CyberArtisans Newsletter Vol 5, Number 4

Welcome to the April 2006 issue of the CyberArtisans monthly newsletter!

Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.

This Month's Topics
Search Engine Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Search Engine Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Last issue we discussed what has come to be called "traditional" Search Engine Marketing. This month we're going to look at Pay-Per-Click, or PPC. If you want to see an example of PPC, go to Google, type in almost any search phrase, and look at the right side of the page. There you will see a list of links under a heading "Sponsored Links." You may also note 2 or 3 links at the top, in blue shading, with the same label.

This is the primary source of Google's spectacular growth. Every one of those links is paying Google money and there are millions of them on Google. Here's how they work:

You open a Google AdWords account (AdWords is simply Google's trade name for its sponsored link service) and you give them your credit card number. Then you design an ad. The design is very limited: One line of 25 characters (including spaces), two lines of 35 characters, and a last line consisting of your web address. The first line is your headline -- it's highlighted as a link and it's what grabs the visitor's attention first. The next two lines are your chance to convince the visitor to click on the link to go to your site. Then you tell Google what keywords (or phrases) you want that ad to appear for. And finally you decide how much you are willing to pay for each click.

Now here's the important part: You pay nothing at all for this ad until somebody clicks on it. Then how much do you pay? It depends. If there's not a lot of competition for the keywords you have chosen, you can pay as little at $0.25 per click or even less to get a position near the top of the listing. If you are in a competitive business you could be paying $3.00 or more per click to even get on the second page. What if lots of people click on the ad but nobody buys anything from you? That's tough -- you still have to pay Google for the clicks.

Unfortunately, what looks like a fairly simple process can get very complicated very quickly. It's possible to design an ad that will bring lots of traffic to your site but no business (yes, we've done it). The trick is to design an ad that tempts the right people to come to your site. Who are the right people? The ones who buy, of course. Sometimes a minor change to the wording of the ad will do the trick, but sometimes it takes bigger changes or many tries until you get it right. It looks like a simple way to get more customers, and for a lucky few it may be, but usually you find yourself using a lot of time tracking results, making changes, tracking those results, making more changes, etc. In most businesses, time is money, so Google Adwords are no more a free lunch than anything else in business.

The good part is that Google tracks every click, so it is easy to figure out what is and what isn't working. Also, you can put up as many different ads as you want for no additional cost (except for the additional clicks they produce, of course). Google recommends putting up different "landing pages" on your site for each ad and even offers a tracking mechanism (also free), so you know which ads are producing and which are not. There are many more choices you can make within the AdWords structure, and part of the challenge is managing all those variables and tracking how each one affects your results.

Clearly, this is a well thought-out advertising mechanism. Its biggest problems are (1) it takes a lot of work to get good results and (2) it has the potential to cost a lot for little or no return if you don't monitor it very carefully.

There are several ways you can learn to use AdWords. Probably the least expensive method is to ask us to lead you through the process and then you take it from there, but of course we can do it all if your time is at a premium. As usual, it's a question of whether you are more comfortable spending time or money. Call or email us -- we are always happy to talk with you about the options.

Thanks for joining us this month. See you next month.

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Jonathan Spencer
CyberArtisans Web Developers

http://www.cyberartisans.com/
617-965-4110