Overview of Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising has revolutionised Internet advertising and allowed advertisers to get more bang for their buck. PPC via search portals, such as Google, has allowed search marketing consultants to create highly targeted adverts that are displayed to users actively looking for solutions to their problems.
The PPC model differs from the concept of paying per impression (i.e. appearance on the page) which was initially favoured by the big publishing houses as they felt forced to move more of their business online. Much the same as Cable TV, the Internet fragmented the audience and took the power away from traditional publishers.
PPC ads can be split into two types:
- Search
- Content
Search ads appear on the right hand side of the search results on the main search engines Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Increasingly there is some encroachment on the left hand side of the search results for some adverts. Content adverts appear in modules which a webmaster will place on their site. Webmasters receive revenue for placing these ads on their site so placement can be very eye catching to maximise review or unobtrusive – depending on the whims of the webmaster. They are distinguished as PPC ads by the phrase “Sponsored Listings”.
So how does it work?
As Google Adwords is the most popular form of PPC advertising to date, the following explanation will be based on their services.
PPC on Google works on the following levels:
- Keywords
- Ads
- Landing pages
A PPC campaign is a careful construction of good interaction between these three elements. Keywords must be grouped into relevant groups so as to display targeted adverts relating to those keywords that then flow through to landing pages relating to the keyword.
If we take the example of a sports store, the keyword “tennis shoes” would correspond to an advert saying “Best quality tennis shoes” (or whatever their selling point was). This advert would then link to a page about the tennis shoes they had available. The keyword “tennis rackets” would correspond to an advert saying “Quality tennis rackets” and link through to a page displaying the tennis rackets the company sells.
It’s all about relevance and providing a good user experience so the user looking for “tennis shoes” doesn’t end up on a page all about tennis rackets.
This article was contributed by Geoff Andrews, a search marketing consultant, known online as SEM Freak. Follow SEM Freak on Twitter or find him on Google.
Link Building with Blog Comments
As every SEO starts out you begin to believe that even the smallest link can have an effect on how well you rank in Google. You first start off with the basics, optimising your site for the terms that you want to rank for, utilising title tags and H1’s as your first point of call. So after you have made the content and the menus all nice and shiny (no flash content however), and easily crawled by Google then you move forward onto link building.
As an SEO you like to tell yourself you are going White Hat (a form of SEO where no dubious means of Link Building are done including buying links and comment spamming). You begin by submitting to free directories and approaching others in your niche to see if they will list you (hopefully without a reciprocal link). Your gain yourself a whole bunch of splendid looking links, situated on PR3 or possibly 4 sites and you feel quite chuffed with yourself. As you progress rankings stabilise but not where you want them. You reach the second page or bottom of the first page and can’t improve on your position. As an SEO you need to investigate other avenues of Link building and take the initiative to try something new.
It’s staring you in the face now, other people do it, and you have seen your competitors do it, so why shouldn’t you? There is a PR8 website that you have found that allows comments on its blog which is a PR7 and even some PR7 posts. So you think why not and get a comment link situated at the bottom of the page, yours is the only one. What’s the best about it is that it was easy, so you go out and find yourself some more blogs that accept “Do Follow” links and place down some more links. You watch your rankings over the next two weeks and see a rise. Positions increase by about 3 or 4 on the first page of Google and you can’t believe it. You relax your link building and then it happens!
About 2 weeks after the rise, things go wrong, you return to your previous position and even possibly lower if you stopped other link building activities. You want to find out what has happened and check those dainty Comment links you did last month. Every single one of the posts now has a hundred comments on it with spam links. Some have been No Followed and others just deleted from existence. You give up on Comment links and return to a true way of Link Building!
Comment Links generally provide an initial boost but are hardly stable links, they are easy to identify and very easy for users to manipulate. Although you could get a lift from them, how long will it last, and is it worth your time, especially if you do not have much time to do it. Many SEO’s me included believe Comment links not to be worth of our time, and are considered a “Grey Hat” approach to link Building!
Bio:
Marcus is an SEO that works for Travel companies around the world.
Posted
April 1st, 2010
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seo
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Blog Commenting
link building
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