Scope of Pay Per Click Optimization(part 1)

By James Lee

As Google and Yahoo! have become household names for Internet Marketing, many are claiming to be experts in this field after only a few months of experience. However, when you have responsibility over a moderately sized advertising budget, you do not want to be pretending to be someone you are not.

I can say this; at Varazo we have been running pay-per-click marketing campaigns for over two years and are still learning to master the optimization process. Why does it take so long to master and what is involved in optimizing a pay-per-click campaign? At Varazo we have divided the PPC optimization process into 3 phases.

§ First, the campaign itself needs to be optimized. This means choosing the right keywords, campaign titles and descriptions. It also involves optimizing the scope of keyword matching and content matching for search-based or site-targeted campaigns.

§ Second, define a maximum bid amount which is effective and cost-efficient for each keyword – each day. This requires an automated process. Here at Varazo we believe we have developed one of the most sophisticated software tools (ClickSweeper) for doing just this.

§ The third, but most difficult optimization challenge is creating paths that are easy, intuitive and attractive from the landing page to the signup (conversion) pages.

Whether the landing page leads to a sales conversion or a product inquiry, it is important to know from which outside pages the visitors came and to which page did they go while on your site. This data can be captured by Google Analytics, but setting this up requires the insertion of tracking code on each of the site’s relevant pages. Conversion tracking on eCommerce pages can be especially complicated, since these pages may be located on other servers and may require interaction with several IT departments.

From our experience we know that proficiency in each area of the optimization processes takes time to master. Unless you or your staff have an advanced PPC skill-set, might be wise to outsource these services to a pay-per-click consulting company.

(http://www.varazo.com/)