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June 1, 2006 |
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By: Louise Rijk - Bio - Blog |
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Pay-Per-Click Advertising Budgets:
You Get What You Pay For
Given how difficult it can be to get your site to rank well in the search engines' organic listings, the allure of pay-per-click sponsored search programs is too good for many advertisers to pass up. The promise is to pay for ads and links to your site, and so long as you can out-bid your competitors, you can appear every time someone who is interested in what you have to offer goes looking. But it's important that you not get caught up in the excitement of instantly seeing your ad appear at the top of the page, but that you pay attention to the bottom line.
High Quality Web Site Traffic
Unlike traditional media advertising, rates for sponsored search ads are not about where you appear or how often you appear. The bidding and charges are all about site visits - that's why it's called pay-per-click. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad and arrives at your website. Your ad could appear to thousands of people every day, but if none of those people visit your site, it doesn't cost you a thing.
While that sounds great, that's obviously not what you want. You wouldn't get into sponsored search if you weren't interested in getting some traffic. However, it's important to keep in mind that sponsored search isn't about bringing you a quantity of traffic - it's about giving you quality traffic. If you're bidding on the correct keywords, you're going to direct qualified visitors to your site. So don't be alarmed if you aren't suddenly seeing a huge increase in site visits. What's important is that you pick up visitors that are going to convert to paying customers.
Setting The "Right" Budget
The difficult part of this process is setting a budget. You set a cap for how much you are willing to spend a day, and the search engines will honor that cap. However, this can cause some confusion. To prevent you from exceeding that cap you set on your spending, the search engines will start to reduce the number of times your ad is shown, as you get closer to your limit. Then, when you reach that spending limit, your ads stop showing altogether. This can be disconcerting for some advertisers - at the beginning of the day you may see your ad at the top of the page, but by the evening, your ad may no longer be there. This doesn't mean you aren't getting what you paid for - just the opposite in fact. Because your spend is based on visits to your site, that means you received as much traffic to your site as you were willing to pay for in one day. It's up to you to decide how much you're willing to spend for the day, and when you reach that amount, your ads won't show until the next day.
Before you get into sponsored search you really have to think about what's important for your business. Is it important that you be visible all day for every relevant search? That may mean you will have to spend more than you were willing to. However, if you have a specific budget in mind, you can be sure that the search engines will never exceed that amount. You may not get maximum exposure at first, but once you start seeing some return on your investment, you may have the ability to increase your budget. Then you can keep your ads running all day and receive even more qualified traffic to your site.
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