If you are an American or think like an American, you are probably going to have a hard time thinking about traffic the right way. The reason is that Americans are always looking for the “next big thing” or the “silver bullet” or the “one secret” behind things. Americans don’t diet–they cut carbs (identifying carbohydrates as the “bad guy” and then avoiding them and only them). Americans seek the latest supplement (krill oil? vitamin D? Co-Enzyme Q?) not good nutrition. In short, most Americans like the answer to any question to be one thing.
Traffic is multifactoral. Getting traffic to a website involves using a lot of different techniques. It is true that some techniques will work better for certain websites than others. It is also true that some people will implement some techniques better than others. But getting and sustaining real traffic to your website means doing lots and lots of things all of the time.
One way you can get traffic to your website is to advertise. The classic website advertising technique is called pay-per-click or PPC and it’s most associated with Google but other search engines like Yahoo offer it, too. The idea is that you compose a very short text ad that appears when search engine users type in certain keywords.
I’m going to talk about Google here because I’m more familiar with it than others, but the same principles apply. You start at AdWords (go to the main Google search page and find the hyperlink under the main keyword box that says Advertising Programs). You need to set up an account, which costs US$5. Then you can create short text ads that appear when your selected keyword(s) are typed into the search engine. These ads appear over on the right-hand column under “Sponsored Links.” They sometimes appear on the top and they also appear on keyword-relevant websites that allow advertising through the Google program.
Want to see it in action? Just type in any hot keyword (like “diet” or “weight loss” or “cruise” or “rehab”) and you’ll see a main page of results (called “organic results”) and the sponsored links off to the right.
Now here is where Google AdWords differs from most print-world advertising. In the print world, you pay for your ad to show up. You give the magazine your money and they make sure your ad shows up in its pages. In the world of PPC, there is no charge to have your ad show up. You only pay if and when somebody clicks on your ad.
Google AdWords could be a course in itself, but it’s also easy enough for even beginners to test out. There are a couple of pointers:
- Know thy keywords. If you are running a resume-writing service, then know what keywords your target customers would type in. Google likes relevant keywords. That means you can’t use “naked people” as your keyword to attract people to your resume-writing service.
- It’s a good idea if your keywords also appear in your Google AdWords ad, your URL (though it’s not necessary), and the landing page of your website (where your ad goes if a person clicks). For instance, if you write resumes and tell Google you want the keyword “resume,” it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use the word “resume” in your AdWords ad and have a URL like BobsResumeService.com, and make sure that “resume” appears a few times on the landing page. A lot of people gripe that Google takes punitive measures against people who break its rules. That’s one way to look at it. But here’s my way of looking at it: Google rewards those who figure out and abide by its rules.
- Google will allow you to write multiple ads for your keyword(s) and then rotate them and compare them. It’s all automatic. This is a good way to test and refine your ads. Just keep checking and remove the one(s) that are not working.
How much does PPC cost? Well, you can get yourself in a lot of PPC trouble if you’re not careful. On the surface, it seems pretty benign. Google even asks you: how much are you willing to pay for one click? You can set that. You can say a penny, if you want, or $10. I would say that it’s really a good idea to hover around 25 cents, but it depends on what you’re selling. Then Google also asks you to set a daily spending limit. If you’re watching your pennies, you can set a $5 a day spending limit. By the way, you can turn AdWords on and off any time you can get to the Internet so you can stop your campaign almost instantly if you want. I’ve done campaigns where I set a high-dollar daily limit but turned it off after three days, because I was interested more in testing the waters than advertising permanently.
Does this method work? As Dan Kennedy, the marketing guru says, all advertising works, it’s just a question of “at what price.” The key with PPC is to make sure you don’t go broke. But an aggressive PPC campaign can bring people to your website–no problem. If you had unlimited funds, you could pretty much guarantee traffic to your site.
The point is, though, that most of us don’t have unlimited funds, particularly if you’re advertising a site that doesn’t even sell anything. So what is the role of PPC?
- PPC is great if you can make it work financially. For instance, if you spend a quarter a click to drive people to your website and you know that 10% of the people who come to your site make a purchase of $1,000 or more, then it’s absolutely a good value. On the other hand, if you spend $1 per click and 10% of the people who come to your site make a purchase and the average value of that purchase is $7, well, that’s a good system for going broke.
- PPC can work great for occasional use. For instance, when you launch a new product or if you want to tie into a holiday or some special event, a short run of PPC can pay off. (For example, Mother’s Day gift ideas or Election Day souveniers, etc.)
- PPC works well when you want to test a market. For instance, I’ll sometimes build a site and launch a pretty aggressive PPC campaign and run it for one to five days. My idea is this–I want to gauge roughly what kind of interst exists for this keyword. If I pay good money for advertising a keyword like “cat grooming” and nobody clicks, that tells me it’s not a good keyword for making money. I recently did a short run of keyword advertising on a strange keyword and got a ton of interest (measured in folks who downloaded a free report). That told me I have a winning keyword. (No, I’m not telling you what it is.)
I would think that you can work PPC pretty well into your traffic plans but for most of us lower-level entrepreneurs or folks who want to promote a site that doesn’t actually make money, PPC is out of our league. Use it judiciously–but know what it is.
Next up in our series: Non-PPC Advertising (yes, you can advertise your website in ways other than traditional PPC)
