At this point, we’ll cover the final two of the big 5 techniques
for building traffic, Pay-Per-Click Search Engines and the major directories.
Let’s start with #2 of the big 5, Pay-Per-Click Search Engines.
Pay-Per-Clicks allow you to bid for keyword placement. For example,
if one of your pages focuses on the topic of “fashion models,” you can
bid for the #1 placement (or any other #) on the first page (or lower,
but what’s the point of being on page two?) of search results.
Boy, does that save time! No tweaking, submitting, etc. But there’s
a catch, of course. The most popular keywords have become quite expensive
at Overture (the first and biggest engine) and are rising at the others.
So your best strategy is to work the niches. Bid on hundreds of less popular
keywords related to your Theme-Based Content Site. This can be an extremely
cost-effective way to build a big list of lifetime customers in a hurry.
There’s a drawback to bidding on hundreds of words, the time involved
to research and actually bid upon them all. Luckily, Site
Build It! Manager takes care of all that.
Let’s quickly review the top Pay-Per-Clicks. The grand-daddy of all
the Pay-Per-Clicks is
Overture
http://www.overture.com/
http://www.overture.com/d/about/advertisers/
Register for a bidding
account with Overture
While you’re there, download their mass-submission Excel template (Basic
or Power form, either one is OK, they prefer if you use the Power form).
Site
Build It! Manager speeds this whole process up and makes it easier,
too. The Manager works with all of the Pay-Per-Click engines’ mass-submission
spreadsheet templates.
Some tips
from Overture
And their relevancy
policy
Overture will generate more traffic for you than all other Pay-Per-Clicks,
combined. Overture is now must marketing. However, it is important
to note that the other Pay-Per-Clicks are starting to come into their own.
Of course, due to its great popularity, each click from Overture will cost
you more than from the other Pay-Per-Clicks. Even though the other engines
are cheaper, it normally might not be worth your time to prepare bids for
them. Why? Because, even though they deliver cheap traffic, they don’t
deliver a lot of it! Factor in the cost of your time and it might not be
worthwhile. Now, though, thanks to Site
Build It! Manager, submitting bids on the other seven Pay-Per-Clicks
only amounts to a few minutes work per engine! Good, cheap, targeted traffic!
So let’s take a quick look at the next tier. In order of approximate
importance, here are the next Pay-Per-Clicks. There are many others beyond
these, but they do not generate enough traffic to be worth your time
FindWhat
Register
for an account with them
7Search
Register
for an account
While you’re there, download their mass-submission Excel template.
Kanoodle
Register
for an account
While you’re there, download their mass-submission Excel template.
Ah-ha
Register for
an account
ePilot
Register
for an account
While you’re there, download their mass-submission Excel template.
Sprinks
Register
for an account
While you’re there, download their mass-submission Excel template.
It’s a major pain to work with, though. Recommendation: simply submit the
template that Site
Build It! Manager prepares for you for Sprinks.
Before you bid on anything, it’s wise to research. And keywords are
no exception. During chapter 2 of the discussion, you had an optional exercise.
If you haven’t had time to do this yet, here it is:
Let’s create an Overture bid-for-keyword list. Do it for each engine.
But since Overture will drive 80% of your traffic, we’ll start here.
Label the first column “Keyword” (yes, the same keyword as in your master
keyword list. Now add 23 more columns to the right of keyword (yes 23,
or better still, Site
Build It! Manager has already done all this for you). Here’s what
to do for each of your high profitability keywords. Label the first two
columns to the right of thekeyword column “Price I Should Bid” and “Buys
#”, leave these two columns empty for now.
In the next column, enter the number of sites that have bid at least
a dime for each keyword. Let’s say that you do a search for “fashion model”
and you find that 15 sites bid at least one nickel for “fashion model”,
enter “15”.
Now, in the next 20 columns, enter the price for the top 20 search results
spots, searchers are unlikely to scan any result past #20, so bidding for
a spot beyond #20 is a waste of time. In our example, since only 15 sites
have bid for “fashion model,” you enter these bid prices in the first 15
columns, leave the last 5 blank or enter 0.00.
Some Pay-Per-Click engines only show you 10 sites on the first page
of search results. In that case, only enter the bids for these. Enter “0.00”
for #11-20, because there’s really no point in bidding for a spot on page
2.
In general, bid a minimum bid higher than the highest site that seems
to reach your target visitor. If the descriptions for the first three sites
are clearly aimed at someone who is not your target, why outbid them? Stay
higher than your competitors, as long as that bid makes financial sense.
You do not want to be below your competition, the click through drops off
quickly as you go down the page.
What makes financial sense? Whatever makes a profit...
Suppose you are paying 10 cents per click for a keyword (minimum bid
at Overture). That means 1,000 clicks costs you $100. Suppose you do a
decent preselling job and a total of 20% of your visitors click on at least
one of the five in-context text links on your Keyword-Focused Content Page.
That’s 200 people visiting your merchants. If your merchants average a
3% Conversion Rate, that’s 6 sales. So, if the average commission is $20,
your $100 has returned $120. And if you’ve chosen good affiliate programs,
ones that offer lifetime customer commissions, you’ve gained 6 lifetime
customers, which means ongoing income with no further expense!
If you are referring visitors to your own online store or sales site,
do similar profitability calculations.
One special bidding strategy for Overture: Overture does more than just
provide its own search results at its highly popular engine. It supplies
listings for many major search portals such as AOL Search, Netscape Search,
Lycos, AltaVista and large meta Search Engines. These search services tend
to cherry-pick the top search results. Your very best strategy for maximal
distribution across all of the Overture search partners would be to make
a bid that puts you in the top 2. Next best is in the top 3. And then in
the top 10. Of course, anywhere in the top 40 puts you on Overture’s first
page of results. But you’ll get far less traffic if you appear further
down. You’ll have to balance the per-click cost of being in the top 2-to-10
against the financial benefit of the extra clicks. You may even be willing
to lose some money, on a per-first-sale basis, to gain precious lifetime
customers.
As always, your bids must make financial sense.
I can’t overemphasize that the key to success is to bid upon hundreds
of keywords related to your site. Yes, hundreds. So the mass-submission
templates are absolutely essential. Don’t let them scare you, except for
one engine, they’re easy to work with when you use the Site
Build It! Manager.
Let me tell you a bit more about SBI! Manager, a productive piece of
software that comes with Site Build It!. The Manager runs off your computer.
The rest of Site Build It! (i.e., the no-HTML SiteBuilder, World-Submitter,
the link tracker, the reporting functions, etc.) runs off of theirs. Together,
it’s a terrific marriage.
Basically, SBI! Manager is a marketing tool for developing highly profitable
keywords related to a theme that is in turn related to products of affiliate
programs that you represent. It automates much of what you have studied
so far in this discussion.
-
Master Keyword List: build a list of keywords, including profitabilty
(demand and supply) data about each, with supply site info research for
each. Use the “profitability” info for each KEYWORD to help you pick the
best topics for your site.
Yes, Site Build It! Manager does all this for you and it only takes
a few minutes. For example, if you enter “fashion,” and then click on the
“Brainstorm and Research” button, it does all the demand and supply and
even breakout window-functions (as covered in chapter 3) for you, creating
a comprehensive list of keywords related to fashion!
Then use the Site Build It! server-side site-building tool to develop
your Theme-Based Content Site, full of Keyword-Focused Content Pages. Attract
traffic to these pages and then refer visitors to affiliate-merchant sites
or to your own sales sites that sell products or services.
-
Page Submission Info Form: prepare for submitting bids to the Pay-
Per-Click engines by entering the info that they require into the Manager’s
page submission info Form
-
Title
Same idea as when you made the Title for your Web page chapter 6),
except your title does not have to be the actual page title. It should
contain the keyword that you bid for, since the click through will be higher.
Overture cuts the title off after 40 characters, so keep it short.
-
Description
Get your most important, biggest point up front. Copy-andpaste your
META description that you prepared in chapter 6. Same basic rules and principles
apply. (The Manager even reminds you if you forget to include the keyword
in the Title or Description.)
-
URL
Direct searchers (your potential visitors) to the specific page on
your site that has the information they request, not just to your home
page.
One important rule of every Pay-Per-Click. Each keyword that you bid
upon must clearly relate to its Title and Description, and to the contents
of your site. For you that’s natural, already done!
-
Bid For Keyword List -- The Site Build It! Manager contains a Bid For Keyword
List for every significant Pay-Per-Click engine. It researches the “# of
bids” and the top 20 bids for all of your keywords, at the simple click
of a button! Only one difference it researches the “# of bids” and the
top 20 bids at all of the significant Pay-Per-Clicks, not just Overture’s!
Use the Manager's pay-per-click automated research functionality to
quickly get all the info at each engine about all of your keywords, showing
you where the bid should be for each keyword. All you have to do is the
fun part, enter your bids!
When that’s all done? Just one more click. Click upon the “Create File”
button to create a file for Overture’s masssubmission template. The Manager
automates mass-submissions to all the major Pay-Per-Clicks. Now it only
takes minutes to do what previously took days. E-mail these files to the
Pay-Per-Clicks and presto! Instant, cheap traffic! With no hassle.
To summarize Site Build It! Manager
Site Build It! Manager is software that you run on your computer.
The Site Build It! Manager automates and greatly accelerates
-
building your list of high
-
researching those keywords
-
preparing content for your Theme-Based Content Site
-
researching affiliate programs that fit with your Site Concept
-
preparing Pay-Per-Click Search Engine bids
-
researching and bidding optimally at the Pay-Per-Clicks
-
making mass-bidding-submissions
Pay-Per-Clicks are outstanding, cost-effective ways to build traffic to
your site. Site Build It! Manager is currently compatible with the eight
major Pay-Per- Clicks.
More information about Site
Build It!
The Wrapup on Pay-Per-Clicks
As you’ll see in chapter 10 of this discussion, you’ll be able to use
Site Build It!'s special server-side tools to create tracking links. These
links enable you to track the effectiveness of each of your pay-per-click
programs.
Site Build It! is the ultimate way to build pay-per-click traffic. Use
the client-side Manager and the server-side Tracker to create and monitor
a powerful, cost-effective, pay-per-click traffic-building program.
It’s totally do-able. Unlike the free Search Engines, all you have to
do is bid. |