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By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2003 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved. Society has always had a proclivity for convenience and the fast fix. Although unarguably faster, in many cases the simple fast fix comes with a high price to pay. Some examples: our fast food industry & our over weight populace, ubiquitous particle board furniture and the loss of true furniture craftsman, and diet pills vs. regular exercise. Sure, there are many other examples that can show the true benefits of an innovation. With this said, the pay per click phenomena, provides a real benefit to many who create income through their websites. However, first of all, not all is as it would seem in the pay per click world. Plus, reliance on this advertising media has created a situation where neophyte website owners are actually loosing revenue to their more Internet astute competitors. Almost all the search engines have some type of pay per click (PPC) advertising services. Pay per click (PPC) is a service in which an advertiser selects specific keywords or phrases and then creates a listing that will show up when someone searches for that phrase. The advertiser selects an amount they are willing to pay for each click on their listing which results in a visit to their site - thus the term "pay per click". Usually, the top bidders for search terms will be in the top ‘sponsored’ positions both on top and bottom of the ‘real’ search results. The world’s largest PPC search engine, Overture, distributes their top paid listings to other partner sites. In fact, if you bid in one of the top three positions at Overture, your listings will also show up at some of the leading search engines including AltaVista, HotBot, InfoSpace, iWon, Lycos, MSN, Yahoo etc. Here is where the fix comes in. What PPC has allowed one to do is to instantly "pay" their way to the top, whereas Search engine optimization (SEO) takes a lot of time and effort to achieve top results. With this instant result, comes problems. First, there is a lot of talk about click fraud. Whether this fraud is intentional, by competitors or just spammers, the fact remains that webmasters are paying for clicks that have no real value. Second, you should understand that PPC will never help improve your positioning in the regular editorial search results. They most always appear in a "Sponsored or Featured" area. Third, on very competitive key word phrases, it has become an “ego thing” to be in first place. The actual number of click throughs necessary to equal one solid client is impossible to speculate on as each site will be different. Setting a tight budget here is critical. If you can approximate your own site’s ratio of clicks (visitors) to paying clients, whether it’s one half percent or ten percent, then you will know what the real value per click is to your practice. I’m assuming no click fraud in this rationale. Recently one legal phrase: Los Angeles criminal defense attorney was over $16 per click for the top three positions! So, if you’re at a .50% conversion ratio, you’ll be spending $3,200 for that new client. You have to determine your average profit this type of client generates to see if it’s worth the cost. Lastly, the infatuation with pay per click has caused some to disregard SEO in place of PPC! SEO should be the foundation of your online marketing strategy because in the long run, the benefits of SEO will far outweigh anything else you do. Copyright 2004 Promotions Unlimited. All rights reserved.
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