PPC keyword selection is very different from organic SEO selection. In the latter, you have to be realistic and prepare for the long haul. You have to target long tail keywords first and look at the competition’s pages and the like. This is because you can’t do anything to influence your rankings on good search engines and ranking takes time.

However, in PPC campaigns, the overriding concern is based on just two factors. The most important factor is – “Will this keyword be used by people who want to purchase/sign up/view a particular page?”. In PPC you pay by the click. So it’s not just visitors you want, but those visitors who will do what you want them to once they’re on your site.

For example, suppose you’re selling computer hard drives. You’re not interested in people who merely want information and want to learn about hard drives. That’s what the organic results are for. No, when someone clicks on your PPC ads, you want to be damn sure they want to buy a hard disk! So you need to target keywords that such people will use – perhaps “hard disk dealers”, “xyz brand hard disks” or the like. Such keywords indicate that the searcher wants to purchase your product.

You need to refine your selection as much as possible to focus on your particular products. For example, if you’re a physical shop without an ecommerce store, then your keyword should be “hard disk dealers in xyz location”. The more certain you are that that particular keyword will be used by your potential customers, the better the keyword is.

The second parameter is the price you pay for each click. It goes without saying that highly competitive keywords cost more. It is precisely due to this reason that the first step of selection is so important. You can lose a lot of money everyday by simply choosing keywords that will not be used by your customers.

Depending on your budget, you need to select a mix of cost effective and relevant keywords, but the latter is more important than the first. I’m assuming that the final goal of your website would be at least a hundred times over and above the cost per click of a given keyword.

These are the basics of choosing PPC keywords. In the coming sections, we take a look at the next stage – preparing your website, bidding, pruning your keyword list and tracking.

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PPC campaigns can be both the most rewarding as well as the most frustrating of experiences. It can get you visitors to your site and bankrupt you at the same time if you’re not careful. In the next few posts, we’ll be examining the various facts of PPC campaigns – how to craft your keywords, how to set your budgets, as well as the technique of converting your visitors – perhaps the most important of all.

Pay Per Click campaigns when handled properly can easily improve your bottom line. Whether you’re an ecommerce site or if you want people to sign up for a newsletter – if you’re a commercial business, you can ill afford to ignore this vital marketing strategy.

The next few posts will focus more on Google than on any other search engine – both as an example, as well as for reasons of practicality. Google is where most of the people search, and that is where most of your sales will come from. Of course, when you advertise on other search engines you might find it cheaper since there are fewer bidders. Eventually your PPC campaign will encompass all major search engines as well as cover your major geographical targets. Stay tuned for more!

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The original patent for Google’s PageRank algorithm focused solely on a mathematical calculation based on the number of links to a website. A simple normalization and voila! – we had the PageRank. Humans however, are very clever at manipulating systems to their advantage, and soon it was necessary to introduce other elements into the calculation. Two of the most important variables are Trust and Relevance.

Basically it means that a link to your site from another site whose subject matter is similar to yours carries more weight than a link that comes from elsewhere. The “Trust” quotient is a measure of a page’s authority and how qualified it is to make a good “vote” (link) to a page. Certain sites like government websites from example, have a high level of trust. But this is due to the nature of their content and the links that point to them – not because they have .org or .edu as their suffix as many people tend to think.

Therefore, it’s worthwhile expending a lot of effort to get links from authority websites instead of trading links with unrelated blogs. Of course, this is easier said than done as a lot of people would give a lot to be linked to from these sites. But then that’s why they’re worth it! If everyone would be doing it, then it wouldn’t be valuable.

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