by Sheri Fink

Created on: May 25, 2007

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be disastrous for companies that are inexperienced in this type of advertising. Keywords can be costly and may not be specific enough to generate enough traffic and sales to justify the advertising expense. With companies becoming more aggressive in this channel, bid prices can quickly increase and exceed budgets if the pay-for-placement ad campaigns are not monitored carefully. The strategies that follow will help drive higher quality targeted traffic to a site.

Advertise on Multiple Pay-for-Placement Search Engines

Advertisers should test their ads on various pay-for-placement search engines in order to reach a broader Internet audience and determine which search engine has the best return for them. I recommend implementing PPC campaigns using both Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Use Focused and Targeted Keywords

The more focused and targeted the keywords and the ads, the better they pre-qualify users before they click. For example, if an online retailer is selling Bark-Free, a product designed to humanely stop dog barking, they may use some of the following keywords: bark free, stop dog barking, no dog barking, stop barking, etc. These keywords will likely be more effective in pre-qualifying traffic to the site than broader keywords such as dog, barking, and bark. If the keyword terms are too broad, the ad for Bark-Free might display when a user searches for "dog parks." Because the ad isn't relevant to the user, any clicks that may occur are unlikely to result in a sale. By using more specific keywords, an advertiser can better match the user's needs.

Many of the pay-for-placement search engines offer features that enable an advertiser to limit the conditions in which their ads will display. These free tools can be very helpful to advertisers to lower advertising costs and better pre-qualify traffic to their sites, providing a better return on their pay-per-click investment.

Create and Test Multiple Ad Versions

Another highly effective pay-per-click strategy is testing multiple versions of ads. Each ad consists of a headline (usually displayed as a hypertext link), a description (ad copy), and a URL (also displayed as a link). Advertisers can create several versions of the ad with modifications in each of the sections listed above and measure the performance of each ad. Things to test include: using a call-to-action in the headline, adding benefit-rich language to the description, and using the keyword in different

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