Price Per Click Advertising - What the hell is that?

If you landed here by searching for “Price Per Click Advertising” you must be new to world of paid search. That’s ok. I can help.

This quick post was inspired by an email I got from one of my ridiculously good looking cousins (*cough Jon) asking me for help with “Price Per Click Advertising”.

Here is the highlights of the replied to him:

(Warning I am not a Pay Per Click expert, but have dabble in it)

First off its called “pay per click advertising or cost per click“.

Here are some pointers.

1. You can do PPC (Pay Per Click) on all major search engines, but I recommend Google because they get about 60% of all search traffic and the interface is very easy to use.
2. Here is a great starting point faq guide for Google Adwords.
3. It all about conversions not click through rate. You could send alot of traffic to a site, but if it does not convert why waste your money? Make sure you setup conversion tracking on your site.
4. You can improve conversion by qualifying your visitor before they even get to the site or clicking on your ad. You can do this with your ad copy. For example, if you mention your starting price for something it will avoid people that can and can not afford your product or service.
5. You can also use negative keywords to help qualify your visitor. Say you ran a high end hotel or service you can place the keywords of “Cheap” or “Affordable” in your negative keywords. So, if some typed in “cheap hotel” your ad would never appear.
6. You can also Geo-target your ads, which will only serve your ads in a geographical area.
7. You can also setup when your ads are displayed. Would people really buy your product or click on your ad at 2 pm in the morning?

Hopefully this help all you newbies and remind us oldies of the basics.

If you would like to add to this please add comments below!

Damn You Yahoo Panama

Don’t worry I am still alive. I have just been slammed at work. Ok time to rant!

Yahoo Panama you piss me off! I am not able to set a time of day schedule for my ads with you. That sucks big donkey balls. I do not want to advertise at 2 am in the damn morning with a limited budget. When I login every morning my account has hit it’s daily spending limit. I want to advertise mid day.

Here is Yahoo’s response:

There is not a way to set up your account so that your ads are displayed online during a certain period of time throughout the day. If you want to keep the ads online only at certain times, you can place the account online and offline manually by clicking on the Administration tab and then on ‘Edit’ under Account General Information.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of any further assistance.

Damn you! I truly hope you integrate this feature in the future. For now I will spend most of my money with Google Adwords.

HAAA HAAA (Nelson from the Simpson’s)

Shame on you Yahoo - Mixing ads in organic serps!

DazzlinDonna’s post lit a fire under my ass! Could it be possible that Yahoo is putting paid ads in the organic serps!? I decided to take look my self and see what I could find. Sure enough I found it too!

I searched for “Ontario Hotels“.

The number 8 result is….
(Click to enlarge)

Check out the url code: (Click to enlarge)

Notice in red Fad.doubleclick.net. Who the hell is doubleclick.net? Well looks like Yahoo partnered up with them back in the day for their Panama Search Marketing Platform. How convenient don’t you think?

I am not sure if I am way off base and have no idea what I am talking about, but what the hell is this then? Is it information tracking Paid Inclusion records?

What do you all think?