Sudah lama aku gak nulis di blog ini. Sepertinya aku harus mulai lagi menulis di blog ini, semua dimulai dari awal. Dulu aku membuat blog ini hanya sekedar untuk menulis artikel tentang make money online dan  tentu saja untuk meraup sedikit dollar untuk menutupi biaya operasionalnya. Tapi seiring berjalannya waktu, sepertinya makin lama blog ini makin tak terurus. Jadi harus mulai lagi dari awal, agar blog ini bisa bangkit dan terurus dengan lebih baik lagi.

Yups, semua itu tentu saja harus dilakukan dengan niatan yang baik, agar semua hal yang kita lakukan akan menjadi lebih baik lagi.
Dan aku tau ilmu yang aku miliki ini tidaklah cukup untuk menulis tentang make money online yang cukup bagus. Tapi dalam hidup ini bukankah lebih baik bila kita berbagi pengetahuan tentang apa yang kita ketahui dengan orang lain? Karena dengan begitu, aku yakin pengetahuan kita juga akan terus berkembang jadi makin baik lagi. Juga karena hidup adalah untuk belajar, maka gak salah bukan kalau aku juga belajar untuk menulis tentang bisnis online?

Aku yakin gak ada yang salah dengan semua itu. Yang jadi masalah saat ini hanyalah bagaimana menumbuhkan semangat belajar itu agar semangat itu terus tumbuh dan berkembang dengan baik.

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Blogging, sebuag kegiatan yang menyenangkan. Dengan aktifitas ini kita bisa menyalurkan hoby, isi pikiran dan juga mendapat teman dan bahkan tidak jarang penghasilan yang lumayan. Memang gak gampang untuk mendapatkan itu semua. Semua butuh yang namanya perjuangan dan pengorbanan. Seorang blogger akan memerlukan waktu untuk berada di depan komputer. Itu adalah sebuah perjuangan dan pengorbanan tersendiri. Kita perlu membuat blog. Dan membuat blog itu tidak semudah membalikan talapak tangan saja. Ada tahapan proses yang harus dilalui

Sekali lagi, semua itu memerlukan yang namanya perjuangan. Untuk bisa menulis dan membuat blog yang banyak pengunjung itu tidak gampang. Tapi waktu akan membuat kita semakin tahu bagaimana menjadi seorang blogger yang baik.
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In this article, we focus on the correct way of finding out the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines. This article will give you the formula for the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - a mathematical formula which I have developed to help you determine which keywords you should be optimizing your site for.

Step 1: Open your text editor or word processor and write down all the words and phrases that you might have searched for if you were looking for a company which offers products and services similar to yours.

For example, suppose your company organizes packaged tours to Australia. Here's a list of phrases that I might have searched for if I were planning to make a trip to Australia:
tourism in Australia
travel to Australia
travelling in Australia
travel agencies in Australia
travelling agencies in Australia
Australian travel agencies

Of course, the keywords that came to your mind may have been different. But that's not important - the important thing is to get an initial list of keywords.
You may be wondering why I have not used single word keywords. Here's why:

* Firstly, single word keywords tend to be hyper-competitive. A search for "tourism" or "travelling" in any search engine will probably generate hundreds of thousands of pages. While it is possible that you may get your page in the top 10 for such a single word keyword, it is quite unlikely.
* Secondly, because of the sheer number of pages that single word searches can throw up, most search engine users have realized that they can get more relevant pages if they search for phrases rather than individual words. Statistical research has shown that most people are now searching for 2 or 3 word phrases rather than for single words.
* Thirdly, single word keywords won't get you targeted traffic. When people search for "tourism", they are not necessarily looking for tourist destinations in Australia - they may be interested in any other country of the world. Even if you got your site into the top 10 for tourism, you gain nothing from such visitors. However, when someone searches for "tourism in Australia", he/she is your potential customer, and hence, it makes sense for you to try and get a top ranking for your site for that keyword.

Hence, whenever you are trying to generate keywords, try to be location specific. Try to think of keywords which apply to the geographic area that your product or service is designed to serve.

Step 2: Open any spreadsheet program that is installed in your hard drive. I assume you are using Microsoft Excel. If you are using some other spreadsheet program, just change the spreadsheet related procedures outlined here to fit your program.

Create 4 columns - one for the keyword, one for the popularity of the keyword, one for the number of sites that appear in Google for that keyword and the last for something I call the Keyword Effectiveness Index (don't worry - I'll explain what KEI means later on). In order to ensure that you can follow what I am saying, I recommend that you add the following column headers to the first four columns of the first row of your spreadsheet:

Keyword
Popularity
No. of Competitors
KEI

Step 3: A great way to obtain a list of keywords related to the ones you have developed in the first step is to use WordTracker's keyword generation service. Wordtracker is a paid service but you can use their free trial tool.

Click on the "Trial" option at the top of the site. In the page that appears, type in your name and email address and click on the "Start the trial >>" button. In the next page, click on "Click here to start the trial". In the next page, type in the first keyword that you developed in Step 1, i.e. "tourism in Australia", in the text box. Click on the "Proceed >>" button.

Step 4: In the next page, WordTracker will display a list of keywords related to the keyword that you had typed in. (Just scroll down the left pane to see the keywords).

Now, click on the first keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site. In the right pane, WordTracker will show a list of keywords which contain the keyword you had clicked on in the left pane.

Then in the table that you have created in your spreadsheet, copy each of the keywords in the right pane and paste them in the first column of the table. Also, copy the number of times those keywords have been used (i.e. the figure present in the Count column in WordTracker) and paste them in the second column.

In order to ensure that you can follow me, make sure that you type the first keyword in the second row of your spreadsheet. Of course, you should only bother adding a keyword to your spreadsheet if it is applicable for your site.

Once you have added all the keywords in the right pane which are applicable for your site, click on the next keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site.

Once again, WordTracker will display a list of keywords in the right pane which contain the keyword you had clicked on in the left pane. Again, copy the keywords in the right pane which are applicable for your site and paste them in the first column of your spreadsheet. Also, copy the figures present in the Count column and paste them in the second column beside the corresponding keywords. Repeat this process for each of the keywords in the left pane.

Step 5: Once you have finished with all the keywords in the left pane, press your browser's Back button a number of times until WordTracker again displays the text box which asks you to type in a keyword. Type in the second keyword in your original list (i.e. "travel to Australia"), click on the "Proceed >>" button and repeat Step 4. Do this for each of the keywords that you developed in Step 1.

Step 6: Go to Google. Search for the first keyword that is present in your spreadsheet using exact match search (i.e. you should wrap the keyword in quotes, i.e. you should type a quotation mark before typing the keyword and a quotation mark after typing it). Google will return the number of sites which are relevant to that keyword.

Add this number to the third column of the spreadsheet in the same row in which the keyword is present. Repeat this process for each of the keywords present in your spreadsheet.

Once you have done that, your first column will contain the keywords, your second column will show the popularity of the keywords and your third column will contain the number of sites you are competing against to get a high ranking for those keywords.

Now it's time to calculate the KEI!

Step 7: The Keyword Effectiveness Index is the square of the popularity of a keyword multiplied by 1000 and divided by the number of sites which appear in Google for that keyword. It is designed to measure which keywords are worth optimizing your site for. Higher the KEI, better the keyword. How the formula for the KEI is arrived at is beyond the scope of this article.

Here's how you can calculate the KEI.

I am assuming that you have created the spreadsheet columns in the way I recommended in Step 3 and that you are using Microsoft Excel. If you using some other spreadsheet program, you will need to adjust the formula to the requirements of your spreadsheet program. Click on cell D2. Type in the following exactly as it is shown:

=IF(C2<>0,B2^2/C2*1000,0)

Then click on the Copy button to copy the formula, select all the cells in column 4 which have keywords associated with them and press the Paste button to paste the formula. The KEI for each keyword will be displayed.

Step 8: Use your spreadsheet program's Sort feature to sort the rows in descending order of the KEI. In Excel, you would click on the Data menu, click on the Sort menu item, choose KEI from the drop-down combo box named "Sort by", click on the "Descending" option next to it, and then click on OK.

And guess what - that's it! You now know the keywords which you should optimize your site for.

You can now start optimizing your site one by one for each keyword, starting with the keyword with the highest KEI. Exactly how many of the keywords you choose to optimize your site for largely depends on the amount of time that you can spare from your normal business activities. But whatever the number of keywords that you target, it obviously makes sense to go for the most effective keywords first.

Tying up the loose ends:

The number of related keywords that WordTracker displays in the trial version is limited. In order to get all the keywords which are related to the keywords you had developed in Step 1, you would need to subscribe to WordTracker's paid service.
(Article by Sumantra Roy , taken from payperclicksearchengines.com)



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What drives visitors to your website and keeps them there? Good content.

Content is Key
Good content is key to website promotion success. All the bells and whistles in the world will not hold an audience like compelling information. Ask yourself: Why would a visitor stay at my website? What are they looking for? What do I have that they need? What holds them there once I've got them visiting? You have to tell your story

Know Your Audience

So how do you get your visitors to stay on your site, and to return to it? First, you need to understand your audience. Who are you trying to reach? Create your pages with them in mind. Do you want to reach a narrow audience, or will you try to reach all levels of readers? Buzz words may make sense to you in your business, but will they reach your target audience? If you are a high-powered underwater basketweaving consultant, focused only on serious underwater basketweavers, you can keep the discussion on your site fairly technical. If, however, you really want to spread the joy of underwater basketweaving to a wider audience, you may want to keep the tone more general, giving newcomers to underwater basketweaving the information they need to become as enthralled by basketweaving as you are.

Get Your Visitors Involved

So what kind of content do you need to provide for your visitors? If you have a site selling gardening books, you will have lists of the titles you have for sale, an order form, and contact information. Everybody else selling gardening books will have these pages too. How do you rise above the crowd? How do you stand out as the definitive gardening book website?

Write Articles

One technique that you can use to good effect is that of writing articles pertaining to your site's topic. After all, who knows more about gardening and gardening books than you? Not only does this give your visitors yet another reason to keep coming back to your site, but it also allows you to reach out beyond your site. There are many other websites out there looking for authoritative information on your topic. Find those sites and submit your articles to them. This creates a "win-win" situation: the other web site gains the benefit of your knowledge, while you are further recognized as an authority in the field. Getting a link from that site back to yours brings more visitors to your site, and increases your site's link popularity.

Keeping an archive of articles on your website builds your knowledge base. You can refer visitors to your articles when answering their questions. People searching for information on the topics you have written about will find your articles listed in their search results. Once they arrive at your site, maybe they will buy something from you: if you know so much about planting bulbs, maybe your site is the place I should buy my bulb- planting books.

Other Offerings

What else can you add to this mix? Think about adding professional gardening book reviews, a gardening book club, FAQ's about gardening, gardening articles, a rating system for books, audience book reviews, and other gardening-related topics. Adding this type of information gives your visitors more reasons to keep coming back to your site. Offer free tools, create a forum. Set up a newsletter for your audience with your topic, adding in a discount for your product for newsletter readers. Give your audience a reason to come back to your website.

What Results Can I Expect: Google PageRank

A primary example of how this works is Google's PageRank. One of the most important aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important; after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles, book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search.

So how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative. The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening- related sites point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published on other websites.

Conclusion

Maintaining good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors.
Daria Goetsch

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Because of increasing competition that has led to higher advertising costs with pay-per-click marketing, many battle-scarred - “do-it-yourself” – businesses have not realized their desired objectives. Although publicized as a straightforward, self-service marketing tool, pay-per-marketing involves far more knowledge than most businesses are able to invest in developing in-house. Faced with a moderately or less performing pay-per-click marketing program and the pressure to allocate resources elsewhere, many businesses choose to drop their pay-per-click marketing entirely – leaving a vast potential of sales for their competitors to harvest.

If you face pay-per-click marketing challenges, before you decide to drop the program, try these proven strategies to get it producing your desired results.
Discover These Proven Strategies to Produce Quick Results.
Keyword-Level Tracking
Track your pay-per-click marketing at the keyword-level – referred to as the “root”. For pay-per-click marketing, it is essential that you know your “per click” results from the money you have spent.
For example, if you have 1,000 keywords active in your pay-per-click marketing program and you spend a total of $3,000 a month – do you know which of the 1,000 keywords produce the best results?
What if 80% of your sales stem from 20% of your keywords? Moreover, what if this 20% accounted for just a small percentage of your $3,000 monthly cost? If you do not have keyword-level tracking you will not be able to make these financially beneficial assessments. Time-tested experience shows that the 80/20 rule applies to pay-per-click marketing.
Does the 80/20 rule apply to your pay-per-click marketing? Get keyword-level tracking.
But Beware of Matching Options!
Although matching options (i.e. broad, advanced, exact, phrase and so on) offered by Google Adwords, Overture and other pay-per-click search engines provide “convenience” they unfortunately skew your keyword performance results.
If you setup a “broad-match” for the keyword “real estate”, you will attract visitors who have entered any possible variation of the term “real estate” including geographically specific “real estate” keywords that may have absolutely no relevance to your product or service.
Here is a scenario where matching options skew your results…
You generate $1,000 in revenue from the broad-match keyword, “real estate” yet the total click cost for it exceeds revenue and because of the keyword’s negative return, you label it as a poor performing keyword.
What if the majority of the click cost originated from irrelevant, broad-match keyword variations like “ Louisiana real estate” - while one variation, “real estate strategy” generated all of the revenue? By identifying this keyword (hard to do in a broad-match environment so rely on your web stats program), taking this one keyword and isolating it as an exact term you will reduce your total click cost while continuing to generate the same revenues.
How are your broad-match keywords performing? Isolate keywords to save click costs and to regulate individual keyword performance.
Landing Page Development
Pay-per-click marketing is unique compared to other mainstream forms of online marketing. In part because marketers have the opportunity to select specific keywords, write specific ads and direct the click-through to a specific web page. This “connect-the-dots” structure creates the need to develop consistency among the visitor’s expectation from the keyword they enter to the ad that draws their attention and down to the web page, they “land-on”. Relevancy and consistency are essential for an effective pay-per-click marketing program.
One of the reportedly major reasons why pay-per-click marketing programs fall short of their intended goal is because businesses direct all of their click-throughs to their home page. Since most businesses’ home pages are designed to serve mutliple audiences (i.e. media relations, investors, current clients, potential prospects, customer services, etc.) they do not provide the level of relevancy and consistency expected from the visitor to get them to act confidently.
What in the Virtual World are Landing Pages?
Landing pages are simply web pages designed specifically for a keyword or related group of keywords. They are highly relevant to the keyword searched and consistent with the ad’s claim. They immediately focus a visitor’s attention to a primary call-to-action (most wanted response). In essence – landing pages ask your visitors to take an action.
If your pay-per-click marketing is not living up to your expectations, consider which web pages you are sending visitors to. Are they relevant and consistent with your pay-per-click ads and keywords? Do they offer too many calls-to-action? Do they “fit” the expectations of the visitor searching on the particular keyword?
For example, are you sending a visitor searching on the keyword “Sony LCD TV” to a web page with twenty varieties of electronic products? An effectively designed landing page would present the visitor a “Sony LCD TV” with customer benefit oriented copy, an immediate “buy now” call to action and all applicable guarantee, shipping, customer service and return policies.
Make it Easy for Your Visitors and they will Reward You with Sales.

Keyword Selection
Keyword selection is important. The keywords you select provide access to “pools” of visitors at different stages in their buying cycle. By selecting the right keywords for your products or services, you can open a completely new market of ready-to-buy visitors.
Make sure that you thoroughly canvass your marketplace using strategies such as:

Your competitors’ websites
Your website’s copy
Third-party tools – Overture’s Suggestion Tool, WordTracker, and others
Your website metrics program (look for “natural search engine” keyword phrases)
Search engines like Ask Jeeves or Alta Vista (who suggest keyword variations)

Most importantly, “THINK” about your potential customers and what direct or indirect keywords they may use to find your products or services. Never give up searching for new keywords to setup and test. Both seasonal and even weekday keyword performance fluctuations should be analyzed and studied in addition to potential associations people make to find your products and services.
What about you - have you selected the right keywords?

Bidding Strategies
All pay-per-click search engines possess unique bidding nuances. However, for the two largest, Google Adwords and Overture do not become fixated on the top bid position. Test how each keyword performs against your website’s sales or lead conversion metrics up to the seventh bid position.
Depending on your product or service, you may be amazed how bid position six attracts less click-throughs but produces greater sales or lead conversion on your website. Or maybe position four generates better conversion. Regardless - test, test and test – the outcome may mean lower costs and higher sales conversions for you.
Consider this New Update in Your Bid Strategy.
Are you aware that recently Overture’s top partners, MSN and Yahoo, opened their results to up to eight “sponsor results” or paid ads on the first page? In some cases, the fourth and fifth or fifth and sixth positions will show at the bottom of the first results page and again at the top, right margin of the first results page – in essence two ads for the price of one.
Do not be lured into competing for the first place position instead keep an eye on your keyword performance (via your keyword-level tracking) and occupy whichever position provides the best sales or lead conversion.

Writing Effective Ads
Finally, always test different ads by interchanging words in the title and description. For Google Adwords, try split-testing two different titles and descriptions and add a unique tracking code to each one so you can identify which one causes the best sales conversion increase. Notice that I did not state, “the best “click-through rate increase”. Why? Because “a lot of nothing” (i.e. a lot of traffic without sales or lead conversion) is not a financially effective strategy. Consider that even a single word change on your ad can create a significant jump to your sales or lead conversion rate.
Follow these strategies to boost your pay-per-click marketing results today. Good Producing!
Kevin Gold is a Partner and Co-founder of enhancedconcepts.com, taken from payperclickuniverse.com)

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Paid for Inclusion is a paid per click mechanism often neglected by companies. It is, however, an extremely successful and cost effective way of driving qualified visitors to a website and through careful management can produce ROI figures in excess of 10 times the investment placed.
A quick look back at history shows that paid for inclusion was one of the first pay per click mechanisms that was available to a marketer. Pioneered most visibly by Inktomi, and then soon followed by engines such as AltaVista and FAST the PFI market really took off providing a welcome manageability to getting your site listed quickly and efficiently. The paid for inclusion market has not changed much since then, with the exception of submission method maybe, but the biggest challenge to a user is how best do I use it?

Whilst paid for placement (Overture, Google AdWords, FindWhat etc) offer simple procedures to getting a site listed, part of the ever increasing strength of the PFP market, the processes that are necessary for optimizing PFI are different. With no guarantee of a high placement and reliance on relevant submitted content, i.e. does Inktomi feel this is 100% relevant to a search or 1%, the challenge to the marketer is much greater. In order to demonstrate that the challenge is not as unfathomable as it may seem here are some guidelines on how to optimize your content.
1. Understand where paid inclusion data appears within the search network - The usual place for paid for inclusion data is within the 'web pages' results. These are pages that appear when the search term has either a) limited coverage within paid for placement or directory listings or b) exhausted all of the paid for placement or directory listings and appears there after! Here is a simple example to further explain this - If you search for 'credit cards online' on MSN you'll be presented with MSN's own paid for placement mechanism 'Featured Sites', then Overture's top 3 listings 'Sponsored Sites', then 100+ listings from LookSmart 'Directory Listings' and then once they are exhausted 'Web Pages' which are Inktomi.2. Understand what you are submitting - Following on from Point 1, if the listings that appear in paid for inclusion are so low in the pecking order you must be careful of which words, phrases, listings to submit. In the example above creating a PFI listing for 'credit cards online' wouldn't make a whole lot of sense, however, 'online credit card service' would have you appear on page 1 in 15th spot as all other sources were exhausted much sooner. But what is the catch? The simple answer is volume; the number of searches for 'online credit card service' is 5% of the number of searches for 'credit card online'. Your advantage is relevancy, those 5% of searches are going to traditionally have more relevant searchers as they've really pre qualified themselves with a longer more considered search term.
3. Don't submit too little - If the volume of traffic is lower then why should you bother going to all of the effort of submitting sites to PFI? The answer is volume again. The best content to submit to a PFI engine is large bulk amounts taken from sites with lots of data on their site. This lends itself extremely well to catalogue retailers (such as BestBuy or Amazon) or publishers (such as Consumer Reports or McGraw Hill). In many instances the effort needed for one listing in PFI is the same effort as 10,000 listings. The more listings you submit the less of an issue the smaller search volume becomes as you'll get a larger percentage of the more specific searches with a larger number of listings.
4. Understand 'how' to submit - There are many ways to submit to PFI engines, many of them will help you with the whole procedure, others will recommend third parties to assist you with it. The most important variable to understand here is relevancy. You listings are not guaranteed number 1 spot, even on the 'Web Pages' or equivalent section of the site. You must ensure that if you are submitting a listings for 'Sony 28" Widescreen TV Model' the entirety of your submission, title, description, supporting text, url, all contain the same information otherwise the engine will bump your listing down for being too vague. Understand the variables of PFI too, for example, Inktomi won't allow anything but a 1to1 listing to unique URL ratio. This further lends itself to bulk submissions from a catalogue or large listing site.
5. Don't submit too much - PFI have variable rate cards per industry and vertical. As with PFP the price is often dependant upon demand for the content for example, finance and legal services are more expensive than reference or computing. For this reason it is important to do research before you submit your content. Be sure that if you are considering putting your entire catalogue of products online that each and every product if sold justifies the cost per click. In many instances the best course of action is to skim the feed your are submitting to PFI up to the point where the AOV of the catalogue products or CPA of the online lead you are listings justifies your costs. NOTE: having a good tracking tool and understanding both your direct and deferred conversion rates really helps here.
6. Creative Management - A PFI listings, as with any other, appears within the search network with countless others. Make sure you don't neglect these listings by relying on the title and description from your catalogue or website listing. In many instances normal procedure to substitute the title that appears in the engine with the title that appears on the site. Include calls to action; add your unique selling proposition and if you have a strong brand name be sure to include it.
PFI management is an integral part of an overall search marketing campaign and if your industry lends itself to this form of submission then it is a must. Optimizing your site for spiders may work well for single submissions to PFI but ensuring that your website content is visible in the easiest possible way is the overall strength of this pay per click mechanism.
(by James Colborn : An Account Director for Inceptor Inc, taken from payperclickuniverse.com)

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Definition of the Pay-Per-Click Process and PPC Search Engines
Pay-per-click (PPC) search engines are those that offer the marketing option called "pay-per-click" to users. PPC is defined as the guaranteed placement of a small "ad" on the search results page for a specific keyword or keywords in return for a specified payment, but ONLY when a visitor clicks on that ad. The advertiser pays nothing to appear on the results page; they only pay the amount they have agreed to (or bid for) when someone actually clicks on their ad and is taken to their landing page; therefore, the term "pay per click".

A PPC listing on a search engine results page typically consists of a title, which usually is your website's name or perhaps a short heading (around 50 characters maximum) and also a short (usually no more than 200 characters long) description of your service or some promotional wording. Some PPC search engines strictly control the text that can appear in the listing, while others are more open to using the advertiser's own text.

Basic Steps to a Constructing a Pay-Per-Click Campaign
The first step in putting together a PPC campaign is to decide your budget and what level of risk you are willing to take, for both will affect which PPC search engine you ultimately choose. As one would expect, the larger properties are less risky endeavors, since they already have excellent market coverage and tend to offer a lot of assistance to their users, but they also are the most expensive in terms of the amount of money you must spend to acquire a top ranking based on a specific keyword or group of keywords.

There are plenty of free, independent tools available to help you in your research of keywords which will tell you the current bid price for certain words or phrases on the different PPC search engines.

Once you have decided upon which PPC search engine you are going to use, have put together you ad, and decided the keywords you wish to have your ad appear under, register with the search engine, fill out the necessary information to open an account, and then begin the bidding process for the keywords you have decided upon.

When you first register your keywords with the search engine you have chosen (and some large businesses will have upwards of thousands of keywords they use), you will also specify the maximum amount you are willing to bid for those keywords. The price of a keyword can range anywhere from 1 cent to $10 or more, depending upon its popularity as a search term and the search engine itself.

Key Tips to Keep in Mind While Running a Pay-Per-Click Campaign
There is sometimes fierce competition for specific keyword(s) on a given PPC search engine. Most PPC search engines automate the bidding process for you (stopping of course when they reach the maximum bid you have indicated), but personal involvement and the judicious use of third-party tools by the user is advisable to ensure that the tracking mechanisms built into the search engine's control panel are in sync with what is actually happening.

The business that bids the highest amount of money for a specific keyword will be ranked first in the PPC results, the second-highest bidder will be ranked second, etc. Typically, PPC search engines limit the number of PPC ads on a results page to less than 10, and research has shown that unless you are in the first 3 or 4 of the PPC ads, you are much less likely to be investigated by visitors.

Because the competition is so fierce in this market right now, most PPC search engines do not require a minimum amount of money be invested in a campaign - in fact, some will even give you a nominal amount of money to begin your campaign with. Some may require a deposit of a small amount (in the neighborhood of $25 to $50), but this money is then applied to your account.

Be sure to check out the fine print in the agreement to be clear on minimums required, deposits required, what happens if you decide to cancel your campaign. Be prepared to spend a fair amount of time monitoring your campaign in the beginning.

Is a Pay-Per-Click Campaign the Right Investment for my Business?
Because of the fierce competition in the pay-per-click market, it can be relatively easy and inexpensive to give PPC a try. PPC search engines offer varying amounts of support and some are easier to use than others, but the opportunity to ensure placement of your ad without necessarily investing a large amount of your marketing dollar, makes PPC an extremely attractive option and one that few business owners should completely ignore as a potential marketing technique.

To help you, a multitude of tools have been developed to automatically monitor and bid, track your Return on Investment (ROI), craft your PPC ads, and help you choose alternate keywords that may be just as effective but cost much less on the particular PPC search engine they wish to use.

Although there are hundreds of PPC search engines on the Internet, there is a core group of 5 to 10 PPC search engines that because of size, brand name, and reputation are the preferred choices for most PPC ad campaigns. These major properties are now experimenting with many variations on the basic premise, including the ability to use PPC on a local basis, extending it from keywords to context and behavior of users, offering their versions of tools that help make the process easier especially for the novice, and decreasing the amount of time it takes to see results from your campaign from hours to minutes.

Once you've mastered the basics of PPC and have learned more about the options, tools, and search engines that offer this form of marketing, you will be in a position to fine tune your campaigns and perhaps try some of the niche-market PPC search engines, which offer lower keyword costs and may be more suited to your product/service.

Keep in mind that even companies with experience in online marketing struggle with the intricacies of the techniques needed to judge which PPC search engine to use and how best to play the bidding game.

And so we come to the bottom line - PPC sounds like a great option, but what does it really cost and is it worth it for my specific business? Each campaign is different, depending upon the bid amounts, number of actual click throughs and the Return on Investment (ROI) generated.

Our main goal at Pay Per Click Universe is to help educate you to make the best choices by offering free, totally unbiased reviews of PPC search engines and the tools designed to be used in conjunction with the PPC process, both to help you with understanding the process and to evaluate its usefulness to you as a marketing tool.

Now that we’ve explained the process a little more in depth, take a look at our reviews and use the information we have provided to help you plan a campaign or fine tune your current campaigns to get the most from the marketing dollars you choose to place in what we consider to be a very competitive, efficient, and effective means of Internet marketing – the pay-per-click search engine marketplace.

(payperclickuniverse.com)

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