I’ve Built It, Why Aren’t They Coming?
You‟ve built the website, you‟ve tagged and metatagged it and you still aren‟t getting the traffic
you desire. Well that‟s because people have paid for ads and rankings and you haven‟t. Yes,
that does stink. There is something you can do about it, though.
You can sign on to Google, Yahoo or any number of pay per click advertisers and set up your
own online ad. Most of them allow you to decide a maximum of daily advertising dollars so you
don‟t have to worry about waking up to a ten million dollar bill one morning.
The sites are easy
to use and allow you to get started immediately. The ads are focused around keyword usage,
so picking the correct words is key to a success. Pick the right words you will see customers
pouring in, pick the wrong ones and you hear crickets chirping.
When building your ad you may want to keep the following in mind:
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Think beyond your company or competitors name as the keywords
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Listen to how people actually talk and use those words
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Use the suggestion tools provided—Google and Yahoo both have keyword generators
that will help you find the right words for your ad
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Be unique, don‟t use all the same search terms as your competitors
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Broad search terms aren‟t always useful, if you can refine yours do it
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Think of common misspellings—after all, not everyone‟s perfect
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Don‟t keep repeating terms, you won‟t fool the search engines
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Don‟t spam—you can actually get banned if you throw everything but the kitchen sink
into the ad.
Keywords are important to the ads success, but so is the engine of record. Google is the
largest search engine on the Internet with Yahoo as its close competitor. If you can afford
Google you may wish to go that route, but Yahoo is an acceptable alternative. Don‟t be fooled
by Facebook‟s ad program and sign on there just because it is a popular destination.
You will
get farther on Facebook by having a well-liked “page†than you will using their PPC ads.
If you want to try something different than make a video ad and put it on Youtube. In fact,
Youtube is the next pay per click marketing horizon.
Its search engine is actually the number
two engine for sheer quantity of searches and they allow the same PPC services as their parent
company, Google—in fact, the build-it-yourself tool is modeled from Googles. The only
difference is that instead of the same boring blue and white ad you see on Google your users
get to watch a mini video. Much more fun and exciting.
Lastly, build all of these same keywords into your website. You want to reflect the same word
choices in your content and meta tags. If the terms are truly relevant then you will absolutely be
able to fit them neatly into the content of the webpages.