By Britnee Nguyen

When you have a PPC ad in Google AdWords, you’re only given 25 characters for the headline and 70 characters for the body of the text. You probably thought writing in 140 characters on Twitter was hard! But after seeing the very limited amount of space you’re given for a PPC ad, you realize you have to be extremely clear and concise to get your message across.

While being concise, you need to make sure that you include relevant keywords, explain the benefits, stand out and have a “call-to-action” message. In addition, you need to remember that you are speaking to real humans so don’t sound too wordy or stuffy.

When writing PPC ads, you need to focus on the goal. The immediate goal you’re looking for is to convey why the person should click on your ad. The next long-term goal is how to convert those clicks into sales. But for this post, we’re just talking about the goal of getting them to click. Getting someone to click with just 95 characters total to entice them can be difficult. The last sentence I just wrote was 87 characters which shows just how concise you need to be.

Headline (25 characters)

Your headline is the attention grabber.

If your headline isn’t interesting, the viewer won’t continue reading the rest of your text; therefore, won’t click your ad. It needs to simply say what you have to offer. If you are selling free birthday cards on-line and want to do a PPC ad to promote your website. If you wanted your keyword to be “birthday e-cards” then you should keep the headline simple such as: Free Birthday E-cards. It’s basically just blatantly stating what you have to offer because you don’t have room to do much else.

Body (75 characters)

When you write the body text, this is where you’ll want to explain more about what you offer. This is typically one sentence long and you’ll want it to be “call-of-action”. This means that you are telling them to do something with action words. You can do this by starting off your sentence with words such as “Send”, “Choose” and “Make”. In the example of using “birthday e-cards” as the target keyword, here are some good examples you could do using the call-to-action and keywords:

Send a personalized birthday e-card to your loved one today.
Choose from 550+ unique birthday e-cards delivered right to the inbox.
Make your friend’s day special with an interactive birthday e-card.

So just make sure you get to the point of what the person will get if they click on your ad. Remember to keep it clear and concise and don’t use too much flowery words because they’ll just skip over it. Make sure to use an action word so they will actually take action and click on your link instead of just reading it. PPC ads can be very effective when written properly. Take the time to write your PPC to make sure it targets the right keywords and creates a call to action.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Writing a paid search or PPC ad is almost an art form: it takes practice, constant effort and preparation.  This, of course, is assuming that you want your ad to be successful.  If you’re not a stickler for getting the most out of your paid search ads, then by all means, follow the guidelines stated here, in a list of how to write stinky PPC ads.  However, if you do want to use PPC ads successfully to aggressively drive traffic to your website and become an internet marketing genius, then avoid these tips at all costs!

1)  Do not do keyword research.

One of the keys to a stinky PPC ad is a lack of keyword research.  Just bid on whatever words you think are relevant to your site and hope for the best!

2)  Stay away from attention-grabbing calls-to-action.

Go ahead and describe your product or service, but do not by any means ask the reader to do anything!  Just to be sure, stay away from any words in verb form.

3)  Try not to give the reader a reason to click on your ad.

When writing your paid search ad, do not ask yourself, “Why should someone click on this ad?”  Make sure that your ad is merely informational and does not solve a problem or provide an interesting service.

4)  Avoid numbers and eye-attracting words.

If at all possible, try to spell out your numbers to make sure that nobody is attracted to your ad.  For example, instead of the extremely attractive “$.05 / month,” try “five cents per month” instead!

5)  Do not consider running your ads at certain times of day or testing your ads.

If you’ve followed all the previous steps outlined above, you shouldn’t have to worry about which of your PPC ads are successful, because none of them will be.  Just run them when you want to run them!  Do not consider holidays, time changes, or when your biggest competitors will most likely run their ads.

So… do you get the point?

Sadly, many online business owners are actually running their paid search campaigns in this manner.  However, you can be one of the lucky ones who actually knows better!  Congratulations.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Yes, the title of this post may seem a bit depressing, but just hear me out.

I’m here to talk about the top mistakes that people make in SEO in relation to keywords, which in turn, basically guarantee that they will never reach the top of Google.

Let’s say that I’m starting an online shop focusing on baby products.  The problem that most people encounter in relation to keywords, is that they use terms  like “baby products” without recognizing their popularity or exploring other options.  There are many problems with using generic, short phrases like “baby products” as your main keyword that you would like to market to search engines.  For example, consider online entities like Babies-R-Us and Graco that have hundreds of thousands of dollars to commit to online marketing.  Large companies like these dominate the online marketing world because they have almost unlimited resources while, sadly, you do not.

Also, consider how search engines like Google rank sites: the shorter the keyword, the more searches you will have.  Therefore, the shorter the keyword or phrase, the harder it is for you to rank number one in Google, for they understand that shorter phrases are more popular, and therefore more desirable for online businesses.

Basically, when people start a site (or start optimizing their site), they tend to choose keywords that are all wrong for them.  In order to avoid this, use the Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool to research key terms and phrases.  First, I would make a list similar to this:

baby products

designer baby products

baby items

baby gifts

These are common key phrases that others with similiar online stores will use to generate traffic to their site.  Once I enter in these keywords (and check the “use synonyms” box), Google will generate information on these terms and other similar phrases.  You can use this information to pick keywords that are popular, but not over-saturated with competition, such as “baby products”.

By using what are called “long tail keywords” (phrases of three or more words) you will have a much higher chance of getting a great ranking in Google.  This works to smaller online businesses’ advantage, because longer keyword phrases have less competition and will allow them to rank in Google’s top page.  Although the traffic generated from these words is quite a bit less than the traditional two-word phrase, it’s better to be at the top of Google for “cheap handmade baby products” than on page 24 for “baby products”.

By Robert Lockard

An excellent blog post on Practical Ecommerce got me thinking about how paid-search campaigns are handled. The blog post is entitled, “Pay-per-click Advertising: Seven Pointers for Smaller Campaigns.”

I was amazed when I read all of the pointers on how people can improve their PPC efforts because basically all of them are easily handled by Submit Solution. I think it’s a great idea to be educated on the best practices of online promotion, so you should definitely read that blog post and take its advice to heart.

After you come up with a plan and thoroughly research your keywords, you can present your ideas to a Submit Solution PPC expert, and he or she will be able to improve upon your ideas and fully implement them for you. Submit Solution offers a number of pay-per-click solutions, including one-on-one support, easily updatable keywords, up-to-date reports and more.

The seven things you should keep in mind when using PPC in your marketing strategies include learning about negative keywords, long-tail keywords and match types. Negative keywords are phrases that include your selected keywords, but attach unfavorable or irrelevant words to them. I’m sure Nintendo wouldn’t want to pay for people who click on its ads when they type in words like “Nintendo Wii defective,” or something to that effect. Those people are more likely to be looking for information or venting rather than hoping to make a purchase.

Long-tail keywords are great because a relatively small number of people search for them and so they used to be less expensive to advertise on. But now that the secret is out that Internet marketers want those targeted keywords more than the general ones, they’re becoming more expensive. A long-tail keyword is a search term with more than one or two descriptive words in it. Terms like “Internet marketing” have a high amount of competition to be number one on search engine results pages. Terms like “Internet marketing solution Orem Utah” will have fewer searchers, but they will be much more targeted.

Match types help you get even more targeted traffic to your website by adjusting how precisely you want people’s search terms to match your selected keywords and phrases.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my discussion of PPC campaigns. This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Submit Solution offers PPC solutions.” The photo of the bad advertisement is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Unlisted Sightings.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Running successful paid search ads is almost a “guess and check” type of process.  It can often seem like ages before you find an ad that works for you!  However, there is one main aspect of internet marketing that is often underplayed in the world of PPC: landing pages.

Your paid search landing page should be carefully crafted to suit your visitors so that each click from your ad counts.  If you, like most companies, run multiple PPC ads at once, catered to different key words and phrases, you should create corresponding landing pages for each ad you run. The “one size fits all” method, with all your paid ads running to the same, generic landing page, is a thing of the past!

Here are some of the reasons why you should create separate landing pages for different keywords:

Targeted Marketing: When you’re running more than one PPC ad, it’s likely that they all cater to a different feeling or benefit.  For example, one of your ads can claim to save people money while another can boast of its ease of use or low price.  All these ads create a different meaning to the visitor who clicks on them.  If they are looking for an easy to use product, you should create a landing page that outlines how easy to use your product is!  Your visitors will not only get the information they are looking for, they will also get a targeted marketing strategy that will prove profitable for your business.

Multi-Faceted Approach: If you were stuck with one generic landing page for every paid search ad you ran, you would only be able to address two or three benefits of your product in the same place.  For example, “Our product is easy to use, cost effective and will save you money!”  When you cram too many benefits into one page, your marketing starts to sound gimmicky and will be ineffective.  By creating multiple landing pages catering to different facets of your product, you can be more successful, for each specific page will be stronger than one catch-all page.

Keep these things in mind when embarking on any internet marketing endeavor you have.  And remember, if your landing page stinks, your paid search efforts will have been in vain, no matter how successful they were!

The photo of the friends smell bad sticker is from Flickr, and is the copyright of evelynishere.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Let’s say that you’ve decided to start an e-commerce site, selling pet products online.  Your shop has been online for a few months now, and you are still struggling to get noticed by online shoppers.  This is a fairly common feeling among new e-commerce businesses, and when it comes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often overlooked as a solution.  This is perhaps because the average person feels that SEO is too complicated for them to participate in, or they feel lost trying to find a proper SEO solutions company to complete the task for them.  However, I would like to argue that there are many easy fixes in SEO that can be completed in just a few minutes and that do not require highly technical skill or understanding of SEO principles.

Try these steps in our SEO Makeover to help your site get a quick boost of traffic:

1.  Keyword Research:

Before beginning to build and market your website, you should have done a quick keyword research to see what key terms and phrases you should focus on in your marketing strategy.  If you have not done this already, do it now!  Simply visit a keyword research tool like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  This will allow you to put in keyword that you think would work for your site and niche (e.g. pet products, pet food, discount pet products, etc).  The tool will then rank those keywords according to search volume and will even give you suggested synonyms to use for your site.

Here’s something to keep in mind when researching keywords: the top keywords in a niche are extremely difficult to tap into.  For example, with the pet store example, you should not focus all your energy on marketing the phrase “pet products,” because this will be dominated by companies with much more time and resources available than you to market these words, for example Petco and PetSmart.  The lessen here is to market key words and phrases that are relevant, relatively popular, and that can apply uniquely to your site, for example, designer doggie clothes, (if that’s what you would like to sell, of course!)

2.  Title and Meta Tags:

The meta and title tags of your website dictate how a search engine will catalog your page.  Therefore, you will need to use the keywords that you just researched to describe your different web pages and blog posts.  There are many tools that can help you with this, but it depends on what type of server is hosting your site and if you are using a platform like Wordpress.  Simply look in your hosting account for the option to change the title tags and meta tags of your website.  This is the next step in getting your site out there for the world to see!

3.  Free Website Submission:

When a website is new, it can take time for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to notice that they exist.  This is also true when a website is redesigned dramatically-the search engine loses all information that was previously indexed on the page.  In order to alleviate the time it takes for Google to index your site, you should use a free website submission service to get the ball rolling.  This is just like it sounds: the free website submission will submit your website URL to hundreds of search engines and indexing services.  Try our free website submission tool now to get started!

Hopefully this post has been helpful in teaching those who may have been intimidated by the complexity of SEO in the past to be able to improve their search engine rankings by themselves.  Be sure to check back in the future for more tips and tricks!

The photo of the tools is from Flickr and is the copyright of ELF cosmetics.

By Britnee Nguyen

A new and free research tool, Google Insights, provides e-commerce owners with the ability to improve their pay-per-click (PPC) advertising with its search data. Many on-line retailers depend on PPC services to get more customers to their shops. If less people are clicking, then that means less business coming in.

Some may not see the relevancy in PPC or even understand how many people actually use it. Google reported that most of its $5.5 billion revenue in the last quarter was from PPC advertising. This is why Google has a keen interest in paid search ads and want to help on-line retailers receive the best support in it.

So the newest tool is Google Insights which helps hone a marketing message. You can choose three different ways to describe your product such as “environmentally-friendly”, “portable”, and “high-tech” for example and plug them into Google Insights which will tell you which term is searched for most in the U.S. or whatever area you’re in. This gives you a starting point on knowing which phrase will benefit you the most.

You can also see how a certain keyword tends to trend each year. For example, “softball cleats” trends to be the highest on March when softball season is about to start. You can also see which states search for the most and other related keywords and how they trend. You can see below how each divot and peak occur around the same time each year.

Note that Google Insights doesn’t tell you exactly how many people search for that keyword, but instead scales it accordingly. It is a helpful tool to help those with pay-per-click and to use it more efficiently. It’s not the only tool needed to succeed in PPC, but it is definitely one you’ll want in your toolbox.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

We’ve all experienced this before.  I’m typing in “iPod Touch” in a search engine, but accidentally spell out “iPod Tuch.”  I immediately realize my mistake as I see the popular question, “Did you mean: iPod Touch?”, encouraging me to search for the correct terms.  However, many of the listings that pull up are relevant, so I don’t redo the search with the correct spelling.  Then I see the paid search ad on the side with the incorrect search query inserted in.  I can’t help feeling annoyed

PPC ads like I just described implement what’s called a DKI or Dynamic Keyword Insertion technique.  These ads automatically insert search keywords into a paid ad.  This form is popular because, if used correctly, it can produce very specific results that will generate quality traffic.

However, the use of DKI in PPC ads can result in annoyance, as in my situation, mistrust or even generic and weak ad content.  I am going to outline some of the pros and cons of using dynamic keyword insertion in your paid search ads.  Then you can see for yourself if this method is right for you!

PRO:  Customized Ads

Sometimes, DKI can greatly increase your traffic.  For example, when searching for foreclosed homes in Provo, UT, I came across this specified landing page.  It seems like this page would be exactly what someone would be looking for with their search.

CON:  Incoherence

However, with the same site, I found I could type in anything for the name of a city in Utah where I would like to find foreclosures.  The result?  You get the picture.  Obviously, there is no place called Crappy, UT.  With DKI, by allowing any search term at all to be included in your ad or landing page, you run the risk of becoming incoherent and purposefully spam-like to the public eye.

CON:  Generic and Misspelled Ads
When you create a PPC ad using DKI, your wording will need to be deliberately vague, so that multiple terms can be inserted without changing the meaning of the ad.  The problem with this is that the ad will be weak.  Even if the ad does include the specific word that was searched for, there is little likelihood that it will be strong enough content wise to draw a quality click.

All-in-all, pay-per-click ads using DKI appear desperate and can even resemble spam.  If you choose to use this technique in your paid ad, do so carefully and choose only key words that both fit your ad and are relevant to the service or product you are advertising.  Stay tuned for more posts on social media, SEO, web design and PPC!