So you've decided on a topic, you've built your webpage. Now you want to know how to send targeted traffic to your site. After all, without traffic, your site isn't going to make you much money! I'm about to outline exactly how to drive as much traffic as you want to your site, so pay attention.
Pay-Per-Click Engine Basics
Pay-Per-Click or PPC, is a relatively new form of traffic generation. Basically, it allows you to write a small ad, which will then appear on one of the search engines like Google or Yahoo. When and only when someone clicks on your ad, do you have to pay. The amount varies depending on how competitive the keywords are and in Google, on quite a few other factors. There are a few more PPC engines around, but I will only concentrate on Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing, because they are the best.
How much is it going to cost? Well, that depends on you how much you are willing to fork over to Google and how well you know your target customers. In a nutshell, youneed to have a clear idea of where youre headed and be able to communicate that to Google. They will charge you a one time activation fee for Google AdWords but it's pretty low. Then all you have to do is tell Google how much you're willing to pay per click and per day. It's pretty sweet because the way they have it set up, you only pay for clicks on your AdWords ads and you can set a limit so you don't get a huge bill from Google that you didn't see coming.
If you live in the USA, you can activate a new AdWords account for 5 bucks and set your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) to be anything from $0.05 - US$100. The higher "cost-perclick" you bid on a certain keyword, the higher your Google ad will rate. For example, go to Google·com and type "dog aggression" into the "search" box. To the right of the page you will see "Sponsored Links". These are Google Adwords PPC advertisements. The number one and two ranked advertisements are in prime position at the top of the page. Advertisement ranking is based on advertisement CTR (click through rate) and highest CPC bid price. As you can see, the two top ranked advertisements are located at the top of the search results and the following six advertisements are to the right of the page. The top two will be the ads with the highest CPC bid price and the highest CTR.
Content Targeting
What's really cool about AdWords is Contextual Advertising (also know as Content Targeting). This is where Google places highly targeted AdWords ads on content pages within their own proprietary network of high-quality partner sites and products. In other words, you'd be getting in with Google's business partners. While this can be profitable, I highly recommend that you test whether or not it is. While it can make you a lot of money, if you bid too high, it can also burn a hole in your pocket very quickly.
The biggest benefits to Contextual Advertising are:
1. Return On Investment (ROI) Performance:
You set up your CPC and then keywordtargeted
contextual ads bring you unique, pre-qualified leads.
2. Get more traffic:
More people can potentially see your ads and hit your site than you could
ever hope for with search advertising alone.
3. Efficiency:
Your ads get on the most relevant sites, and you only pay for clicks that you
receive.
Google Adwords "Content" ads appear on related websites, e.g if your advertisements relate to "learn guitar", Google will find web pages relating to "learn guitar" and display your ads. "Content" ads are ranked in the same way as "search" ads, meaning ads with a higher CPC bid price will be shown more frequently.