How to spend a little… and get a LOT of good traffic
Who wants traffic?
(I do, I do!)
Last week we started piecing together the family of strategies responsible for bringing you just that — “search marketing.” We started with how to optimize your website so it shows up in the organic (read: free!) search results.
But while SEO should be one of your core strategies, it’s not going to get you a top ranking overnight…
But you can buy yourself a top spot in the “sponsored” search results that appear around the main results — in minutes!
It’s called pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and it’s well worth the cost.
Here’s why:
PPC ads show up immediately, so you can drive traffic to your site right away — even if you haven’t been indexed by the search engines yet.
With PPC you pay only for results. No matter how many times your ad is displayed, you pay only when someone clicks on it. And by watching your results carefully, you can determine how well each ad is converting and if it’s worth continuing.
PPC is a great testing tool because you can run several ads simultaneously. By split testing different ads you’ll see very quickly which ones work best… and then you can immediately dump the duds.
Test your keywords this way and use the best ones on your site to boost your organic search results.
In fact, you can use PPC to test everything from your product offerings and price points, to your ad headlines and salescopy… and find out exactly how to appeal to your target market.
And done properly, PPC advertising is also very affordable. In fact, if you do it right, you’ll actually make money while you boost your visibility and traffic. What a deal! (Find out four ways to squeeze every penny out of your PPC campaigns on our blog.)
Final thoughts
If you want to make sure your target market finds your site, you need both SEO and PPC. That’s effective search engine marketing.
No other set of strategies offers you so much scope. You can dramatically improve your search engine rankings AND direct quality traffic to your website — often without spending a single dime!
A lot of the techniques I covered are basic to the way search engines do business. Just getting those right will give you a competitive advantage.
… But some techniques come and go. What worked magic for you last year may disappear in a puff of smoke this year!
And discovering a great new search marketing trick could put you way out ahead of the competition — and seriously boost your bottom line…
So do the basics. But make sure you also try out the new techniques and strategies. With ongoing search marketing you’ll be where your market can find you — front and center in the search results.