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Website Promotion and Traffic Building

Making money from your web site requires a steady stream of new visitors to your site. The hard part is deciding which methods are worth the effort which is where we come in.

Web Promotion | Pay Per Click Advertising

In life you generally get what you pay for and it's no different with web promotion using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The more you pay the more visitors you can get to your site - the tricky part is making a profit!

It seems obvious but it's amazing how many people buy traffic which loses them money! There are dozens of PPC advertising opportunities but until you understand how PPC bidding works and how to make a profit stick with Google Adwords.

What is Google Adwords?

When you use Google and perform a search the main results (often called natural or organic search engine results) are displayed. You cannot buy ads in these listings but you can buy ads which are shown down the right hand side of the page, these are Google Adwords ads.

To get your own ads online all you have to do is open a Google AdWords account, deposit $5, then follow the wizard to create your first ad which involves submitting your website address and some descriptive text. Choose a few keywords based upon search terms your audience are likely to enter, set the price you're prepared to pay for each click and, when you're ready, start your ad campaign - remember you only pay when someone clicks on your advert.

In crude terms the more you bid the higher up the listings you will feature but it's not as simple as that. Google ranks ads according to how much money they generate for Google.

Here's an example:

If your ad has a 3% Click Through Ratio (CTR) this means, on average, for every 100 times your ad is displayed it's clicked on 3 times. If you're paying $1 for each click then Google earns 3c per ad display (because 100 ad displays results in 3 clicks each costing $1, a total of $3 income for Google).

Compare this with a competitor who is prepared to pay $1.25 for the same click but their ad has a lower CTR of 2%. Every 100 times this ad is displayed 2 clicks costing $2.50 result but Google only earns 2.5c per ad display.

This means even though your competitor is bidding higher than you Google will display your ad above there because your ad makes more money for Google - effectively they are rewarding advertisers who write effective ads for relevant keywords. So make sure you learn how to write great sales copy designed to attract clicks.

Google Adwords Tip #1

Google not only displays Google Ads on Google but also on partner sites and other websites signed up to the Google Adsense network. By default Google Adwords are set to appear across its entire network but in our experience clicks on partner sites are not as effective as ads running on Google itself so when setting up you ads remember to set ads to display on Google only - at least until you get an idea how your ads is performing.

Google recently recognised this perceived quality gap and responded by making it possible to enter seperate bids for Google and its content networks.

Google Adwords Tip #2

Don't become obsessed with getting your ad top of the list. In our experience people will click down the list scanning the results which means by the time they get lower down the list they're more likely to switch from browsing to buying. We aim for positions 3 to 5 for really specific keywords and settle for lower positions for more general keywords.

Google Adwords Tip #3

Are you making a Return On your Investment (ROI)? Make sure you're using a really good stats package, we use WebStats, which can help you analyse which PPC campaigns and keywords and working and which are money down the drain.

Other PPC Search Engines...

After you have mastered making a profit from Google Adwords you can consider working with other PPC advertising programs. We also use Overture, MIVA (formerly espotting) and Mirago with varying degrees of success. One thing to watch out for is the growing problem of "click fraud" which can steal your advertising budget so do your research and be careful out there.

Website Promotion | Best Of The Web (BOTW) | Link Building | Directory Listings

Best of the Web has established itself as a firm favourite with webmasters looking to drive traffic to their websites. BOTW is committed to maintaining a high quality and relevant directory which is good news for webmasters and visitors. If you're going to pay for directory listings for traffic or SEO purposes put BOTW right at the top of your list.

Best of the Web (BOTW) paid directory listings that work...

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