Google AdWords

A lot of traffic for one of my businesses is coming from online. I only have experience with traditional media sources print and radio.

 

How does Google AdWords work? How much does it cost? What does a typical small business (5MM/annum) generate in terms of Google AdWords expense in a given month? Is it better to contact a company to optimize our website for search engine searches? What else should I know or do? Is this the same as a sponsored link? Is it better to be above the organic links rather than on the right sidebar?

 

Basically please explain this shit to me at retard speed and guide me in the right direction.

you elect keywords that will generate your ad on the side of the search results. For each of those clicks, you pay Google. The price depends on the value of your keywords. You can elect to set a monthly budget, but once that budget is used up, your ad won't appear any more.

A lot of traffic for one of my businesses is coming from online. I only have experience with traditional media sources print and radio.

 

How does Google AdWords work? How much does it cost? What does a typical small business (5MM/annum) generate in terms of Google AdWords expense in a given month? Is it better to contact a company to optimize our website for search engine searches? What else should I know or do? Is this the same as a sponsored link? Is it better to be above the organic links rather than on the right sidebar?

 

Basically please explain this shit to me at retard speed and guide me in the right direction.

 

For the most part, you bid on keywords and you ad will show up along the sides and the top for said keywords. You pay per click, and your cost per click is determined by the quality of your ad and the person bidding below you.

 

Organic listings are better... because they're free. If you are already have top spots, there is no reason to buy them. Yes, you should do some SEO for your site. Most companies that offer SEO service suck and are a waste of money.

 

Impossible to say what your costs would be without knowing your business. I used to spend $40-50K/month with them. If the traffic is good, then you buy as much as you can and spend as much as you can. That assumes the traffic you're buying has a positive ROI. It takes time to figure it out. Trial and error. Unless you are doing very broad targeting, the cost will most likely be limited by the amount of traffic available. You could spend $1MM month of you really wanted, but I'd question whether or not it was good traffic.

 

If you don't mind sharing what your business is or going into some more detail in public or PM, I can give you some more advice. Otherwise, can't help too much. Everything is different. One business could easily spend $50K, and another one could struggle to find even $1K worth of good traffic. It's not really the size of your business that affects your spending, but rather the amount of traffic for your niche/product/whatever.

 

e.g. You could have a $100MM/annun in a very high-tech field, but because your business is so specialized, you'll find that there is very little traffic available. Not many people, let alone consumers, are search for graphene products. On the other hand, if you are a $5MM/annun online retailer, you can probably get a lot of traffic because there are tons of consumers looking for common proucts.

From what I've learned, PPC (pay per click advertising) is a good way to figure out keywords and optimize. The first few free links that come up on Google will always be better than the best PPC link, however PPC is still better than being nowhere at all.

 

Finding a good SEO company would probably be your best bet.

For the most part, you bid on keywords and you ad will show up along the sides and the top for said keywords. You pay per click, and your cost per click is determined by the quality of your ad and the person bidding below you.

 

Organic listings are better... because they're free. If you are already have top spots, there is no reason to buy them. Yes, you should do some SEO for your site. Most companies that offer SEO service suck and are a waste of money.

 

Impossible to say what your costs would be without knowing your business. I used to spend $40-50K/month with them. If the traffic is good, then you buy as much as you can and spend as much as you can. That assumes the traffic you're buying has a positive ROI. It takes time to figure it out. Trial and error. Unless you are doing very broad targeting, the cost will most likely be limited by the amount of traffic available. You could spend $1MM month of you really wanted, but I'd question whether or not it was good traffic.

 

If you don't mind sharing what your business is or going into some more detail in public or PM, I can give you some more advice. Otherwise, can't help too much. Everything is different. One business could easily spend $50K, and another one could struggle to find even $1K worth of good traffic. It's not really the size of your business that affects your spending, but rather the amount of traffic for your niche/product/whatever.

 

Nicely said Brian.

 

Your last point is pretty key:

 

"It's not really the size of your business that affects your spending, but rather the amount of traffic for your niche/product/whatever."

 

For example in the information product business, there are 3 niches that have a lot of potential that can very easily sustain big budgets once the product is established:

 

Health & Fitness

Finance

Love & Relationships

 

For everything else in the information product world, not so clear.

For the most part, you bid on keywords and you ad will show up along the sides and the top for said keywords. You pay per click, and your cost per click is determined by the quality of your ad and the person bidding below you.

 

Organic listings are better... because they're free. If you are already have top spots, there is no reason to buy them. Yes, you should do some SEO for your site. Most companies that offer SEO service suck and are a waste of money.

 

Impossible to say what your costs would be without knowing your business. I used to spend $40-50K/month with them. If the traffic is good, then you buy as much as you can and spend as much as you can. That assumes the traffic you're buying has a positive ROI. It takes time to figure it out. Trial and error. Unless you are doing very broad targeting, the cost will most likely be limited by the amount of traffic available. You could spend $1MM month of you really wanted, but I'd question whether or not it was good traffic.

 

If you don't mind sharing what your business is or going into some more detail in public or PM, I can give you some more advice. Otherwise, can't help too much. Everything is different. One business could easily spend $50K, and another one could struggle to find even $1K worth of good traffic. It's not really the size of your business that affects your spending, but rather the amount of traffic for your niche/product/whatever.

 

e.g. You could have a $100MM/annun in a very high-tech field, but because your business is so specialized, you'll find that there is very little traffic available. Not many people, let alone consumers, are search for graphene products. On the other hand, if you are a $5MM/annun online retailer, you can probably get a lot of traffic because there are tons of consumers looking for common proucts.

 

 

Brian can you expound a bit more on the bidding process? What happens to the guy that bids less? Does his ad appear lower down?

 

Our business is local/city-wide although we draw most of our traffic from a 5 mile radius. This particular business generates 5MM/annum gross revenues as I mentioned. We spend a very low amount on total advertising, roughly 100,000/annum. We spend virtually nothing for online marketing currently other than our website hosting cost. And the things we currently spend on advertising are not generating new customers in appreciable amounts. Most are coming from online or word of mouth.

 

 

From what I've learned, PPC (pay per click advertising) is a good way to figure out keywords and optimize. The first few free links that come up on Google will always be better than the best PPC link, however PPC is still better than being nowhere at all.

 

Finding a good SEO company would probably be your best bet.

 

 

Can you give examples of good SEO companies with proven results? I'd happily pay X if I could get to the top of the organic link list?

I just came from a Social media bootcamp course an hour ago...dude tons of stuff to know...unless you have money to burn you better make sure you set up your keywords ect properly...I highly recommened this guy..he is in Canada but it shouldn't matter because it can all be done online. James is a master at this stuff.

 

http://businessfusionmarketing.com/

Also tried hiring a company to optimize my products in Google searches.

 

From what I understand when you pay for a key word in Google, let's say "awesome pie". When someone types "awesome pie" in Google, your website would appear on one of the first listings under this box for ads. However, you still wont be able to be on the top 10++ search hits.

 

In order for you to be on top of the search list. You should hire a SEO company to embed your website into code that would make you trend in Google. Google has this formula that says who should be on top of the search list and ranks them depending who has the more points on the formula. The main purpose of the SEO is to make sure that your website is optimized for the formula. Thus enabling your site to be on top of the list.

Another thing that seems to work very well with page ranks is backlinks. A backlink is a basically a link from another webpage to your site (e.g. blog links to your site).

 

If a lot of sites link to you, you are worthy of a great page rank on google. This makes sense of course, and the best part is you will rank well without having to go through the annoying SEO process (but that doesn't mean you should stop from doing that).

 

Of course the challenge is getting all of these backlinks, but good to know it's there.

Brian can you expound a bit more on the bidding process? What happens to the guy that bids less? Does his ad appear lower down?

 

Our business is local/city-wide although we draw most of our traffic from a 5 mile radius. This particular business generates 5MM/annum gross revenues as I mentioned. We spend a very low amount on total advertising, roughly 100,000/annum. We spend virtually nothing for online marketing currently other than our website hosting cost. And the things we currently spend on advertising are not generating new customers in appreciable amounts. Most are coming from online or word of mouth.

 

If you can PM me your niche (you don't have to be super specific,) I can give you some more details on the PPC side of things. One thing I can tell you off hand though is this: If all your business comes from word of mouth or within a 5 miles radius, there won't be a ton of traffic to buy. Consider the population in a 5 mile radius, then multiply that by the percentage of potential customers, then multiply that by the percentage of those who will search the internet, then multiply that by how many will click you ad.

 

However, that doesn't mean the traffic is bad. Quality is key. My friend runs a party bus business and generates a huge portion of his revenue from organic search listings. If you can profit $500/customer and convert customers at 1:20, then having even only 10-20 clicks per day can still bring in significant profit.

 

Consider the traffic volume, your lead conversion ratio, and your margins. If margins and conversion ratio are very good, then small traffic can still bring nice profits.

 

You bid a cost per click. Your bid is then multiplied by a quality score which they do not tell you, nor do they tell you how exactly it is computed. It's a combination of click though rate, page content, ad content, among other things. Bid*QS = X. Whoever has the higher X gets ranked higher. Your cost per click is then computed to be the cost per click or the advertiser ranked below you divided by your quality score, and up to your maximum bid price. That means you could bid significantly less the bidder below you, rank higher, and pay less than him. It's all about QS.

 

Does it sell mainly one specific product/service, or many?

 

As for SEO, you need basic SEO done on the web page. However, the most critical form of SEO is backlinks. Links from other sites with related content, good sites, and text related to your product/service is the most important part of SEO. You can rank for keywords you barely even mention on your site if the backlinks are related to those keywords.

 

I think most SEO people are shitty. SEO can drive huge revenue --> millions and millions! Heck, I made all my money from search traffic. If people were so good at SEO, why wouldn't they just do it themselves? If they could get good results, then they would make way more running their own businesses than doing SEO work for others.

 

Let me know if you have any more questions.

If you can PM me your niche (you don't have to be super specific,) I can give you some more details on the PPC side of things. One thing I can tell you off hand though is this: If all your business comes from word of mouth or within a 5 miles radius, there won't be a ton of traffic to buy. Consider the population in a 5 mile radius, then multiply that by the percentage of potential customers, then multiply that by the percentage of those who will search the internet, then multiply that by how many will click you ad.

 

However, that doesn't mean the traffic is bad. Quality is key. My friend runs a party bus business and generates a huge portion of his revenue from organic search listings. If you can profit $500/customer and convert customers at 1:20, then having even only 10-20 clicks per day can still bring in significant profit.

 

Consider the traffic volume, your lead conversion ratio, and your margins. If margins and conversion ratio are very good, then small traffic can still bring nice profits.

 

You bid a cost per click. Your bid is then multiplied by a quality score which they do not tell you, nor do they tell you how exactly it is computed. It's a combination of click though rate, page content, ad content, among other things. Bid*QS = X. Whoever has the higher X gets ranked higher. Your cost per click is then computed to be the cost per click or the advertiser ranked below you divided by your quality score, and up to your maximum bid price. That means you could bid significantly less the bidder below you, rank higher, and pay less than him. It's all about QS.

 

Does it sell mainly one specific product/service, or many?

 

As for SEO, you need basic SEO done on the web page. However, the most critical form of SEO is backlinks. Links from other sites with related content, good sites, and text related to your product/service is the most important part of SEO. You can rank for keywords you barely even mention on your site if the backlinks are related to those keywords.

 

I think most SEO people are shitty. SEO can drive huge revenue --> millions and millions! Heck, I made all my money from search traffic. If people were so good at SEO, why wouldn't they just do it themselves? If they could get good results, then they would make way more running their own businesses than doing SEO work for others.

 

Let me know if you have any more questions.

 

 

Interesting. Do you have any experience with specific SEO companies? If so which ones?

 

The hypothetical ratio you gave is close to my conversion needs. I require roughly $500 from each new customer, and would be happy with anywhere from 1:20 to 1:100. I would consider those numbers a success.

 

One thing I'd want to avoid if we hired an SEO company is dodgy stuff like finding our website address on a bunch of link farms. Any way to avoid these things?

 

Sorry to hijack thread Porter but I would love to learn a bit more about SEO & AdWords as well. My business does little advertising and educating myself on SEO & AdWords just hasnt happened at the rate I would like it to. Thanks for the info so far guys.

 

Brian, if you send Porter info on a specific SEO would you sent it to me as well. Thanks!

Sorry to hijack thread Porter but I would love to learn a bit more about SEO & AdWords as well. My business does little advertising and educating myself on SEO & AdWords just hasnt happened at the rate I would like it to. Thanks for the info so far guys.

 

Brian, if you send Porter info on a specific SEO would you sent it to me as well. Thanks!

 

 

Two that have been recommended to me are:

 

www.riseseo.com and www.rankpay.com

 

Rankpay has a calculator that will figure out how much it will cost but I don't even have the experience to understand the results. My search terms says for "Top 3" for Google it will cost $246 for monthly cost per ranking. How could this only cost me $246/month?

 

 

Interesting. Do you have any experience with specific SEO companies? If so which ones?

 

The hypothetical ratio you gave is close to my conversion needs. I require roughly $500 from each new customer, and would be happy with anywhere from 1:20 to 1:100. I would consider those numbers a success.

 

One thing I'd want to avoid if we hired an SEO company is dodgy stuff like finding our website address on a bunch of link farms. Any way to avoid these things?

 

No experience with companies. I did it all myself, and most people I know who have high ranking sites either have very big/popular sites that ranked organically/naturally for their keywords, or did the SEO themselves. I've never heard of people getting good results from a third party.

 

I think you might have misunderstood what I meant by conversions and margins, or I am misunderstanding you. Just to clarify in case we're talking about different things; it's not really a matter of what ratios you'd be happy with, but rather what they actually are. The real ratio could be 1:800 and could cost $0.20/click. That would mean you'd spend $160 for every sale you make. Do you profit at least $160/customer? This is just an example.

 

To determine if a keyword is profitable, you need:

Desired Profit - (CPC*Ratio) > $0

 

However, that assumes anything greater than $0 is worthwhile. Making $10 might not even be worth your time. There is no telling what the actual CPC will be (though it will be <= your bid) or what the ratio will be. You just have to try it and see what it is. They will change day by day, and you pay regardless. You do not get to say 'I will pay this maximum CPC as long as I convert 1:50." You pay no matter what, and it's your job to convert the click to a sale.

 

The only thing a SEO company could do to hurt your site is a) black hat SEO on your site itself hurt your company image. A links location cannot affect your site, otherwise you'd be able to hurt people's sites by just posting their links. Can't happen. It could hurt your company image though if the SEO company starts spamming comments on blogs and putting links on inappropriate or irrelevant sites. It's unlikely that would happen since your business is local. What I mean by black hat SEO is doing stuff that tricks the ranking algorithms or exploits them. There are always weaknesses and no algorithm is perfect, but doing stuff to take advantage of those things can have very negative effects. At the very least it will mean your site will suddenly rank shitty once that 'exploit' is fixed. At the very worst, it could get your site penalized. Google wants quality sites that rank well for real reasons, so you can imagine that they will penalize sites that are 'spamming' their index by exploiting it.

 

Getting your site listed on giant link farms won't hurt it at all, it just won't help it at all either. No link is a bad link per se, but a link from some bullshit link farm is pretty much worthless and will have almost 0 effect. Paying people to do that would be a waste of money.

 

The only way to see that you're getting what you're paying for is to a) see how your site ranks a few months down the line and make them tell/show you what they're doing. If they can't, then they are probably doing worthless stuff, or black hat stuff. However, there is no way to tell at first if what someone is doing is good. You can make some educated guesses, but it takes time to move up in rankings (some times taking many months before you start seeing improvements.)

Two that have been recommended to me are:

 

www.riseseo.com and www.rankpay.com

 

Rankpay has a calculator that will figure out how much it will cost but I don't even have the experience to understand the results. My search terms says for "Top 3" for Google it will cost $246 for monthly cost per ranking. How could this only cost me $246/month?

 

That's bullshit. Complete bullshit if you ask me. They also say only $400/month for 1-3 for shoes. Riiiight. Something tells me they aren't going to be able to outrank Zappos, Payless, Steve Madden and the likes. And if they could, why they hell would they not do it for themselves. Top 3 listings for 'shoes' could generate a hell of a lot more than $400/month without even owning a shoe store.

 

I only looked at rankpay for a second, but I noticed they say you only pay for what you rank for. Well, even if they would only charge you $246/month to get you in the top 3, it's probably very unlikely they could do it. Maybe they get you in the top 20 and charge you less. Keep in mind that the value of rank can decline considerably from one spot to the next. Page 2 isn't even remotely as good as page 1, and anything after that probably doesn't get much traffic at all.

 

Also, how would you ever know if they got you better listings or if you did, or if it just happened? Also, what happen if they get you to the top three and you decide you don't want to pay anymore. How would that work? It's not like they can call Google and tell them to remove you. They have ZERO control over it.

 

The only way they could control this would be to boost your rankings by adding links from only site THEY control. Then they could just remove your links and eventually you'd begin to drop. If this is what they do, would you really want to let all your stuff be controlled by someone else? Any SEO work you pay someone to do should be done and stay done. There should be no undoing. If you stop using their service, then they simply should stop working on your SEO, but they should not begin to work against you.

Sorry to hijack thread Porter but I would love to learn a bit more about SEO & AdWords as well. My business does little advertising and educating myself on SEO & AdWords just hasnt happened at the rate I would like it to. Thanks for the info so far guys.

 

Brian, if you send Porter info on a specific SEO would you sent it to me as well. Thanks!

 

I'll post all the info publicly unless something pertains to someones private business/info. I'll answer that stuff only in PM.

 

I won't just post tips/how-tos and stuff. Not because I don't want to, but because it would take forever and it's too general. I could talk for hours on the subject, so you can imagine how long it would take to type.

 

I'll gladly answer any questions though as best I can, and give you my opinions on things, so ask away.

 

Also, if you have any questions specific to your business/niche, you can PM me. Some people are understandably hesitant about giving that info out, but I can only help so much in a general sense. With some businesses I could probably tell you don't even both with PPC/SEO simply due to tiny search volume/market, while others I could probably say good luck competing with IBM or HR block for organic ranking because the niche is so broad and saturated. It really does depend considerably on the business/niche.

Most of our marketing dollars for my company go to PPC because we get the best return on our advertising with it. We have over 130 keywords for PPC. Six years ago this was not the case. Google is HUGE for us!

Porter,

 

Swil recommended Riseseo to me over a year ago. I have used Weldon ever since. I have been in the game for 2.5 years throwing money for SEO at my site and learned the ins and outs. Weldon is your guy.

 

Heres the deal though, your check book does not determine how fast you get to the 1-3 positions, if that was the case all the wealthy types would dominate. Instead Google builds in every factor you can think of to make it so no matter how good your core practices are it will take time. In a semi competitive market, plan on 8-12 months to be number 1, depending on many variables of course. I am in that type of market and Weldon can deliver a number 1-3 spot for each keyword in 5-7 months per, proven a few times over. I am also talking about doing this for the long haul and in perfect white hat form as google intended. If you cheat and cut corners you will not be promised a first place position for very long.

 

Seo practices,

 

Strong url

Strong relevant backlinks from websites that are relevant to yours

Press releases

Articles

Blog comments, relevant

many other smaller items

 

These steps happen daily and 300 days of the year so that you are feeding the fire constantly. This is why Weldon wins every time and beats out the competition.

 

Its expensive and once you start you cant stop if you want to remain at the top

 

Ppc is also important but you will pay for both types of traffic, its best to test the waters with PPC to see how your return on investment is first while beginning the long and slow task of SEO.

 

But................when you rank number one and your the new guy on the block in your field, its a fantastic feeling.....

 

Ppc, none other then Perry Marshall or those that have learned and practice his techniques

 

Seo and Ppc have to many losers in the market that make promises, steal your cash and waste your time.

 

Ive been through it all, trust me on this.

Tons of info, thanks guys! There is a shitload to learn...

I used to use Adwords a lot for some other online ventures I run outside of ADV.1 for PPC traffic to my sites... for a LOT of niche's you just get raped using google.

 

I switched over to 7search last month and cut my ad budgets to 1/4 of what they were for the same amount of CTR and traffic. Some real world numbers- car insurance niche that I am in can charge up to 8-10.00 PER CLICK on google - i'm getting the same CTR, ranking, and ad positioning for about 1.46 on 7search.

 

Ummm yea. I'm never using Google Adwords again.

Adv1, thanks for the helpful referral.

 

 

I will try them out, does anyone else know any other search engine like 7 search that are proven?

Just thought I'd chime in here with some other tips on Adwords:

 

First off, the CPC (Cost Per Click) will start out much higher in the beginning, and this turns a lot of new bidders off. For example, I worked with an insurance company a few years back who were mortified to learn that the average cost per click was 13.00 and up just to be in the top 3.

 

Most new bidders catch wind of these high estimated clicks and run for the hills. However, what they're not taking into consideration is that an experienced user can drive the costs down significantly. How? By learning the game Google plays.

 

This game is nothing more than "who can make us the most money at any given point?"

 

Often times this means displaying ads of those who are bidding much lower, not higher.

 

See, Google is going to crawl your proposed landing page, and give it a Quality Score. The higher your quality score, the better your chances of paying less. (Your quality Score is determined by a combination of factors - But relevancy is amongst the most highly weighted in this algorithm)

 

If you can manage a high quality score, and enjoy a high CTR (Click Through Ratio) - Then Google will prefer to display your ad over higher paying/bidding competitors because you're getting more clicks. Look at it this way:

 

Bidder A: Willing to pay 20.00 per click, but only 1 out of 100 people click on his ad

 

Bidder B: (You) Only willing to pay 10.00 per click, but 4 out of 100 people click on your ad

 

Even though you're paying less per click, you're getting 4 times as many clicks, so Google will display your ad more often, and allow you to get away with lower bids. It's not uncommon to cut click costs in half if you show a rising trend of higher click through ration, and Quality Score.

 

This is not too difficult to do if you follow a paste and stick bidding methodology. This is nothing more than running A/B style split tests. Never run just 1 ad - But run a combination of ads, and rotate them. Ad A runs 50% of the time, and ad B runs 50% of the time. After 50 - 100 clicks, stop, looks at the stats, see which ad win in conversion rate. Kick the loser to the curb, and write up another control ad. - Wash, rinse, repeat!

 

This keeps your conversion rates moving forward, click costs low, etc.

 

There's other little tricks of the trade such as properly running the Google Adwords Content Network, Facebook PPC ads, and a host of 2nd tier PPC engines.

 

I've almost always enjoyed lower costs, and higher conversion rates through Yahoo's PPC, but the traffic volume isn't there to justify avoiding Adwords. It's a supplement, not a replacement.

 

I live for this kind of talk, so feel free to contact me if you want more in depth. Heck, I'd be happy to show you the ropes. I can also recommend some great reading material.

There were some comments on SEO earlier. SEO can indeed be a beast, but I have to disagree strongly with those who say it is a viable alternative to PPC. Why?

 

THink of it this way. Let's say you put together a monster of a campaign that feeds you millions of visitors and an appreciable amount of your business comes from SEO... Sounds like heaven right? Free traffic.... (Buzzer sound!) - What happens if Google changes its algorithm and you get bumped off page 1?

 

Happens all the time. Just 1 month ago 11% of all sites on the web took a hard Google slap to the face. I personally know of more than a dozen companies who had their revenue cut by 40 - 50% or more overnight because of the "Farmer" update from Google. Heck, most the sites didn't deserve to be bumped from their spots -Just collateral damage, and they're still struggling to make up for it.

 

It's nuts to put your business in the hands of a business that could buck you overnight, and most likely will. Anyone who claims there's away to avoid it is lying, as no one knows the whims of Google other than Google itself.

 

Does this mean we should avoid SEO? Heck no! FREE traffic rocks! But at the same time, we must understand it for what it is, and prepare accordingly - Which means stocking up on multiple streams of traffic. Social media, PPC, video traffic, etc.

 

Keeps the lines of traffic coming in from multiple angles and multiple search engines so that you're not at the mercy of the "big 3."

 

So what makes for a great SEO campaign?

 

Understand that there's two primary factors at work here - On page, and off page.

 

On page SEO accounts for roughly 20% of your SEO performance and off page accounts for 80%. (In our best estimations of course)

 

On page is all the simple techy stuff at work. mostly keyword usage, page structure, avoiding messy code, heavy code, etc. Easy to do, and easy to manage. (Inter-page linking and fresh content are king though in my personal experience)

 

Off-page SEO is backlinking, and proof of popularity in the eyes of the search engines. There's a lot more to this, such as using anchor text enhanced links, link indexing, link velocity, and link variation. I'd be happy to expand more on this if interested. Just don't want to bore anyone to death here!

 

Tons of info, thanks guys! There is a shitload to learn...

I was thinking the same thing. Im in the same boat with one of my sites. Thanks for all the info everyone.