Firstly, don’t listen to Search Engine Optimisation guys/girls who tell you that the number of clicks you will get from Google AdWords / PPC are insignificant compared to the free clicks you will get if you rank well in the organic search results.

A study from Optify concluded that, for more valuable keywords, the organic click-through rate for page 1 placement on Google was 37.3%!

This means that PPC ads can get around 60% of available traffic!

There are many people who would have you believe that you would be lucky to get a Click Through Rate fo 1% for PPC ads. Here are some real world examples from campaigns that I am managing (and the average position on these ads is relatively low):-

Ad1 – approx 44,000 impressions – avg. pos. = 2 – CTR = 14.18%
Ad2 – approx 1 million impressions – avg. pos. = 3.8 – CTR = 6.79%
Ad3 – approx 120,000 impressions – avg. pos. = 6.9 – CTR = 4.52%

Secondly, don’t listen to people (mostly Search Engine Optimisation guys/girls) who tell you that you are paying money for clicks on PPC ads when people would have clicked on your organic result anyway if your ad was not there.

A recent study from Google (OK it is bound to be slightly biased but you can be sure it is not fabricated) showed that “a full 89% of the traffic generated by search ads is not replaced by organic clicks when ads are paused“.

References:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008384
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/07/studies-show-search-ads-drive-89.html

An interesting article :-

http://googlebarometer.blogspot.com/2010/11/all-you-want-for-christmas.html

For all you SEO type people who reckon that natural search tends to convert better than paid search – there is an interesting line in the article which says :

“Paid search signals purchase intent as those who use sponsored links are 1.5 times more likely
to purchase.”

The speed of your web site is increasingly important in keeping the search engines and your customers happy. With this in mind, Google have released a new ‘mod_pagespeed’ module for Apache web servers which can speed up your web site by up to 2 times! :-

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/11/make-your-websites-run-faster.html

Speak to your techie guys/girls today about this.  The software is free, and it is not difficult to install.

NB – not all web sites do use the Apache web server – so it cannot be used by everyone…

Recently updated:-

http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

I have been reliably informed that PropertyPal.com is now the biggest property site in Northern Ireland….

I will now (free of charge) reveal the secret to their hugely successful online marketing campaign…

As I was browsing through the code of the web site (as I sometimes do on other web sites because I am nosey like that), I was suddenly hit by the following:-

They were using the following metadata on their web site:-

<meta name="jedi-mind-trick"
content="You will bookmark this site and use it a lot." />

Now it all made sense, this must be why I regularly visit their site to check the value of my 2 bed apartment in Bangor!

If you have a WordPress based web site (like this one), then this is almost certainly worth doing.

If you didn’t configure this properly when you set your web site, then try following the instructions at:-

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-friendly-url-structure/4556/

I did – and it seems to be working well for me so far…..

It is currently running at 19 minutes… (OK so it says 29 minutes below – but it took me 10 minutes to get round to doing this post at which point I had to refresh the screen!) :-

I have been using this for a month now, and can honestly say, while it is not perfect, it is an absolutely fantastic utility which saves time and effort in setting up new PPC campaigns (and allows you to easily see what is working and what is not working for your competitors, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel:-)

If you do PPC for a living, and can’t make KeyWordSpy pay for itself many times over, then you are in the wrong job! (It also is fairly useful for SEO).

It is also recommended by Howie Jacobson, so you don’t just have to take my word for it!

*Check out KeyWordSpy here*

(NB – Unless you are a *big* company, you only really need to purchase the ‘research’ option).

If you do try it out, please let me know how you got on…  Thanks.

This blog does not “nofollow” comments.

If your comment is worthy of publishing then you will get a link back from me.

If it is in any way “spammy” you won’t.

So there is no reason for me to use “nofollow” for comments on this blog

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