Should I use pay-per-click advertising services?
Q: "Traffic Generation: Pay-Per-Click" - Should I use pay-per-click advertising services like Google Adwords to generate more traffic?
A: In short, yes, you should, as long as you have the advertising budget for it. Google didn't become one of the biggest advertisers in the world promoting a system that doesn't work to people. Its AdWords pay-per-click service is one of the most effective ways out there to get traffic to your site.
Now, you've got to be careful doing it, though, because you can quickly rack up a huge advertising bill if you're not careful. With that in mind, there are two concepts you need to be familiar with before you start advertising: keyword selection and split testing.
When we talk about keyword selection, we're talking about the keywords that are used when AdWords decides when to display your ad. When you create the ad, you generate a list of usually no more than twenty search keywords that will trigger your ad. The trick in doing this is to do effective keyword research beforehand - the Adwords External Keyword Tool will work perfectly for this - to make sure you're choosing effective keywords.
So what makes an effective keyword? You want two things: high search volume with low competition. It doesn't do much good to buy ads in a keyword that rarely ever gets searched. Likewise, it isn't effective to buy ads in a keyword that's got high competition, because unless you're willing to pay through the nose for placement, you're not going to get ranked highly. Take your time when setting up your campaign, do your research, and choose keywords that meet both of these criteria.
Also, we highly recommend doing split testing with your ad copy. What you don't want to do is just create one ad, assume it's the best, and then throw it out there. Start by creating four or five ads in your group, each with the same body text but with different headlines, and see which one is the most effective. That one has your best headline. Then take that headline and make four copies of that ad, each with different body text, and see which one performs the best. That gives you the best body text. What you now end up with is your best combination of headline and body text for your ad, and you know what you've got out there will be extremely effective.
These are good steps towards effective pay-per-click marketing. There's a lot more you can learn out there, and as always, we encourage you to get involved in one of the many marketing communities out there to learn from other people who are doing what you're doing. Aside from that, get out there and start with it - there's no better way to learn than by doing.
One last note on Google AdWords: be absolutely sure to set a daily budget for your ads, especially during testing. Not doing so is a sure way to break your bank. You have been warned.