In my last article I briefly covered some of the reasons you may wish to use Pay Per Click Search engines to help increase your traffic flow. This article will delve a bit deeper into some of the techniques you can use to get the most of your PPC dollars.
When using Pay Per Click search engines the first thing you must decide is "What Is My Desired Goal." By this I mean what are you trying to accomplish. Are you trying to boost targeted traffic to your site in hopes of conversions, or are you attempting to increase your branding. Most adult webmaster who run free or AVS type sites will be shooting for targeted traffic to send of to their sponsors. This is what I will focus on in this article.
Getting Started
When first starting out, it is a good idea to test the waters. Find a good PPC engine, and submit one site to it. Select search terms you feel are appropriate to your site, and bid the lowest amount allowable. Start with just a handful of search terms until you become comfortable using this engine. It may be helpful to look at your server logs, and determine which search terms people are using to find your site now. You could then build off this list of keywords. After you get used to the bidding process, you can fine tune your bids to suit your budget.
Less is More
It is very important to select search terms that are relevant to your site. Many webmasters will make the mistake of looking for the search terms with the highest volume of traffic, with no regard to relevancy. The only thing this will accomplish is a high bill, with little to no conversions. For example, while you will definitely receive a high volume of traffic bidding on the term "free sex", if you are trying to promote a membership site that is not free, you will probably be wasting your money. It would be better to bid on search terms that are more finely targeted to your site. If you are promoting a panty site, you may wish to bid on terms like "teen panties", "white panties", "up skirt shots", etc. By selecting these more targeted search terms, you will be receiving traffic that is more likely to purchase what you are selling. Also you will not be paying for a lot of non-converting traffic. A nice side affect to using relevant search terms is, you will usually be bidding on terns that have lower prices. It is much easier to afford the #1 ranking for "teen schoolgirls" than it would be for "teens."
You need to be cautious when you are going past your earnings per click point.
Optimizations
Without a doubt, your highest volume of traffic will come from those search terms where you are listed in the #1 position. However there is still very good quality traffic below the #1 spot.
It is important to analyze the price differential between the #1 ranking and say the #2, and #3 rankings. If the #1 ranking costs $0.10, and the #3 position costs only $0.02, then it would be cost effective to bid on the #3 position as opposed to bidding on #1.
It is very important to calculate the bid price vs. the income you will receive from the conversion. The first thing you need to consider is how much a click is worth on your site as it stands. You would do this by looking at the amount earned in sales dived by the amount of traffic clicking through to your sponsor. This figure would represent the earnings per click. Many sponsor programs will provide you with this information (assuming no shaving). Once you know how much you make per click, you can then determine what your maximum bid can be per search term. It is important to point out that all terms are not equal, and some terms will yield a higher conversion ratio than others, but this will make for a good starting point.
Working It
Once you have your site listed, and you have a good collection of search terms listed with reasonable bids, it is time to start fine-tuning. You should monitor your click throughs to identify which keywords are netting the best results. You should look for keywords that can generate a large volume of traffic at low bid prices. But don't overlook those highly targeted search terms that can deliver quality conversions!
You will need to adjust your bids from time to time, as others try and out bid you. You need to be cautious when you are going past your earnings per click point. You want to avoid falling into a bidding war with someone that could easily eat up your advertising budget!
Once you have gotten your feet wet with your first site, you can move onto listing your other sites. You should also try out other PPC engines, and see which ones work the best for you.
