your advertisement – because the adverts still get click throughs and the cost per click makes it effective….

We’ve all heard of Google slaps and how you can pay an awful lot for a click — Don shared that a fully optimised landing page that really matches your ad and doesn’t send your potential customer somewhere they don’t want to go, is of paramount importance.  Your landing page for a PPC advert has to be very, very specific.  For example, an advert for Golden Retriever Puppies that leads to a generic Pet Shop page is likely to incur a higher PPC price than a page that actuall discusses Golden Retriever Puppies.

The one thing that really stood out to me, was the amount of analysis you need to do on your PPC advertisments to ensure that you are getting the best possible price and conversion!  Don discussed split testing advertisements for Headings, Keywords and Wordings – as well as split testing landing pages!  Don actually checks his own and his clients results at least once a day! Which might explain why Don is getting a lot of business managing the campaigns for his clients!

There is still a lot more we discussed – it’s worthwhile listening to the call a couple of times.  You can download the call and load it on your MP3 player or mobile phone to listen to when you’re travelling.

Learn more about SEM and PPC with Don’s free report “Adwords Secret Strategies Report” from https://www.donchristie.com