CPA is just one of four ways that you can pay for your bids. It's the most recent one but here are all four explained.
Manual Bidding:
This is the normal bidding style that people use. It's the default setting when you start a campaign and it's basically telling Google the maximum you are prepared to pay for a click.
Preferred Cost Bidding:
In this case you set an average price you are prepared to pay for your clicks and Google manages your account for you to even out the amount you pay for clicks so that you are charged this average amount over time.
Budget Optimizer:
Here you don't set a bid price at all. You simply set a 30 day budget for your campaign and Google will manage the bid prices for you within that budget. You cannot use this for content bidding campaigns and if you have any content bids mixed into your search network campaigns (shame on you!) they will be turned off if you select this bidding option.
Conversion Optimiser:
This is their latest bidding option and the one we have been discussing above. It's also called cost per acquisition bids. With this option, you set a price that you are willing to pay for a conversion and Google will manage your click bidding in order to deliver conversions at that price.
Clearly for this option you will need to have conversion tracking on your campaign. Another limitation is that your campaign must have over 200 conversions in the last 30 days. This is because Google uses conversion history to determine the bid prices it will set on your behalf to get conversions at your requested price.
To set any of these options you go to the Campaign Settings and look under the section Advanced Options. The first option is Keyword Bidding. Just click on the View and Edit options link and you can select one of the four bidding options for your campaign.
Cheers
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Sunday, February 12, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Local SEO for Your Small Business Success
What is Local SEO? Before we move into leveraging the power of Local SEO, we need to understand what it is! While Local SEO is much like Regular SEO, the only difference is the optimization for local results. With search engines listing local results for local searches and based on location, it is all the more important to concentrate of local results. However, there are few differences with the way listings are listed under local results.
As a small business, you are more likely to limit your business to the area you are located in. This makes Local SEO more important to small scale businesses. You would definitely know who you are targeting and the type of customers you are looking at. This is an advantage when optimizing your site for getting listed in the local results. Your keywords should be targeting these customers and how they would probably search online. A good idea would be to do a keyword research and see how the search results are listed for the keywords chosen. Then you can make changes if needed.
Contact Address: When looking to rank for local searches, you need to give more importance for the terms associated with that. So the business addresses and contact details should be given importance in the site. This is a major difference from regular SEO and Local SEO efforts, where business address and contact details aren't given priority with the latter.
Think Beyond Google! While Google is where most head to for any information, there are other reliable sources besides Google Places and Search Results. Yelp is one such place where many head to. Remember such sources and other leading search engines including Yahoo and Bing, during your Local SEO efforts.
Think Citations & Reviews: This is very important to get listed in Google. You can create your own citations and reviews, though persuading your customers to do that would be ideal. This helps get better ranking in search results. While only Google Places reviews are listed in Google, getting reviews in other prominent sources including Yelp, will aid with rankings.
Go Social: Search results are now inherently related to your Social Media presence and are no different with Local SEO. Make sure you use them in your marketing campaigns. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other prominent social sites are vital for your marketing campaign. Google and Facebook pages are also important for your brands.
Content is the King: Any ranking and result is only based on the content. Having quality content with backlinks, quality site content and regular updates to the site are the key for indexing. With the recent Google panda update, site being regularly updated will be listed better.
Think Mobile: With the surge in smartphone users, mobile internet and mobile searches have increased by folds. It is important to have the site optimized for mobiles and also, consider how listings are done for mobiles. As we all know, iPhones are trendy and most go for it not only for the luxury it offers, but also for the features. With SIRI in iPhone 4, search engines results are no longer the same. It is important to get the business listed beyond Google and in places like Yelp and other public sources, to be able to get listed or seen by SIRI. This is an important aspect in any Local SEO campaign.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6870150
As a small business, you are more likely to limit your business to the area you are located in. This makes Local SEO more important to small scale businesses. You would definitely know who you are targeting and the type of customers you are looking at. This is an advantage when optimizing your site for getting listed in the local results. Your keywords should be targeting these customers and how they would probably search online. A good idea would be to do a keyword research and see how the search results are listed for the keywords chosen. Then you can make changes if needed.
Contact Address: When looking to rank for local searches, you need to give more importance for the terms associated with that. So the business addresses and contact details should be given importance in the site. This is a major difference from regular SEO and Local SEO efforts, where business address and contact details aren't given priority with the latter.
Think Beyond Google! While Google is where most head to for any information, there are other reliable sources besides Google Places and Search Results. Yelp is one such place where many head to. Remember such sources and other leading search engines including Yahoo and Bing, during your Local SEO efforts.
Think Citations & Reviews: This is very important to get listed in Google. You can create your own citations and reviews, though persuading your customers to do that would be ideal. This helps get better ranking in search results. While only Google Places reviews are listed in Google, getting reviews in other prominent sources including Yelp, will aid with rankings.
Go Social: Search results are now inherently related to your Social Media presence and are no different with Local SEO. Make sure you use them in your marketing campaigns. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other prominent social sites are vital for your marketing campaign. Google and Facebook pages are also important for your brands.
Content is the King: Any ranking and result is only based on the content. Having quality content with backlinks, quality site content and regular updates to the site are the key for indexing. With the recent Google panda update, site being regularly updated will be listed better.
Think Mobile: With the surge in smartphone users, mobile internet and mobile searches have increased by folds. It is important to have the site optimized for mobiles and also, consider how listings are done for mobiles. As we all know, iPhones are trendy and most go for it not only for the luxury it offers, but also for the features. With SIRI in iPhone 4, search engines results are no longer the same. It is important to get the business listed beyond Google and in places like Yelp and other public sources, to be able to get listed or seen by SIRI. This is an important aspect in any Local SEO campaign.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6870150
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Free monitoring tools:
TweetDeck - allows you to schedule tweets and monitor them in multiple columns.
HootSuite - similar to TweetDeck, for most the difference is just preference.
Social Mention - beats Google Alerts as it lets you search Google and a number of social networks for mentions, including Delicious, Twitter,
Google Alerts - Schedule alerts to track mentions of your brand, competitors and anything else you want to keep track of.
Kurat, - can be used as content discovery and publishing tool behind company social media efforts and of course as a personal newsreader.
NetNewsWire - An RSS aggregator that allows you to create “Smart Lists” to find keywords within your RSS feeds; can create RSS feeds for Google Alerts that sync here as well.Social Media Tools
Paid monitoring tools:
Actionly - They tag themselves “one dashboard to rule them all.” Allows you to measure “everything” including page views, clicks, revenue, retweets, etc. and set up campaigns; publish from multiple networks and accounts and integrate sm teams; track conversations; puts metrics from all over in one place; analyzes sentiment; and create custom reports. Seems a little limited for the cost, but they do offer a free trial.
Sprout Social - They monitor Twitter, Google Analytics, Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn profiles. You can dig deep into the info or look at the highlights in the Reports section (which can be downloaded by PDF or CSV)
CustomScoop - This scans not just YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, but also online news resources. Pretty intuitive for research - you can set it to automatically email reports/PDF’s/excel docs/etc. You can also create graphs and charts for comparison features.
Radian6 - One of the most well-known social listening tools - has a somewhat confusing pricing structure but it’s robust, has a great back-log and gives you pretty much everything you need! If you aren’t an agency or a corporation it will give you too much.
Sysomos - “Like Radian 6 but on steroids” - extremely expensive but if you can afford it, do it!
Webfluenz - An easy-to-use social media intelligence system to listen, monitor and engage with social media and the real-time web. With affordable pricing, it offers powerful analytics pertaining to influencers, trending topics, sentiment, geographic chatter and much more.
Hubspot - Probably has some of the “prettiest” reports out there. Good at pulling data for a mid-sized business or for doing research. Great for a small- to mid-size business. It also does both measurement and listening - a rare combo.
Alterian SM2 - Another agency/corporate model of a listening tool. They’re sorting functionality is horrible, but the robust features are great plus they don’t limit you in searches which all the other big shots do in this space at this time.
Free scheduling tools:
Buffer - Finds the best times to schedule your tweets and Facebook posts; allows multiple bit.ly accounts.
Dynamic Tweets - A very basic, easy tool that schedules tweets, but you can search through old tweets.
TweetDeck and Hootsuite
TweetGrid - Create a Twitter search dashboard the updates in real time.
Timely.is - Finds the best times to schedule your tweets (after testing, not quite sure it actually does know the best times); allows multiple accounts but only allows one bit.ly account.
Crowdbooster - Freemium model; analyzes account to show when users most engage with tweets and suggests scheduled time based on the algorithm; multiple bit.ly accounts as well but only with paid program.
Save tweets:
The Archivist - Uses the Twitter Search API to find and archive tweets.
Twapper Keeper - Archive tweets from your conference, trending hashtags, keywords and personal tweets.
TweetReports - You can put in a search (such as a hashtag) and you can download the report and even customize it beforehand with an intro (great for Twitter chats) - you can only download to Excel w/ the agency model which stinks but the PDF gives you clickable links and accounts, etc.
Storify - You can search for terms, tweets, YouTube videos, RSS feeds, Google, other Storify articles, Flickr, and Facebook - then you drag and drop the updates into a Storify “article”. You can also add text/headlines/etc. to package the recap in a very pretty way.
Free measurement tools:
Hootsuite: Provides graphs, etc analyzing your social media engagements. More detailed graphs are available with the paid versions.
Facebook Insights - See how many new ‘likes’, comments, etc your page has.
SocialProgrss (In Beta, you can sign up for an invite) - Instantly generate an enterprise social media progress report.
TweetGrader & FacebookGrader - gives you a score based on account activity and engagement and shows the users you interact with the most
TwentyFeet - Shows engagement and reach of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube & Google Analytics over time.
Twitalyzer - Limited analysis for free, with three paid levels for more info.
Paid measurement tools:
Actionly
Extras:
Tweetchat - An easier way to participate in Twitter chats. You don’t have to add the hashtag to your tweet each time, you can easily mention and RT others.
Echofon - Echofon automatically keeps unread tweets in sync between your computer, your iPhone and your iPad.
TweetGrid - Another tool for Twitter chats. A little more cluttered than TweetChat, but you can follow multiple streams at the same time.
HootSuite - similar to TweetDeck, for most the difference is just preference.
Social Mention - beats Google Alerts as it lets you search Google and a number of social networks for mentions, including Delicious, Twitter,
Google Alerts - Schedule alerts to track mentions of your brand, competitors and anything else you want to keep track of.
Kurat, - can be used as content discovery and publishing tool behind company social media efforts and of course as a personal newsreader.
NetNewsWire - An RSS aggregator that allows you to create “Smart Lists” to find keywords within your RSS feeds; can create RSS feeds for Google Alerts that sync here as well.Social Media Tools
Paid monitoring tools:
Actionly - They tag themselves “one dashboard to rule them all.” Allows you to measure “everything” including page views, clicks, revenue, retweets, etc. and set up campaigns; publish from multiple networks and accounts and integrate sm teams; track conversations; puts metrics from all over in one place; analyzes sentiment; and create custom reports. Seems a little limited for the cost, but they do offer a free trial.
Sprout Social - They monitor Twitter, Google Analytics, Facebook, Foursquare and LinkedIn profiles. You can dig deep into the info or look at the highlights in the Reports section (which can be downloaded by PDF or CSV)
CustomScoop - This scans not just YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, but also online news resources. Pretty intuitive for research - you can set it to automatically email reports/PDF’s/excel docs/etc. You can also create graphs and charts for comparison features.
Radian6 - One of the most well-known social listening tools - has a somewhat confusing pricing structure but it’s robust, has a great back-log and gives you pretty much everything you need! If you aren’t an agency or a corporation it will give you too much.
Sysomos - “Like Radian 6 but on steroids” - extremely expensive but if you can afford it, do it!
Webfluenz - An easy-to-use social media intelligence system to listen, monitor and engage with social media and the real-time web. With affordable pricing, it offers powerful analytics pertaining to influencers, trending topics, sentiment, geographic chatter and much more.
Hubspot - Probably has some of the “prettiest” reports out there. Good at pulling data for a mid-sized business or for doing research. Great for a small- to mid-size business. It also does both measurement and listening - a rare combo.
Alterian SM2 - Another agency/corporate model of a listening tool. They’re sorting functionality is horrible, but the robust features are great plus they don’t limit you in searches which all the other big shots do in this space at this time.
Free scheduling tools:
Buffer - Finds the best times to schedule your tweets and Facebook posts; allows multiple bit.ly accounts.
Dynamic Tweets - A very basic, easy tool that schedules tweets, but you can search through old tweets.
TweetDeck and Hootsuite
TweetGrid - Create a Twitter search dashboard the updates in real time.
Timely.is - Finds the best times to schedule your tweets (after testing, not quite sure it actually does know the best times); allows multiple accounts but only allows one bit.ly account.
Crowdbooster - Freemium model; analyzes account to show when users most engage with tweets and suggests scheduled time based on the algorithm; multiple bit.ly accounts as well but only with paid program.
Save tweets:
The Archivist - Uses the Twitter Search API to find and archive tweets.
Twapper Keeper - Archive tweets from your conference, trending hashtags, keywords and personal tweets.
TweetReports - You can put in a search (such as a hashtag) and you can download the report and even customize it beforehand with an intro (great for Twitter chats) - you can only download to Excel w/ the agency model which stinks but the PDF gives you clickable links and accounts, etc.
Storify - You can search for terms, tweets, YouTube videos, RSS feeds, Google, other Storify articles, Flickr, and Facebook - then you drag and drop the updates into a Storify “article”. You can also add text/headlines/etc. to package the recap in a very pretty way.
Free measurement tools:
Hootsuite: Provides graphs, etc analyzing your social media engagements. More detailed graphs are available with the paid versions.
Facebook Insights - See how many new ‘likes’, comments, etc your page has.
SocialProgrss (In Beta, you can sign up for an invite) - Instantly generate an enterprise social media progress report.
TweetGrader & FacebookGrader - gives you a score based on account activity and engagement and shows the users you interact with the most
TwentyFeet - Shows engagement and reach of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube & Google Analytics over time.
Twitalyzer - Limited analysis for free, with three paid levels for more info.
Paid measurement tools:
Actionly
Extras:
Tweetchat - An easier way to participate in Twitter chats. You don’t have to add the hashtag to your tweet each time, you can easily mention and RT others.
Echofon - Echofon automatically keeps unread tweets in sync between your computer, your iPhone and your iPad.
TweetGrid - Another tool for Twitter chats. A little more cluttered than TweetChat, but you can follow multiple streams at the same time.
- Goo online tools:
- Crowdbooster.com
- SocialMention.com
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Boosting Conversions in Pay Per Click Marketing
Pay per click, or PPC, advertisements are one of the fastest and easiest ways to target traffic and drive it to your website. If you don't know what PPC ads are, they are sponsored links, or ads, that show up when a user performs a search on a search engine, and they can also be an advertisement on a website or blog.
PPC ads are more effective than banner ads or offline advertising because they are a more targeted form of advertising. However, many businesses fail to carefully select the keywords and phrases for the PPC ads or fail to send the user to the right page of the website when someone clicks the ad. These mistakes can be very expensive for the company.
The point of a pay per click campaign is to get your advertisement in front of searchers who are looking for what it is that you have to offer. This means that a lot of keyword research needs to be done and an impressionable ad copy needs to be created to get the user to look at the ad and then click through to your site. The wrong keywords will get your ad in front of the wrong people.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make in their PPC ads is sending the user to the main homepage of the website when they click on the ad. They also make no attempt at establishing a relationship with the site visitors that don't make a purchase.
Instead of sending visitors to the home page, visitors should be sent to a webpage that is very specifically relevant to the keyword that was searched. For example, if you have a website about beauty products and you are running a PPC campaign targeting hair brushes you should not send a visitor who came to your site through your ad to the homepage of your site. The visitor will potentially be frustrated that she now has to determine where the hairbrush section of the site is and she might leave quickly. Instead, the link in the ad should take her directly to the webpage about hairbrushes. If there was a specific style or brand of hairbrush mentioned in the ad, then when the link is clicked the user should be taken to a webpage that is about that specific hairbrush.
The landing page does not need to sell the product. Instead it is wise to allow the landing page to help build a relationship with the visitor. One suggestion is to offer the visitor something free such as an ebook which requires a signup, an online seminar, a newsletter, educational information etc. Teaching the visitor more about the product or service helps to build a relationship.
Landing pages should not offer the visitor too many navigation choices that lead away from the page. Instead conversion choices should be offered. If the visitor is offered a download, newsletter form, free drawing entry form, link to the "Contact Us" page etc. all of these paths will lead to a conversion.
An effective pay per click marketing campaign can be very time-consuming and requires a great deal of planning so it is highly recommended that a marketing company with expertise in PPC advertising be hired to handle all PPC campaigns. They will perform all the necessary research to determine which keywords should be targeted and will work to create ad copy that will make an impression. They will then be able to execute techniques that will bring you positive results by improving your conversion rate.
Visit StLouisPayPerClick.com to get more information and resources about pay per click marketing for St. Louis pay per click users and companies.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Couch
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Online Marketing Strategy Tips: Social Media and Pay Per Click Advertising
Social media is not just for teenagers to hang out and chat, it is also a highly useful tool for businesses to gain exposure online and to communicate directly with the target market.
With social media, businesses have access to a huge crowd outside the normal reach of a small business. However, to utilise social media successfully for online marketing, consistent time and creativity must be invested. It is not a tool to be taken lightly! Many larger companies choose to employ social media strategists purely to maintain and expand their social media networks.
The key to success in social media, whether it be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any of the myriad of social media networks available, is constant interaction. Posting each and every day is essential, including weekends. Social media management tools such as HootSuite can be used to schedule updates so that you can pre-write relevant posts and have them delivered at the best times to reach your target audience, even if you are not available during those times.
Another key to social media success is update quality. No one cares about what you ate for breakfast unless you're a Hollywood starlet, so keep your posts informative and interesting. Posts about promotions or daily specials for your followers are great status updates to make. Source articles which are both interesting and relevant to your industry that you feel your target audience would benefit from and link to these, giving comments where appropriate.
Lastly, remember to interact with your followers. Pay attention to your followers and they'll pay attention to you. If you have thousands of followers, it can be hard to pay attention to all of them, but it isn't impossible to respond to comments and questions they have for you, and it is always appreciated!
If you follow these tips and set aside time each day to focus on building your social media networks, then you will eventually be able to build a following of potential clients interested in what your company has to say.
Online Marketing Strategy Tip: Pay per click advertising
Gaining page views through search engines can be incredibly difficult for small businesses who can't afford to compete with those who pay SEO firms thousands of dollars per month for page 1 rankings. Luckily, search engines, social media networks and other large sites which are perfect for targeted advertising campaigns offer 'Pay Per Click' which allows small businesses to gain quality website hits within their own budgets. The best part? You only pay when potential clients visit your site, maximising the return on your investment. But how do you run successful pay per click advertising campaigns? Read on to find out.
Interesting titles and copy pay per click advertising is quick, short and catchy, utilising very small descriptions, a brief title and occasionally an image. Therefore, your ad needs to be extremely well written in order to pique the interest of your target market. Avoid using your company name or the industry you're in, for example 'Company name - web design'. This is boring, and it will not sell! Instead, bring focus to your Unique Selling Proposition(s) or other interesting points. For example 'Stunning CMS websites under $1,000!'
Test and measure
There is no real point in releasing a single ad and hoping that it will work without really knowing if it appeals to your target market or not, so you need to test and measure. Instead of running just a single ad, split your daily or weekly budget across several ads and run them simultaneously to test which ones have the greatest affect and convert the most prospects. You may find that what you thought to be the strongest selling ad actually converts the least, because once viewers click through to your site, the information provided there is not relevant to their needs or doesn't reflect the content of the ad. Once you've found ads which work for you, then you can feel free to use these.
Optimise your site
Why bother running an aggressive pay per click campaign if your website cannot sell your product or service? Having an optimised homepage is essential to the success of your advertising as potential clients will not bother looking any further if you cannot convince them on the first page that you mean business. Don't use your homepage for a bragging ground or your company's back story. Make sure that you fully address the needs and wants of your potential client. Outline what their issues and problems are and say what your company will do to fix it. Don't make it about you, make it about your client. If you're running a very specific ad campaign for a promo or a new line of products, consider creating a special section or page on your website dedicated solely for your pay per click campaign, so that viewers can link directly to what is relevant to your ad.
Hopefully this online marketing strategy tip has helped you to gain further insight into creating successful pay per click advertising!
Mick Simpson
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6595885
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