Pay per click analytics are the core base for understanding the effectiveness of your keywords and their playback value. Before analytics tools came on the market most companies bid top dollar for the broadest keywords that they could in the hope that using a bigger net would catch more fish. In time however, the analytics tools came on board and some businesses found that the broadest search terms were not the ones that were actually bringing in the traffic.

The PPC Analytics basics were as follows:
Your PPC campaign analytics showed you a direct response model. A customer clicked on your ad after searching on a particular keyword that you have bid on. But did they convert? And more importantly, did enough of those clicks convert to justify the expense paid for that keyword?

The PPC managers took note and started to narrow down their keywords to the ones that seemed to bring in the most conversions.

The results were not always as expected. As it turns out, research heavy online shoppers were often visting a site multiple times on broad, then narrower, then focused keywords, and only after the final focused keyword are they converting and actually purchasing the product. Does that mean that the first two visits were meaningless? Does it mean that the broader keyword bids were a waste of money? Of course not!

The first couple of visits bring site and business name recognition with the consumer who then narrows down the keyword to exactly what they want. The next search brings your site up again. The customer is already familiar with it, and your site encompasses everything that they’ve looked for. Company name recognition and site familiarity will encourage customers to buy.

Think ahead before you turn off the broad keyword campaign and deem it unnecessary. If you want more information, look to analytic tools that will track multiple user visits and see what’s working for you.

Local Pay Per Click campaigns can offer a business a fast return on their marketing budget bucks in comparison to waiting for an organic SEO campaign to build, but that doesn’t mean a business should jump in blind. Here are some of the basics about Pay Per Click advertising.

What’s the point of Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click is an online marketing strategy that is used to increase site traffic and get your business’s name out in the market.

How Does PPC Work?
Basically, your business will bid on keywords that relate to your products or services. The amount of your bid is what determines the ranking of your ad on search engine pages. If you want to sell ‘Safety Scissors’ and your competitor currently holds the number 1 ranking spot for that keyword, with a bid of .10 per click, you can try to outbid them for the number 1 spot for that keyword.

How Can I stretch my PPC budget?
You can stretch your Local Pay Per Click budget by going after keywords the smart way. If you are selling Safety Scissors, but your competitor holds the number one spot on the search engines for that keyword at a price you aren’t willing to match, try a variation. Bid and use the phrase “Buy Safety Scissors.”

The logic is simple. Many people might type in Safety Scissors if they are doing research on the product, or looking for price comparisons, or just curious, but when they’re ready to buy, they will often type in ‘BUY Safety Scissors.”

If you are a local business looking to increase traffic to a website than pay per click could be your solution. While organic listings take time to grow and climb in the search engines Yahoo’s Pay Per Click is a fast convenient way to quickly get directly in front of your audience. Your local customers are no longer just looking in print and local yellow page books to find a place to shop. 

Your local audience has found that it is even easier to go directly to their computer and just look for whatever they need in a search engine rather than flipping through a book that only gets their fingers dirty. Yahoo offers an affordable solution to reaching out to your community. It is an avenue of advertising that many of your competitors are probably already using to generate revenues for their organization. Don’t think of pay per click advertising as a national campaign. You can very easily geo target your campaign and reach only the people you desire. If you are frustrated with your organic listings and waiting for your site to climb you should take advantage of a localized pay per click campaign because it could be crucial to the success of your company. Yahoo’s sponsored search website has made it very easy for you to come in and set up your campaign. Just create an account they will walk you through the rest of the process.  For more information please visit Yahoo’s sponsored search marketing site and take advantage of this traffic generating product.

In the Local Pay Per Click campaigns, some businesses are still set on quantity, not quality. The amount of potential customers brought into your site was the only thing focused on for so long that some companies are reluctant to bring those numbers down. Less clicks?!? Less traffic?!? That’s bad!

Actually, that can be good thing. Geographic Targeting can, and (if done properly) will decrease the traffic to your site, but you will end up with higher conversion rates and a higher audience share.

Why is geographic targeting important, and is less traffic a good thing, in your PPC campaign?

Geographic targeting is about excluding traffic from outside a specific geographic area that you designate. Geographic targeting is highly valuable to advertisers who serve customers regionally and also to advertisers who want to focus their budget on increasing brand/product awareness levels in specific geographic areas.

It doesn’t make sense to present your ads to people in the UK or China if you don’t ship outside of the US. Drilling down even more, if you sell only in a single state, a single city, or a single neighborhood, you shouldn’t waste your budget on clicks from outside of that area.

When you apply this strategy to your local PPC campaign, your traffic volume will go down, but the key point is that your profits won’t. The consumers who are clicking on your ads are the consumers that can use your product or services.

Don’t focus so much on traffic volume. Instead, keep your eye, and your advertising budget, on quality.

Jennifer Osborne at SearchEnginePeople wrote a good article on the 26 Mistakes That Cost You Money in a small business PPC campaign. The article is a little lengthy (26!) but some of the points she brings up are worth noting.

11. Using very Broad keywords. Broad keywords tend to be used by people early in the buying cycle. Think about the difference between “Vacation”, “All Inclusive Vacation” and “Bermuda All Inclusive Vacation”. Generally we find that people using very broad keyword queries are very early in the buying cycle, in the Learning Phase. As a result, conversion rates for these types of keywords are very low. Yet broad keywords tend to cost the most.
Narrower, more specific keywords tend to be used by people who know what they want and are closer to the Purchase Phase of the Buying Cycle.
I’ve seen Broad keywords eat 50% of a Small Business budget without any conversions. In this scenario, by not bidding on those expensive keywords the client reduced their spend by half while maintaining the same # of Conversions and Doubling their ROI.

I love that tip, and I’ll explain why. Too many businesses get wrapped up in their PPC strategy and focus on the broad keywords that will get the most attention, but as Jennifer points out above, the broadest keywords queries are often used when potential customers are researching a purchase. They are not ready to buy yet, so your conversion rates are rock bottom.

Bidding on the more specific keywords might seem like you are targeting a smaller audience, (because you are) but that smaller audience is the one that is ready to purchase.

Focus your PPC strategy. Sharpen it. And ultimately make it work for you.

Local pay per click offers a narrower field of competition simply because not everyone can advertise as being in your area. No matter what your product or service, you will benefit from local pay per click and narrow down the amount of competition you have to deal with.

If you aren´t already using it, local pay per click is also an excellent investment and will often end up being cheaper in the long run. The reason for this? People who see your ads will be looking for your products or services locally. That means they are more likely to be in a buying frame of mind, too.

Try local pay per click if you aren´t already using it. You can save money, while getting higher quality clicks! This is definitely a good deal for anyone involved in online business.

When bidding for local pay per click keywords, being the highest bidder isn´t always a good idea. In fact, it can cause you to run out of advertising money pretty darn fast! It´s often better to come in with a lower bid and here´s why.

• You´ll save a lot of money by bidding lower.

• A lower position won´t necessarily give you better results.

• Getting into a bidding war will just drive the price up and everyone loses.

It simply isn´t worth fighting for the first position in local pay per click, the majority of the time. If there is little competition, go for it, but otherwise you end up paying far too much for just a few clicks and it really isn´t worth it.

One of the big issues with local pay per click advertising is the high risk of click fraud. This is when people click on the ads displayed on their own website to earn money. Obviously, to the advertiser, these clicks are completely useless, but still being paid for.

No matter which local pay per click service you choose, make sure they offer the option of deciding which sites your ads should NOT appear on. That way, if you feel that some sites are promoting click fraud, you can ban them from displaying your local pay per click ads and save yourself some cash.

Local pay per click ads are somewhat more limited than those in other areas of advertising, since you will only be displayed on sites that show the local keywords. So do be careful that you aren´t banning all your available options!

When you hear “local pay per click”, you probably think of Google Adwords, but the truth is that there are quite a few other options out there for local pay per click. One huge on is Yahoo. Many people figure Yahoo is somewhat overshadowed by Google, and with the recent rumors of sale . . . Yahoo might not seem like the top choice. However, there are several reasons to try Yahoo out for your local pay per click needs.

Decide where your ad will rank. You can see how much you need to pay in order to boost your local pay per click ad to the #1 spot on Yahoo, which is a huge advantage of Adsense.

Quality ads get better positioning. Yahoo actually takes a look at how well your local pay per click ads are written, so with a top quality ad, you can get further than ever before.

Direct linking is permitted. With Yahoo, your local pay per click ads can link to an affiliate site, something that isn´t allowed with Google. This can be a huge benefit if you are into affiliate marketing.

Google and Yahoo aren´t the only local pay per click options out there. Do your research and consider advertising in more than one place to boost your results. You might be pleasantly surprised at how well things go for you with other types of advertising.

When you are managing your local pay per click ad campaign, it really is worth it to take a look at the tracking information available to you and find out how things are working out for your ads. You should be able to see where they are appearing, on which sites, as well as how each site performs with your ads. This is fairly specific information and you may be tempted to just skip it, but that would be a major mistake!

Knowing where your local pay per click ads are being placed will help you make your campaign more efficient. You can eliminate those sites that are not helping you out much, of course. Google AdWords has a site elimination option where you can choose NOT to place your local pay per click ads on certain sites. However, this isn´t just for keeping your ads off non-performing sites. In fact, there are better ways to go about this.

One huge benefit of being able to see which sites your local pay per click ads are on is that you can check to see if they are relevant. Let´s say you have a business that sells molds for soaps and candles. Unfortunately, your mold is spelled the same as the mold that grows in homes and makes people sick. You don´t want your ads appearing on those sites, since they aren´t relevant, so if you notice this happening, just let the ad program know that you aren´t interested.

This can drastically reduce the number of useless clicks that you are receiving (and paying for). If your local pay per click ads are only appearing on sites that are relevant, you´ll find that your click rates and conversion rates go up. Which is always a good thing!

If you are learning about local pay per click as you go, you might want to consider taking Google up on their latest offer. Google is offering seminars, Inside AdWords, to help their users improve their advertising campaigns.

Introduction & User Training - designed for those who want an introduction to Google Analytics, setting up Analytics, exploring the user interface, and analyzing reports.
Here is a list of topics that will be covered:

* Introduction to Google Analytics
* Reports Interface
* Administrative Interface
* The Importance of Goals
* Real-world Case Studies
* What Do You Want To Track?
* Optimizing AdWords and PPC Campaigns
* Introduction to Experimentation and Tracking

The seminar should be extremely useful to anyone needing more information on how to use AdWords and make it work for them. It is a local pay per click nightmare if you don´t know what you are doing and learning directly from Google could be the perfect solution.

If you are interested in attending the Adwords seminars to improve your local pay per click campaigns, you have a choice between Dallas, San Diego and San Franscisco at the moment, though there may be more in the future.

Local pay per click ads don´t have to be based on just one or two words. In fact, research has shown that more searchers type in more than one keyword. The more keywords you use in your local pay per click ads, the better your matches will be, though obviously you don´t want to overdo it.

It makes it easier for your ads to show up on relevant searches and pages that are specifically geared to your keywords when you use two or three words in your phrases. Imagine how many irrelevant hits you could get if you just used “Pizza” as your keyword, as opposed to “Vancouver Burnaby pizza”.

Using more than one location keyword can also be helpful in getting people who are looking for a business in your specific area. While you may want to also run local pay per click ads with less specific territories, this will ensure that you turn up for anyone looking for a “laundromat on Maple Avenue”.

Think very carefully about which words you want to use in your local pay per click campaign and consider using several words in order to target very specific traffic. This can really help lower the number of useless clicks that your ads get and boost your revenue.

Local pay per click is being used by many small businesses these days, but the market is still far from being saturated, so it´s a good time to start using a local pay per click campaign. Even if you have already been dabbling in this area, there are a few techniques that will boost your results and up your response rate.

Local Pay Per Click Ad Techniques

Use negative keywords. These are keywords that you do not want your ads to appear on when searched. By selecting the words you don´t want associated with your local pay per click ad, you can control where your ads appear.

Test different modes. Text ads aren´t the only options available on most local pay per click services. Test images and animated ads as well, if you can, you may be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Choose multiple keywords. This will allow your ads to come up on all searches or websites that relate to it, using several different keywords. Many online entrepreneurs use this technique to expand their influence.

Higher responses to your local pay per click ad campaign will automatically result in higher sales, which is really the whole point of ads in the first place! Use these tips to boost your response rate and watch how quickly your numbers rise.

Local pay per click can be a great way to advertise your business or website, but it is also easy to end up with messy keyword lists and confusing amounts of ads. The best way to combat this is to simply make sure that you have everything neat and organized. There are a few ways to go about this.

• Eliminate inactive keywords. Often, you´ll find that certain keywords just aren´t working for your local pay per click campaign. Get rid of these, since they are just cluttering up your keyword list.

• Test and delete. You should be testing new ads, that´s a given, but when you find that one is just not working, get rid of it. It can be very confusing to look at a list of local pay per click ads and not remember which ones were keepers!

• Check new trends. There are constantly new trends on the search engines, so stay abreast of these and get rid of anything that is considered old-fashioned and useless. Your local pay per click advertising account should be nice and clean.

Keeping your local pay per click advertising account nice and neat and organized means less costly mistakes. You need to make sure you get rid of keyword lists that don´t work for you and eliminate lesser functioning ads. This will keep everything working smoothly and you´ll never get confused as to which ads you need to be using.

It´s out there. You´ve probably heard about people who put local pay per click ads on their website and then click on their own ads in order to earn money. They may also ask visitors and friends to do the same, boosting their earnings and draining your advertising budget. If you are a small local business, chances are you can´t afford too many of these, so you will want to avoid them if possible.

One of the best ways to avoid this problem is to stick with a well-known local pay per click company like Yahoo or Google who have strict rules against this sort of behavior and are active in banning anyone who is involved with local pay per click fraud. But you may want to go with a lesser known local pay per click company in order to save a little on money and avoid going up against so much competition.

Research any local pay per click service before leaping into it. You can check on forums to see what others think of it. While every service will be criticized sometimes, you don´t want to go with one when absolutely no one has anything good to say about it!

Yet another way to avoid local pay per click fraud is to look for a service that offers live help and real contact information. Email only helps you so much, sometimes it is simply necessary to speak to someone and any local pay per click company that offers that is probably very serious about their business and will do everything in their power to prevent click fraud. Check their rules to be sure.  You do not want to jeopardize your local advertising efforts.