What is pay per click? If you’re new to internet or network marketing pay per click seems to be a topic of great mystery. The notion exists that you can literally loose your shirt if you go about it the wrong way. And I suppose there may be some truth to that if you’re the kind of marketer that has no interest in monitoring what is happening. Or if you’re one of those who think they have it all figured out and didn’t bother going to the source for the correct info.
Ok, so what is Pay Per Click? It’s a form of advertising that requires you to pay for visitors that click on your ads. This is in contrast with all the free forms of advertising that exists. Things like article marketing, backlinking, video marketing, blog posting and the like. Most of the top successful internet marketers agree that pay per click is by far a quicker way to get to your internet marketing monetary goals. You have to be smart about it but it is a faster way to advance.
Part of the internet coaching program I belong to included having some pay per click ads set up on the Microsoft adCenter. After the ads were set up I noticed that my impression were relatively high compared to the click through rate. Along with those stats were some pretty poor quality scores as well as poor ad placement. So of course the first thing that came to mind was “what the hell”?
As it turned out, when I created an account with Microsoft adCenter I joined their mailing list to receive updates and what not. In my email inbox came a message telling of a webinar dealing with the topic of pay per click for the newbies, I’m paraphrasing here but you get the idea what the content was about. So I sign up for the FREE webinar and marked my calendar for the upcoming event.
The webinar geared towards us newbies was packed with really relevant info. It lasted an hour, was very professionally presented and even had some Q&A time as well.
What I learned was that the ads the coaching program set up were not done entirely correctly. Issues with ad keyword content not being relevant to the landing page content was making the Quality Score very low. I also found out that it’s not enough to just pick the UK, Canada and Australia to be included in the US ads, it doesn’t work that way. Australia isn’t even supported by the Bing network and the UK and Canada have to have ads directed at their respective portals. If their not and an internet user from the UK or Canada doesn’t switch from their local browsing to US browsing, guess what, they won’t see your ads.
So after the webinar I get on the live chat at the Microsoft adCenter and find out what I need to do to make this correct. This chat lasted for an hour, so total time spent with Microsoft adCenter so far is two hours at a total cost of FREE. The outcome of the chat was I needed to go back and do some keyword research, make the ad keywords and the landing page keywords be the same and come up with some new ad wording. The chat ended with the support person making an appointment to follow up to make sure I’m on the right path to having some success with the ads. Again at a cost of FREE.
Another topic that was discussed was the terms of use and editorial guidelines. Two of the most important things I took away from that was that the landing page had to have at least 50% original content that didn’t include any pics or video, those don’t count. You can have them on the landing page but it’s the text that counts towards the original content. The other thing that was made clear was that the website were the landing page is has to have a Privacy Policy in plain view. That Privacy Policy has to include information about WHO is collecting contact info if indeed you are, WHY you’re collecting the contact info, WHAT you’re intending to do with that contact info, and HOW a subscriber can opt out if they so desire.
And let me reiterate, all this for the grand total cost of FREE.
Pay Per Click advertising can be a winning proposition however one needs to set up an account with Microsoft adCenter and call in or start an online chat to get your issues straightened out, for FREE.
I was told they will even look at the ads you create and be upfront and tell you if it’s OK or it needs some work. Not a bad deal in my opinion.