PPC Scams

Understanding PPC so you don't get scammed like our buddy Joe
 
As I delve deeper into what people are paying for search engine optimization I've been learning just how little the average business owner knows about what they pay for.

Recently I spoke a man about search engine optimization and he became very interested in my services. We'll call him, Joe. Joe is paying for someone to post ads in Google. This is referred to as Pay Per Click or PPC.

I asked Joe a few questions about his current campaigns he was running. There are several things you must understand if you are going to be using PPC to drive traffic to your website. After all, if you don't understand what your ROI is, how can you possible understand if PPC is of any value to your business?

When I asked Joe what his ROI was he said,  "I don't know the guy won't tell me."

I had a reason why I was asking this, it was to explain the difference between natural search engine listings and PPC, but I became totally distracted by that answer and never did cover the topic.

Trying to understand if I heard him right I said, "Huh?" I paused for a moment to colect myself and then asked, "What do you mean the guy won't tell you?"

Joe said, "Well, he just said he won't tell me, that's all I know. I just know he's got my site at the top in Google. He's just keeping me at the top."

Poor Joe is paying on average $1500.00 per month and he has no idea if he's sold one item from his PPC traffic!

Before you get into any type of PPC advertising campaign you really need to understand the basics of PPC.

1. NEVER pay for services when you don't understand what you are paying for. When it comes to PPC, you should know the following:

a. How much per click on average you are paying and what keywords are being used. That was the only thing Joe knew. However, he had no idea of the value of any of thoses keywords.

b. You should know what the "service" fee is. Is it a percentage of the monthly PPC fees is it a flat rate, what? What are you paying for to have someone run a PPC campaign for your business.

c. What type of experience does the PPC campaign manager have? d. You should know the daily or monthly searches performed on any keywords selected for your campaign.

What makes up a good PPC manager? First, I have to say that PPC is a science. Not everyone can do it. It is a very tedious job. You must track stats and you need to understand how many clicks it takes on any given keyword to convert to a sale.

For example: You want to promote a Dog Training ebook. It sells for $40.00. It costs you $1.00 per click for the keyword, "Dog Training Guide". If it takes 50 clicks before you make a sale, you are spending $10.00 to get one sale. If it takes 35 clicks before you make a sale, you have a profit of $15.00.

It's pretty obvious what you need to do if it costs you more per click to get a sale than the product is worth. If you don't know how many clicks your getting how the heck would you EVER know if your PPC money was paying off?

This is a very simplistic way of describing PPC. It is not that simple. You must create what is called a "Landing page" for every keyword you are testing. This allows you to know which keywords are converting to sales. Or some other types of techniques that allow you to track your keywords for sales conversions.

Why must you track each keyword or keyword phrase?

Let's say you have two keywords your testing, Dog Training Guide and Dog Trainer. After testing you discover that Dog Training Guide will convert to a sale in 35 clicks, but Dog Trainer takes 39 clicks.

Now you know which keyword converts better. One keyword is more profitable. By testing you learn which keywords are more profitable. By sending people to a special landing page or using some type of special tracking you can target your audience better.

Like I said, it's a science. If you are selling dog collars, you wouldn't send people to your main website page that speaks about dog training would you? No, you would send them directly to your page with all sorts of dog collars to choose from. Now, let's get back to Joe.

Not only does Joe have no idea how much traffic he is getting from his PPC campaign managers services, but EVERY SINGLE keyword phrase is sent to his main URL where he has a FLASH page!

There are so many things wrong about his campaign managers services that I can hardly contain my anger.

Today I wanted to talk about why Natural, Organic listings search engine listings are so much better than PPC but I became overwhelmed with my frustration and had to get it out.

I hope if you're using a PPC manager you have a little better understanding of what to look for so you can make a wiser choice than poor Joe, who is going to FIRE his manager very soon, I guarantee it.

So, next time I'll go over why natural organic search engine listings may take longer, but pay off much more in the long run.

Until then... enjoy the rest of your day, Chrisi Darrington

 
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