Choosing the best keywords/phrases to bid on for your site can be tough if this is your first time using pay-per-click or keyword bid search engines for advertising your URL. Here are a few quick tips which may help you:
Only Bid On Keywords That Are Relevant To Your URL
This point cannot be emphasized enough. For some, this can also be a difficult task. Perhaps the following examples will help.
Example 1: Let's say you own a web site about camping in North America. On your index page you may have a link to a web page on your site about books/guides for campground locations (books which you sell and/or review). You may also have a web page about outdoor survival information with descriptions and affiliate links to purchase survival gear. You may also have a web page on your camping site detailing the pros and cons of various tents with links to your online store to purchase them.
For the above example here are some possible relevant keyword choices and the related URL you should link these keywords to:
"camping in North America" - linking to your index URL
"North American camping" - linking to your index URL
"North American campgrounds" - linking to your campground books/guides URL
"campground location guides for North America" - linking to your campground books/guides URL
"campground location guides for Canada" - linking to your campground books/guides URL
"campground location guides for USA" - linking to your campground books/guides URL
"camping guide books for North America" - linking to your campground books/guides URL
"outdoor survival information" - linking to your survival information URL
"survival gear information" - linking to your survival information URL
"survival supplies" - linking to your survival supplies affiliate URL
"survival gear" - linking to your survival supplies affiliate URL
"survival kits" - linking to your survival kit affiliate URL
"lightweight tents" - linking to your lightweight tents online store category page URL
"Coleman® tents" - linking to your Coleman® tents online store category page URL
"Coleman® Dakota® Cabin/Dome 7 Person Tent" - linking to your Coleman® Dakota® Cabin/Dome 7 Person Tent tent online store product page URL
... and so on.
Keywords you would not bid on would be something like "camping associations" ... even though you may want them to visit your site or recommend your site to their members, these keywords would not be relevant to your site content. An Internet searcher using this search term would be looking for actual camping associations and even though they might find your Title/Description interesting enough to click-through to your site, they would more than likely be "curious clickers" rather than actual paying customers.
Note: in the above example, bidding on non-relevant keywords would most likely result in a "Keyword Relevance Alert" sent out by one of our moderaters. Our goal in setting all Terms and Conditions is to provide quality results for our searchers and quality traffic for your site(s). Keyword relevance is important to achieving this goal.
Test Your Titles And Descriptions
To improve the quality of your traffic you will want to pay close attention to your click-through traffic and conversion ratios. In order to determine your conversion ratios you will also need to have some form of URL tracking in place. If you do not have access to your logs you may want to consider an online URL tracking service (such as ROIbot) or hyperTracker.
Example 2: If we use our above North American camping scenario, let's experiment here with the keyphrase "lightweight tents". Here are a few possible Titles and Descriptions you might want to test for this keyphrase bid.
Title #1 - Lightweight Tents
Title #2 - Lightweight Tents - Coleman®, Eureka®, Sierra Designs®, and more.
Title #3 - Lightweight Tents Perfect For Backpacking
Title #4 - Lightweight Tents Perfect For Hiking
Note: Time4me does not require you to use your search term in your title. However, some other pay-per-click search engines (such as Overture) do so we have used it in our examples.
Description #1 - Purchase a tent from "yourstorename" for your next camping trip. Our lightweight tents are easy to carry, perfect for hiking and backpacking.
Description #2 - Find a wide selection of lightweight tents at "yourstorename" for your next camping trip. Our lightweight tents are easy to carry, perfect for hiking and backpacking.
Description #3 - Our 2-person, 3-person, and 4-person lightweight tents are perfect for outdoor camping adventures. Check out the wide selection at "yourstorename" for your next camping trip.
Description #4 - "yourstorename" carries a wide selection of lightweight tents including brand names such as Coleman®, Eureka®, Sierra Designs®, and more.
Note: Similar to other pay-per-click search engines, Time4me DOES require you to use your keyword/phrase bid term in your description. There is one exception to this policy - misspelled words bid on can (and should) be incorporated into your description with the correct spelling. (Example: If bidding on the phrase "golf glubs" you should use the correct spelling of "golf clubs" in your description.)
Additional Tips
Tip: If you're getting high click-through traffic from your keyword bid but few sales you may only want to further qualify your traffic by changing your title to narrow your target market. (Using the above as an example you may want to change your title to "2-person lightweight tents".)
Tip: When first starting out using pay-per-click search engines to advertise your site bid on as many relevant keywords/phrases as you can. Then, after tracking results and calculating click-through conversions, refine your bids to those keywords/phrases that produce the best sales.
Mypowertips.com is currently compiling an excellent e-book titled "The Quickstart Pay-Per-Click Guide" which includes:
- How to design your own Pay-Per-Click Marketing Strategy.
- How to calculate your Return On Investment when using pay-per-click advertising.
- 7 easy and inexpensive methods for tracking your click-through traffic.
- Secrets to reducing costs and increasing sales.
- Links to more than 250 pay-per-click advertising sites.
- And more.
If you are serious about using pay-per-click methods for marketing your site, this e-book will more than pay for itself in savings for your advertising budget.
