A great post today from the PPC Hero blog…as I stated in my previous post, this is a great search marketing resource.

Whether your goals are to drive sales, leads or sign-ups, increasing traffic to your site is one action you can take to get closer to your goals. Below I’ve described six ways I was able to increase traffic for my clients without spending additional money. And in turn, I was able to generate more leads and revenue for my clients.1. Stop Ad Text Testing, Temporarily - If it’s near the end of the month, one way I increase traffic for my clients is to pause my ad text testing and only use the ad with the highest click-through rate to get maximum traffic. Then, at the beginning of the next month when goals and budgets start over, I un-pause my ad text and begin re-testing.

2. Separate Content Network - After speaking with my Google rep, she said that one way to increase traffic to your site is to turn off the content network in your sponsored search and create a new campaign where only the content network is being used. The keywords you should put in your content only campaign should be very general keywords. General keywords are more likely to be picked up by publishers versus specific keywords. She also suggests that you use the content network placement performance report to see which sites are driving the majority of traffic and which are not.

3. Add All Match Types - If you’re currently not running all match types in Google, I strongly recommend it. I have one keyword with all three match types (exact, phrase and broad) in a separate ad group in Google and all three keywords get clicks and conversions. It’s not always necessary to keep your different match types in a separate ad group, but you might find a higher click-through rate if you do. It’s something you’ll have to test on your own.

4. Keyword Tools – Keyword tools are not only important when you’re setting up new campaigns and ad groups. You should be using the keyword tool at least once a month to add new keywords to your ad groups. The more people type that go to Google and Yahoo and type in new search queries, the more new keywords will show up in the keyword tools. I recently used the keyword tool for one of my accounts that I haven’t used for a while. I managed to find tons of new keywords to add into my ad groups.

5. Site Related Keyword Tool – This is a relatively new tool for Google and I just started using it for my accounts. You type in your landing page URL and the tool will find relevant keywords according to that page. At times when I have used this tool, I have found it helpful most of the time. Even if there’s one or two keywords that the tool brings up that you didn’t think of or didn’t have in your ad group it could possibly bring a significant increase in traffic.

6. Set Daily Budgets, Lower Bids – Everyone knows that raising your keyword bids will increase site traffic. But if it’s near the end of the month and you don’t have the extra money to spend, set a daily spending limit and if you begin to hit that limit consistently, lower your bids. This will allow more traffic to come through at a cheaper cost, and in turn you’ll increase your traffic without spending additional money. Make sure you don’t lower your keyword bids too aggressively at first, or you could end up losing traffic if you go below your daily spending limit. I check my accounts at various times throughout the day to see if and when I’ve hit my spending limit. At one point I found that my account was hitting it’s spending limit at 10am. So I began to lower my bids and saw a significant increase in traffic yet didn’t go over my budget. If you don’t have a daily spending limit set up on your account set one, then gage whether or not you should need to lower your bids.

Source: PPC Hero: 6 Ways to Increase Your PPC Traffic

I have a friend who is an extremely successful pay-per-click marketer and as he has grown out his business his team has taken to blogging on the topic of PPC. After checking out the posts for a few months I have to say that I am impressed. I have worked directly with Patrick and his company Hanapin Marketing in the past and can attest first hand to their expertise and success in the search marketing arena.

So if you are doing any paid search marketing go check out PPC Hero, it has some great tips and advice.

I have seen a growing number of businesses drastically cutting or eliminating their search engine spending. This is mostly due to low conversion rates and the rising cost of keyword phrases…so marketers are looking into alternative ways to spend their advertising budgets.

This is ridiculous to me.

You cant blame anyone for a lack of conversion - this responsibility rests solely on the shoulders of the marketer. A poorly converting site will always be a poorly converting site.

I have heard the argument made about lead quality from Google going down as a retort. This is factually wrong since Google is spending all of its time making the results even more relevant. To single out Google or any search engine as becoming poor in lead quality is a cop out - the searchers habits didn’t change overnight…it is more likely that the competition is heating up and why keyword phrases are getting more expensive.

Unfortunately alot of marketers have grown to view Google as a cash cow, and hold it to a different standard. The fact remains that Google provides a huge amount of traffic and for anyone to ignore it as a viable marketing channel is looking for the next cash cow instead of putting sound marketing practices into place.

What if you treated all marketing tactics that way? You would soon quit marketing all together.

The smart marketer will always be looking into ways to improve the channel. They will test combinations of ads, landing page layouts, keywords, messaging, offers, and audience segments. They will always be looking for ways to increase response while reducing the bottom line.

So if you find that you are contemplating getting out of search marketing - you might want to think twice about throwing in the towel. There are over a hundred million searches performed every day…do you want to give them all to your competition?

I have created a lot of landing pages since I joined the internet marketing community. I was trying to keep track for awhile and eventually gave up - my last count was somewhere around 5 hundred individual landing pages that I designed, maintained, and tested. ..all for various employers, companies, and clients.

The reason that these pages were so important was because they were the gateway from all of our internet marketing efforts. If you clicked on a banner, search listing, affiliate link, press release, or anything else we used for online promotion - you were taken to a unique landing page. We even tracked print response by driving activity online. There was no campaign we ran that did not have its own landing page to test and measure its success.

So at this point I can say that I am somewhat knowledgeable about landing pages. Lets have some fun and check out two LED sign manufacturers that use pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic.

Here were the top two listings…

LED Signs by BigBrite
Free Shipping, Low Price Guarantee
Order Signs Online or Call
BigBrite.com

Watchfire Digital Outdoor
LED billboards designed and
manufactured to last. Free paper.
www.WatchfireDigitalOutdoor.com

(I removed the google tracking so it wont charge them if you click)

There are obvious differences. Lets start with BigBrite.

The first problem is that BigBrite pushes everyone to the homepage. While there are instances where this may be suitable in this one it is not. None of the information from the ad is reinforced on the homepage where there is no coherent message other than to BUY NOW!

If you aren’t ready to purchase - then what? I guess you can aimlessly navigate around the site to find what you are looking for but my guess is that you would most likely leave before you found it.

Lets contrast that with Watchfire.

This is a landing page that reinforces the message from the ad - encouraging those visitors to sign up for the white paper. They aren’t trying to sell you a sign right away - instead they want to help you inform yourself on making the decision - and open the line of communication. They realize that you aren’t going to pick up the phone right now and tell them to “Sign me up! And while your at it heres my credit card info!” Their interest is to persuade you over time to make the purchase. (BTW, these signs are NOT cheap)

Watchfire also minimizes noise on the landing page by removing all navigation and links. While they do not intend for you to buy today they still need to capture some return from your visit so they are not taking any chances. You can only take the action they intend. This is a fair trade since they are not bombarding you with anything you didn’t already expect from the ad.

When thinking about landing pages keep in mind that most of the traffic coming to your site are first-time visitors, all coming at different stages of the buying process. Very few are looking for the immediate purchase so understanding that most likely wont sell to them on this visit will probably drastically change your approach. If you look at this as more of an opportunity to begin a relationship with your customer you will most likely see more long term rewards with a more responsive customer when you go to re-sell, up sell, or cross sell.

I was going to do a post on beginning search engine marketing tips but came across a great article that covered alot of the points for me…

10e20’s article on paid search is a great article for those marketers beginning the foray into PPC marketing. Its a great (and comprehensive) article - so check it out!