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Scoop Up Inexpensive & Neglected
Traffic Streams In The Pay-Per-Click Search Engines With
These Three Simple Bidding Strategies...
In the last issue
of the "Marketing Tips" newsletter, I attempted to take
some of the mystery out of making money and generating
traffic with the pay-per-click (PPC) search engines by
showing you how to calculate your "maximum bid" – what
you can afford to pay for a single visitor to your web
site to guarantee you always make a profit! (If you missed
this article, you can click here now to read it.)
This issue,
I’d like to take this topic a step further by explaining
more in-depth how to use your "maximum bid" to funnel
traffic to your web site from the PPC search engines by…
Bidding on inexpensive
keywords that are frequently searched by your
target audience
– but virtually ignored by your competition!
Spending less money
to get the same traffic by paying close attention
to "bidding gaps."
Lately, PPC
search engines have been gaining popularity with web site
owners who are looking for paid advertising that guarantees
traffic, sales, and profits – and this means that
bids on popular and common keywords have been steadily
increasing.
However, it’s
still possible to pay literally pennies for frequently
searched keywords and phrases that your best potential
customers are typing into the PPC search engines – you
just need to be educated in your approach and use the
following three simple bidding strategies.
Increase Your
Traffic and Sales With These
Three Simple Bidding Strategies:
Strategy
#1 – Build a list of targeted keywords and phrases.
When brainstorming
a list of keywords and phrases to bid on, your challenge
is going to be thinking up terms that are commonly searched
by your best potential customers, but that aren't overly
expensive as a result of bidding wars between your competitors.
For example,
if you sold cell phones you might consider bidding for
the key phrase "cell phones" in Overture. However,
a quick search of this phrase shows that to be ranked
in the #1 spot right now, you'd need to bid $1 per visitor.
On the other hand, you would only need to bid 26 cents
per visitor to be ranked #1 under the similar phrase "cellular
phone sale."
Now you could
probably enlist the help of friends and colleagues to
come up with unusual variations of your common keyword
list – however, if you’re a stickler for accurate statistics
like I am, this guessing game isn’t going to satisfy you.
That’s why I
recommend getting a little help from two powerful tools that will tell you exactly which keywords your target
market is searching:
WordTracker is
basically an online tool that collects the search results
from 24 major search engines – including Overture.com, FindWhat.com, and numerous other top PPC search
engines – and compiles them into a database that is
constantly being updated.
Simply type in
your keyword and WordTracker will return a list of related
keywords and phrases. This is a really useful feature
because often produces keyword combinations that
you may not have thought of!
Plus, WordTracker
will also tell you:
How many times
a particular keyword was searched during the past
24 hours based on their database of well over
30 million queries,
Exactly which misspellings
are drawing traffic (so you can bid on this traffic,
too!),
And how many web sites
are competing under a keyword in a particular
search engine.
This is all the
exact critical information you need to make informed
decisions about which keywords are worth bidding for…
and which are a waste of your money!
The
other tool worth checking out is Overture’s free Search
Term Suggestion Tool that takes the keywords and phrases
you enter and gives you a list of related keywords along
with the number of times each was searched in Overture
during the past month.
It’s
obviously not as comprehensive as WordTracker, however,
you could reasonably assume that popular search terms
in Overture – the giant of the PPC search engines –
will be relatively popular in the other PPC search engines
as well.
Important
Note:
Before moving
on to the next strategy, I can’t stress enough the importance
of choosing targeted keywords – words that aren’t just
frequently searched, but that are frequently searched
by individuals who fit the profile of a buyer on your
site.
If you’re bidding
on keywords that don’t really relate to your product or
web site, you’ll be wasting money on traffic that isn’t
interested in what you’re offering. Your money will be
more profitably spent on targeted keywords.
Strategy
#2 – Calculate your maximum bid.
In the last
issue of the "Marketing Tips" newsletter, I showed you
step-by-step how to calculate the value of a single visitor
to your web site. This figure is very important because the value of your visitors is also your maximum bid.
For example,
if a single visitor to your web site is worth 75 cents
profit, then your maximum bid should never exceed 75 cents
per visitor if you want to guarantee that your advertising
always remains profitable.
Warning: Should you be tempted to enter a bidding war for a popular
keyword that exceeds your maximum bid, stop for a moment
and think about all of those dot-bombs who threw millions
and millions of dollars into unprofitable advertising,
with vague notions about turning profitable 5 years
down the road. Then give your head a shake and focus
on advertising that’s really going to make you money!
If you don’t know
the value of a visitor to your web site, click here now to review the last issue of the "Marketing Tips"
newsletter.
Strategy #3 – Place strategic bids
for cheap but popular keywords.
Once you’ve
done the preliminary footwork, you’re ready to start combing
through your list of keywords one by one, looking for
those that are frequently searched by your target market,
but that aren't highly competitive (i.e. expensive!).
A really useful
tool at this stage in your research is CompareYourClicks.com, a
free site that will take any keyword or phrase you type
in and produce a comparison chart of the top bids in 9
of the PPC search engines including Overture, FindWhat,
Sprinks, Bay9, and more.
Overture offers
a similar Get Current Bid Tool,
though it obviously doesn’t offer bidding comparisons
for the other PPC search engines. (I guess we can forgive
them… it’s their competition after all.)
Simply type
your keyword into either of these tools, and you’ll be
presented with a list of the top bids for that particular
search term. For example, when I typed "gift ideas" into
the Overture Bid Tool, here’s the list I was presented
with:
Lenox Has Something for
Every Collector s0b.bluestreak.com(Cost to advertiser:
$1.78)
Give the Gift of an Online
Business! www.cihost.com(Cost to advertiser: $1.77)
Great Gifts at GiftWild www.giftwild.com (Cost to advertiser:
$1.76)
T.J. Maxx - You Should
Go! www.tjmaxx.com (Cost to advertiser: $1.73)
Send Champagne or Wine
Anywhere in Hours www.1-800-4champagne.com(Cost to advertiser:
$1.19)
The gift industry
is very competitive, so it shouldn't be too surprising
that bids for visitors are heading up towards $2 per click.
However, let me draw your attention to a couple of missed
opportunities in bidding strategies that exist here.
Opportunity
#1 – Save Money By Closing The Gaps!
First of all,
remember that we're looking at bids in Overture, the giant
of the PPC search engines, where ranking among the top
three bids means that you also get exposure under your
particular keyword or phrase in Yahoo!, AOL, Lycos, AltaVista,
Netscape, Hotbot, and Cnet.
So it obviously
makes sense to try and rank among the top three listings
in Overture whenever you can afford it because you...
Dramatically
increase your exposure in multiple
search engines through this single listing.
However, do
you notice a problem with #3 – Great Gifts at GiftWild?
They're bidding 3 cents more than necessary to keep their
ranking in the top three! They could easily save themselves
money by dropping their bid to $1.74!
What's more,
if #4 – T.J. Maxx can't afford to compete with the top
3 bidders, then they should drop their bid by a whopping
53 cents to $1.20. They'd keep their #4 ranking, but avoid
wasting an unnecessary 53 cents per visitor!
When you're
looking to place your bids, watch for gaps like these
and take advantage of them! Never bid more than necessary...
and monitor your bids once you've placed them to remove
any gaps like these that may appear. You'll save yourself
a lot of money in the long run – money that you can use
to bid on more keywords to drive even more traffic to
your site!
Opportunity
#2 – Go For
The Traffic Your Competitors Are Neglecting!
Grab the low-hanging
fruit first. Why get sucked into an expensive bidding
war for one common search term when you can bid pennies
for multiple keywords and phrases to generate similar
volumes of traffic for a lot less cost!
Just to give you
a simple example, I searched the keyword "gift" in Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool and was provided with a list of approximately 50 related
keywords that included "unique gift idea," "the gift,"
and "gift for a birthday."
Then
I did a traffic and bid comparison on the keywords I randomly
selected from this list using information from both Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool and Current Bid Tool,
and here's what I discovered...
Keyword:
Traffic
#1
Spot
#2
Spot
#3
Spot
#4
Spot
gift
idea
45,613
$1.78
$1.77
$1.76
$1.73
unique
gift idea
3,774
$0.97
$0.96
$0.69
$0.68
the
gift
3,132
$0.40
$0.37
$0.36
$0.30
gift
for a birthday
2,192
$0.06
$0.06
$0.06
$0.05
Obviously,
"gift idea" is the phrase more frequently searched – that's
why it's sooooo competitive at $1.78 per visitor for the
#1 spot.
However,
who says you have to bid on the most frequently searched
term when you can go after smaller traffic streams...
like the bargain find "gift for a birthday" at just
7 cents per visitor for the #1 spot! Even 41 cents
per visitor for the #1 spot for "the gift"... or 70 cents
per visitor for the #3 spot for "unique gift idea"...
is a far cry from the $1.78 these sites have been battling
one another to pay.
Do
you think we should tell them? ;-)
Key
Secret: Did you know that there are over
200 PPC search engines? Sure, Overture is
where you'll get the majority of your traffic
from; however, its popularity means you pay
more for each visitor you get.
With
the smaller PPC search engines like FindWhat,
Kanoodle, Sprinks, Bay9, etc... you can still place bids of 1 and 2 cents on popular keywords! Maybe you won't get the same traffic that you
will from Overture... but you're paying pennies
per visitor! So does it really matter?
Even
if a keyword in a smaller search engine only
generates a handful of extra visitors each month,
it's still traffic you wouldn't have without
the bid! To get a complete list of the PPC search
engines, visit PayPerClickSearchEngines.com
Final Thoughts:
I know paid advertising
like the PPC search engines might seem a bit risky to
those of you with tight budgets. If you’re looking for
new sources of traffic for your site, though, I’d advise
you to consider the strategies that I’ve taught you in
this article (as well as those in the last issue of the "Marketing Tips" newsletter) very
carefully.
The PPC search engines
are one of the few low-risk paid advertising opportunities
that allow you a LOT of control over your success. If
you follow these few simple rules that I’ve laid out for
you here, keep your bids lower than your maximum bid at
all times, and choose keywords targeted to your market,
it's actually quite easy to funnel targeted traffic into
your web site.
Plus, you can really
give yourself an extra edge by looking for keywords that
your competitors are neglecting and scooping up these
untouched traffic streams while taking advantage of bidding
gaps that make sliding your site into a top 3 listing
extremely easy!
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly
successful online businesses that attract more than 1.8
million visitors per month and generate over $6.6 million
each year. He is also the author of the #1 best-selling
Internet Marketing course online.
To
Find Out How To Market Your Business
Online CLICK
HERE
