Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising is one of the most effective methods for drawing traffic to a website or blog. At the same time, it is potentially one of the most costly methods for marketing. If done correctly, however, the return on investment (ROI) will pay off quite nicely.
A PPC advertising campaign is one that involves paying to have your blog appear among the “Sponsored Links” or the “Sponsor Results” you find on the right hand of the screen when you perform a search with a search engine such as Yahoo or Google. You accomplish this by placing a bid on certain keywords and keyword phrases. Then, every time someone enters those keywords into the search engine, your blog will be brought up in the sponsored results. Every time someone clicks on your link, you will have to pay the search engine a certain pre-determined amount.
As you can imagine, paying for a PPC campaign can be quite costly. After all, even if you are paying just five cents per click and you have 1000 clicks per day, that is $50 per day. That comes out to be $350 per week, which can eat away at your marketing budget rather quickly. Now, paying $350 per week may seem worthwhile if it is bringing you 7,000 new visitors. But, if only one or two of those people are people who are actually interested in your blog, the cost certainly isn’t worth it.
So, how exactly do you make your PPC campaign worthwhile? This is where your marketing research comes in handy. Since you now know the needs of your target audience, you can select keywords for your PPC campaign that will draw in visitors who are interested in what your blog has to offer. 
Be certain to select keywords that are very specific in order to bring in the right type of traffic. For example, if you are maintaining a blog about dog training, you should not set up a PPC campaign based around the word “dog,” as this can bring in visitors who were looking for information about dog breeds, searching for dog food, trying to find instructions for building a dog house, or any other possible term associated with dogs. Rather, select keyword phrases that are more specific to dog training in order to bring in the right type of web traffic.
When searching through the various keywords you can select for your PPC campaign, you should look for phrases that are popular while still being within your budget. You should also place a bid on phrases that will allow you to be within the top 5 results. That way, they will be displayed on the first page of the search engine results and will be more likely to be seen by your target audience.
If you are looking for a quick way to boost traffic to your site and if there is room in your budget, PPC advertising is a good route to take. Otherwise, you may want to explore other methods of marketing that are not quite so costly.
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Hi Larry,
Honestly speaking, I have never tried PPC advertising for blogs before. Don’t really find it worthwhile doesn’t it? But on the other hand, if you are doing affiliate sales on your blog then it would be different.
Your advice on doing market research first before use PPC is a good one. This will reduce the risk of using PPC as a form of advertising.
Wei Liang
Wei Liang | ABloggerBlogs last blog post..Lesson 16: Comment Marketing
You have to do the research before you decide PPC is good for your blog. PPC might be a good thing to try if you have a new blog and no traffic and want to get started building your base. But make sure you are getting the visitors you actually want.
Dang Larry, I gotta say as a PPC noob (also haven’t done it yet) this is probably the clearest explanation of things I have come across…and that’s saying a lot considering the serious info overload surrounding PPC. LOL
i guess the main reason I haven’t is lack of “spare”? cash flow and I don’t “get” all the keyword research stuff yet….bad combination as you pointed out.
You also gave me a great idea for a controversial post.
Dennis Edells last blog post..8 Effective Viral Marketing Techniques
Thanks Dennis, Can’t wait to see your post
[...] on Marketing your Blog. Part 1 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog: An Overview Part 2 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising [...]
I’m not sure when, but it’s comin! Some already saved in drafts.
Dennis Edells last blog post..8 Effective Viral Marketing Techniques
SEO web traffic pay per click service ensures your ppc campaigns are targeted and affordable. One of the major thing about paid search is (such as ppc and contextual advertisings) you can find what yours ROI on advertising spend is at the each specified click.
jacobmadisons last blog post..Hire Us
Hi Larry,
I just signed up a $1000 home study course with a former Google employee who used to be one of the pioneer staff in Google. I’m very excited of how he generate millions a year with just Adwords.
I’m glad to read your post and can’t wait for my course to arrive too. And I hope that I’ll achieve great results with PPC!
Alex- The Blog Traffic Guys last blog post..How Blogger Group Can Increase Your Traffic By 1000%
Good Luck and let me know how it goes
[...] series on Marketing your Blog. Part 1 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog: An Overview Part 2 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Part 3 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Social [...]
Just found your blog today. Really like it – keep up the good work. But hey anything else on this topic you want to share?
Thanks for this. We’ll be doing a follow-up article soon, but a good plan would be this: we just launched our new forum (Beta), yesterday, here: http://clubblogger.com/club-forum/ As you’ll see, it’s literally brand new, but will populate soon as our moderators and users getting moderating and using! We’ll open a PPC forum – please drop in with any comment/queries and we’ll keep it in mind when the new post goes live. Best, ClubBlogger