If you found our SEO Blog, you probably know what PPC is (Pay-Per-Click Advertising). But what the heck is PPI? Pay-Per-Inclusion involves purchasing a listing, hopefully with a keyword-rich backlink, from a trusted web directory. When discussing B2B PPC or even B2B PPI, it’s difficult not to mention the largest business to business niche search engine: Business.com.
After a recent overhaul of their website and their B2B PPC ad platform, this B2B engine may be the sweet spot you’ve been looking for to get more B2B leads. I’ve personally worked with Business.com as an advertiser for over 3 years, experienced fantastic conversion rates and have even been a judge on their What Works for Business Contest, so I’m no newcomer to their business.
As a fan and advocate of their business directory (a PageRank 6 I might add), when they announced a $50 savings on inclusion in their B2B directory, I had to share. B2B PPI is a great way to purchase trusted links from web and business directories such as Business.com. Here’s a link to the offer below:
Get Listed in the Top B2B Online Business Directory – Receive $50 Off!
I’m not the type to brag about something and not put my money where my mouth is. Take a look at the Google Analytics snippet below to see how my first week with Business.com B2B PPC went. You can image how the account looks now after several months of optimization.
So there’s yet another great offer available if you’re considering trying Business.com’s B2B pay-per-click advertising platform. They are giving away $100 in free clicks! Be sure to request an Account Manager after you have your account setup and ask for account optimization recommendations. If you’re only advertising in the U.S.A., be sure to let them know. The ad platform is outstanding, but there’s still a bit of hand-holding required to insure you get the highest quality of clicks. Here’s the link to the free $100:
Target High Quality B2B Leads – Get $100 in Free Clicks!
Sorry Omniture Search Center users, this vendor is not currently available in the list of integrated ad platforms, so be sure to raise a fuss with your Omniture rep so that we can get Business.com included.
Other B2B directories include B2BYellowpages.com and DirectoryB2B.com, both have lower PageRank than Business.com and don’t seem to be focused on helping B2B business owners the way Business.com does. Try their B2B PPI or their B2B PPC programs with the discounts above and share your results below.
Working the new Google AdWords interface has been a bit of a learning curve for many people, as compared to using the legacy version, with all sorts of dynamic Flash-driven functionality going on while you try to work within the browser. Today, I spent some time looking at the new filter functionality and created what I believe to be The Ultimate AdWords Filter for optimizing your AdWords account. Here is how it works:
Note: Quality Score was set to higher than 7/10 above. You should take an additional step by saving a filter specifically for viewing keywords with a Quality Score under 7/10. Scrutinize the relevance and validate that the ads & landing pages contain the keywords with the low Quality Scores.
Date Range: All Time
We had the opportunity to attend SMX Advanced 2009 and this video and post to share with you from the Amazing PPC Tactics session in the paid search track. Below are notes from the session (SEO Expert Steve Wiideman). Enjoy!
Dan Thies, Stompernet
Dan Thies of Stompernet kicked off the round of insight with a very aggressive approach toward PPC. I may be way off, but my take on his methodology is to simply outbid and out optimize your competition. Understanding the importance of CTR to Quality Score, Thies says to secure that top position, get the highest CTR and eventually the cost will stablize.
Thies says not to fear day-parting, but to take advantage of it based on conversion rates and value per click data. To figure out the amount you should be paying per click, Thies says to calculate conversion rate by average order value to get revenue per visit, then multiply that number by the percentage of net profit you make to get the max amount you should be paying per click.
Example:
3.31 conversion rate X $61.49 average order = $2.03
30% profit X $2.03 = 61 cents per click
Thies says to run one campaign based on “Best Times” and one campaign for “Night Owl” searchers (after hours). Got the next step by offering a Midnight Special coupon offer and of course using different ad creative and bids.
As mentioned above, Thies says to always test at the top and you’re sure to see more sales, traffic and profit. You’ll also gain market dominance by being omnipresent. Another reminder was presented to use exact and phrase matching and to put the entire ad in the landing page, verbatim.
Ryan Lash, Founder and VP Search, ymarketing, LLC
Lash says when it comes to optimizing bids, you have three options:
Calculate ideal cost per click (CPC) by looking at existing spend by keyword. Ideal cost can be found by multiplying conversions by target cost per conversion. Ideal CPC should be ideal costs divided by clicks. Based on actual performance, the CPC Sweet Spot will be closer to or effectively half net margin.
Lash says to start with a keyword report every 7, 14 or 30 days and to do some Excel-based calculations (which I’ll have the columns for you for shortly) to optimize bids.
Dan Soha, Founder & SEM Specialist Five Mill, Inc
Dan’s presentation was so fast and furious that I’m going to have come back to this post after I have the deck. However, here are a few bullet points I took down:
For Yahoo!:
For Google:
There’s always that one advertiser who owns the top spot with an ad title that kills. Even if you use that title, the advertiser will still win because they have CTR history. To gain control of that spot, you can create a second ad with a different headline, then optimize ad serving in campaign settings and bid above the advertiser. If the advertiser is using bid management software, their automated bid management program will notice a hike in cost and reduce the position, thereby allowing your ad to move up. Once in the top spot, simply change the title to one that the advertiser was using to own the top position for the best title.
Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
By far my favorite presenter on the topic of PPC, Addie truly defined the “amazing” in Amazing PPC Tactics with real data and statistics. Of course most of that data was presented in the Quality Score Under the Microscope session. Here are some bullet points from Amazing PPC Tactics from Addie’s presentation:
Unless you have a nice and fat budget to inflate initial CPC on high quality keywords, you may want to babystep your PPC campaign and grow it over time with a limited number of starting point keywords. If your account has an overall poor Quality Score, it might be time to start over with a new account, considering the fact that the experts have confirmed that there is such a thing as Account-Level Quality Score.
Once you’ve got that 10 Quality Score, choose your max CPC with intelligence and bid during hours where you get the best conversions. I’ll have some more data to add to this post shortly. Hopefully you found the notes useful.
Diving in to Pay-Per-Click Advertising Optimization can be as scary as jumping into a dark well. Allow us to shine some light on the topic to help you get going with your PPC campaigns.
First off, you absolutely need to install the Conversion Tracking code provided by AdWords, Yahoo! Sponsored Search, Microsoft AdCenter, Business.com or any other platform you are advertising on. Don’t even think of starting a PPC program until you can track the results.
Next, we strongly recommend testing your ads and landing pages constantly, until you get a click-through rate (CTR) of 20% to 30% and until your landing page has a GREAT (or least OK) Quality rating. Expect to see a 5% to 10% conversion rate after using split or multi-variant landing page testing (Google “multi-variant ppc” on Google without quotes to learn more.
Finally, optimize your bids, positioning, and negative search terms constantly. Don’t measure yesterday, but measure a specific testing period per tactic you are implementing to improve results (maybe 4-6 weeks).
Watch the video above to hear SEO Expert Steve Wiideman discuss this Crash Course in PPC Optimization via YouTube.
So you’ve optimized your website for higher organic/natural search engine placement and have realized that it’s going to take awhile to see some traffic produced from the handful of keywords you are optimizing for. Hopefully your chosen SEO company set good expectations with you or right now you’re probably feeling a bit frustrated and maybe even a little cheated.
Well, there’s more than one way to get traffic from Google, especially if you have a marketing budget. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising is a method of bidding for a Sponsored Ad in Google, Google’s Search Network, and on pages hosting Google AdSense ads.
Before you throw a ton of budget at something you know nothing about, I encourage you to either find an experienced vendor who can show you detailed case study reports from their existing or preexisting PPC Advertising campaigns. If you still want to do it yourself, I recommend becoming AdWords Certified first, otherwise you’re jumping into a Celebrity Poker Game with a three cards and the number 21 on your mind.
If you’re campaign name is Campaign #1, please scroll back up and read the third paragraph again. How you organize your Campaigns and Ad Groups is instrumental to the success of your PPC Advertising strategy. You must first have a solid understanding of the phrase “Long Tail”, know who your competitors are, and not be jaded by the idea of bidding on your own company name.
Below is an example of an ideal (generic) PPC account structure that accounts for company name-related terms, competitor names and websites, and 2 product types (i.e.: cups and mugs). This structure does not account for geo-targeting, but can be applied to a specific geography.
I like to think of Long Tail Keywords as being more targeted, but less searched. This means from a PPC perspective that I’m buying thousands of search terms (such as “purchase widgets online”) rather than spending thousands of dollars on one or two (such as “widgets”).
Catch people in the buying stage of the purchase cycle to get the best results from your PPC Advertising campaign.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to track results when you have a phone number listed on the website. After all, how can you attribute an exact keyword searched for to a phone call? You can’t, which is why you should make every attempt to get the user to complete a form or purchase on your website. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter will all provide you with a snippet of code to place on the confirmation page of your lead form or sales confirmation page. Use this code or don’t bother wasting your money with PPC Advertising.
As you start to learn which search terms result in the most amount of sales, you’ll be able to adjust your ads and the destination page the ad takes the user to. Doing this exercise will help improve Quality Score/Quality Index, which in turn will lower your bid costs and improve the amount of times your ad is displayed in the search results.
Don’t spend months learning something experts are already good at. The cost may seem high for a robust PPC build, but once the campaigns start performing, most of the heavy lifting is done and the account is pretty much on autopilot. Hire a PPC Expert to get your campaigns to produce leads and revenues and you’ll see results within a few weeks, rather than a few months like you would in an Organic SEO campaign.
Download the guide I should have given to every client who ignored my request for keyword-themed content.
Be one step ahead of your competition with this SEO Content Writing Guide. This guide introduces tools and best practices, such as using online collaboration software and keyword tools to stay organized with your SEO campaign.
