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Pay Per Click Advertising: A Way To Drive Laser Targeted Customers To Your Site

Calvin Harvey — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:38:05 +0000

If you’re a business owner with an online presence, one of your problems will be getting targeted traffic to your site in order to promote your product. You may want to consider pay per click (PPC) advertising as an extremely effective way to drive traffic and targeted leads to your service. Pay-per-click advertising is an effective and measurable way to reach potential new customers who are interested in your products and services. It allows you to take control of your advertising spending because with pay-per-click advertising you can target your ads to new customers interested in your products and services.

PPC: What Is It And How Does It Work?

Pay-per-click advertising is a type of search engine marketing where you pay a small fee (it can be as small as a few cents!) every time someone clicks on your ad and visits your website. For example, when you do a google search, look on the right hand side of the results page. These are all PPC adverts, all being shown on the first or second page of the search engine results. Because you decide the specific keyword searches where your advertisement is displayed, PPC advertising is truly one of the most cost effective ways to advertise online. You have total control over how and where your ads are shown. Unlike other online advertising methods, PPC advertising provides instant results at affordable rates.

PPC Advertisers

As a PPC advertiser, you can easily build, customize, and manage your search campaigns, as well as closely monitor their performance. Typically, PPC advertisers measure their performance based on a combination of metrics, such as conversion rate, Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS), Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA), Cost-Per-Lead (CPL), or Click-Through-Rate (CTR). All are essential measurements if you want to know your overall return on investment (ROI).

As a PPC advertiser you can set the amount you pay when someone clicks to your website from an ad you’ve placed in a search engine’s results. Google apportions a quality score, which is determined by a number of factors including how much you agree to pay per click, along with the average click-through rate of your ad copy, as well as the relevance of the landing page visitors are sent to. These factors determine how high your ad will appear in the search engine PPC listings. However, overbidding for poor-performing search phrases quickly leads to a failed PPC campaign. You can lose a lot of money with an untargeted campaign.

The good news is that advertisers can reduce their average cost per click without lowering bids by improving click-through rates, making good landing pages, and writing good ads. Remember, ROI is the key to the success to any PPC advertising campaign

Keywords, Choose Them Wisely…

One of the vital ingredients to a pay per click campaign is key words. In order for you ads to show up in the search engine results, you need to specify the keywords that you think your customers would type in to the search box. A word of caution, keywords that do not help the consumer to find their product will decrease your return-on-investment and conversion rate.

Choosing the proper keywords to bid on for your site and for your business is essential to the PPC advertising process. If you choose unwisely, PPC advertising can become prohibitively expensive, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword phrases and the aggressiveness of the competition. As with typical search engine optimization, keyword research is critical to the success of pay per click advertising.

Ultimately, pay per click advertising is a great way to promote a web site. It’s completely quantifiable and highly targeted, enabling you to display your advertisement in response to an internet search for your products or services. But …there is a lot to learn before you venture into your first campaign. If you don’t do your homework, chances are you will lose money. So make sure you read up, and then you’ll be able to reap the rewards.

Wordpress 2.3.3 Is Available for Download Now!

Calvin Harvey — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:32:27 +0000

Wordpress, has released an urgent security update that everyone should upgrade to ASAP.

If you have registration enabled a flaw was found in the XML-RPC implementation such that a specially crafted request would allow a user to edit posts of other users on that blog. In addition to fixing this security flaw, 2.3.3 fixes a few minor bugs. If you are interested only in the security fix, download the fixed version of xmlrpc.php and copy it over your existing xmlrpc.php. Otherwise, you can get the entire release here.

Also, there is a vulnerability in the WP-Forum plugin that is being actively exploited right now. If you are using this plugin, please remove it until an update is available from its author.

Since we are talking security, remember to use strong passwords and change them regularly. While you’re updating WP and your plugins, consider refreshing your passwords.

10 Wordpress Plugins That Kick A$$!

Calvin Harvey — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:31:27 +0000

These are my top 10 Wordpress Plugins That Kick A$$! These plugins either make your blog more productive or enable you to do some sweet things.

10. Executable Php Widget- This one allows you to insert php code into a widget to use on your sidebar.

9. Feedburner Feedsmith- This one automagically forwards your wordpress RSS feed to your feedburner feed. Sweeet!

8. iWPhone - Reformats your blog so that it can be properly viewed on a iPhone.

7. Most Commented - This one swipes the most commented posts and put the in a list from greatest to least. This one will draw attention to your most popular posts.

6. Popularity Contest - This one makes a list of your most popular posts from greatest to least. Your even able to create a popular posts page. Again another plugin that will draw attention to your most popular posts.

5. DoFollow- Removes the no follow tag from your comments. Stimulates commenting on your blog.

4. Show Top Commentators - Encourage more feedback and discussion from readers, by rewarding them every time they post a comment! Readers with the most comments are displayed on your Wordpress blog, with their names (linked to their website if they provided one).

3. Related Posts - Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches.

2. Wordpress.com Stats - Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.

1. MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad - A new non-obtrusive way of displaying a single line of advertising message, a special note or other information right at the top of your blog. This is currently my favorite plugin. Why? Because I said so that’s why!

Vote for your favorite plugin!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Making Link Love

Calvin Harvey — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:26:32 +0000

I must apologize to my inability to update my Viral Tag links. I am still part of The Andy Coates Viralink, and have received so many link love from so many bloggers. It has just been overwhelming so I am re-posting to link back to the people that I missed.

Follow the instructions below and watch your link love grow.
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Instructions:

1.) Copy and paste the matrix of “ViralTags” below courtesy of Founders Cafe.

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the “Viral Tags” in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their “Viral Tags”, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your “Viral Tags” below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: Make Money Online

Important: Once I get a ping back from you, I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as “Host Tag” here, replacing one of the “ViralTags” from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.
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I am very appreciative of the bloggers that have provided me with link love through these months. It has considerably helped my Technorati rating and I wish the same for all of you.