Ever since its advent, PPC marketing has been in vogue as it enables quick success in the online business. Pay Per Click marketing is the most viable option for any website to get quick exposure and bring in online business. But it can also be heavy on your pockets at the same time since you’ve got to pay to Google every time your ad is clicked. The amount that you pay per click is also fixed by Google on the basis of its algorithms. Therefore, a big challenge in PPC campaign is to avoid click fraud as it might make you spend more amount on advertising. Click fraud is an ongoing issue with all the online advertisers. Let’s understand first what is meant by Click Fraud before plunging into its solutions.

Click Fraud! I haven’t heard of it.

If this is your reaction then you certainly need to read this before you get yourself into troubles over PPC campaign. Click fraud is to deliberately swell up the number of clicks on the advertisement.  Google defines it as, “Click fraud refers to clicks generated with malicious or fraudulent intent.”

For better and in depth understanding, this definition by Wikipedia is useful, “Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link”

However, whatever be the definition but one thing is clear that click fraud is an internet crime and that you are getting cheated and paying more for your PPC campaign.

Who are involved in such activity?

Mostly the people are very much aware about the PPC marketing and therefore they avoid clicking it if they are not interested in what the ad is showing to them. But there are other kinds to who click them without any interest in the ads or perhaps click them with personal gain intention. So, whom do you think would involve in this!

Firstly, the people who are also members of Google AdSense or similar other pay per click affiliate programs. These people click the ads that are placed on their website as they get to earn few bucks through it from Google.

Secondly, the competitors or rivals of the business might also employ this unethical means to trigger off more advertising costs for the competitor.

How To Save Your Bucks In This Scenario?

It’s obvious that you can’t keep a track on who’s clicking your ads all the time. Therefore, one of the best means to employ is to optimize your ads that are placed on various websites. Optimized ads can provide you with better ROI (Return On Investment).

Also, you must go through the Google AdWords eBook thoroughly as they have in detailed information on the ways and means to enhance the impact of pay per click ads.

By now, Pay Per Click advertising has gained much popularity and all most all online businesses go for it for getting quick relevant traffic to your website. However, if you are new to PPC or wish to start out with PPC campaign then here’s the basic that you should know.

Know About Google’s Quality Score?

If you are running PPC campaign through Google Adwords then you must know about Quality Score. Quality Score is one of the Google’s algorithms that enable to know the quality of your pay per click search ad. It is this algorithm that has an impact on your Cost Per Click i.e. CPC and also the placement of your ads in the search. A good quality score can lead you to have better placements and less Cost Per Click. In short, Quality Score is rating of your landing page according to the relevancy of the keyword and information on your landing page.

A Quality Score is based on several factors such as the quality of your landing page, the CTR (Click Through Rate) of the targeted keywords and all the ads that you have in your account. a good landing page according to Google for Quality Score is determined by the Google’s bot. therefore, it’s important that the landing page has certain essential features that are easily accessible by the bot such as having relevant text, H1, Meta tags, keywords, and descriptions. All these put together will enable you to get you better Quality Score.

What Are The Impacts Of Low Quality Score?

If you land up having low quality score then you can end up in inflating your Cost Per Click, not only this but it also makes you get your ad displayed below on the page. Both these factors are hazardous for your website business since your ad is pushed down on the page, it will not have good visibility, and you would be paying unnecessarily without getting the expected exposure of your website. A low Quality Score will also lead you to have inactive keywords for search.

How To Perk Up Quality Score?

The key to getting a good Quality Score is to have a relevant landing page. A landing page is the page that will open up once the viewer of the ad clicks on it. Therefore, you need to make a landing page that is not only attractive to the viewer but also the search engines. The important points that you need to bear in mind while making an effective landing page are:

• Create landing page with relevant content that is informative as well as original.
• Developing one landing page for each Ad group is also a best way to enhance the impact of your PPC campaign.
•  You must create the landing page in a way that fulfills the customer’s expectations too. Since they click it by getting attracted to your ad make sure you hold their interest and convert them to your customer.
• Link the landing page to your private policy too.

It’s a merry-making time for everyone and all wish to be there with their family and friends for spending good time during festive vacation. Here comes the season when everyone’s busy but it’s not really with work but with the social visits and spending some great time with the friends and family. Therefore, a little drop is common till the New Year’s Day.

In this holiday season, most of the websites witness a slowdown in the number of customers and visitors. In fact, the slack the business starts right from the day of thanksgiving, but that is hardly for a week whereas, in December the trend continues to dip even further. It is a known fact that holiday is counted in one of the major reasons for the dip in the numbers of visitors and it can at times become half of the total website visitors in the month of December.

Most of the people surf during their free hours in office but since they are busy with enjoying their vacation. It is much obvious that the frequency of their search would decline during holidays. However, the only websites getting hit too much would be the one that are into selling or offering seasonal or holiday related items.

So if you posses an online presence which is not related to holiday related / seasonal items then the dip is sure to follow.

On that happy note,

“A little smile, a word of cheer, A bit of love from someone near, A little gift from one held dear, Best wishes for the coming year… This makes a Merry Christmas!”

Wish You All Happy Christmas! Have Fun To Your Heart’s Delight!

No matter how much ever the companies resisted the social media previously, but now they have come to realize that to resist social media can be damaging to the business. It’s like all your customers are already there and by now even your competitors are there. So the only one missing all is, you, if you are not there. However, before plunging into the ocean of social media, it is necessary to be clear regarding certain social media myths.

Myth no.1- Social Media Is Cheap

Yes, certainly most of the social media websites are free to use for social media marketing including Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter and so on. There is also a long list of free blogging tools such as WordPress, Blogger.com, and many more. But as the saying goes, nothing’s free in this world. The integration of these social media marketing tools with your corporate marketing program involves a fair amount of skills, time, and surely money. There is a vast sea of blogs and profiles out there on the social media so if you have a common or an average website or presence on any of these social websites then it is almost equivalent to not having one. For this, you certainly need to invest some amount in getting some additional widgets in your blogs or some attractive interactive features in your website or spend on Google Adwords. This will make you stand out from the rest and creating this uniqueness is certainly not that cheap.

Myth no.2- Any Tom, Dick, and Harry Can Do It

Social media work is not as simple as it appears to be when it is integrated with corporate marketing campaign. There are lot of concerns there of marketing such as advertising, digital and PR. You surely need someone well experienced person as no theory or opinion can match it. A successful social media marketer has acquired rich experience in blogging, handling and managing forums, comment postings, participating in contests, and much more.

Myth no.3- It’s a Short-cut to Success

Well this can be true, but not always! As mentioned earlier it is not a child’s play and integrating a social media marketing work with any business requires efficiency and strategic skills to hit the bull’s eye. This is not discourage you and say that you can’t achieve quick success with it but it’s just that it will require lot of work, experience, strategy and money on it to achieve that quick success through it. 

Myth no.4- The Results Of Social Media Marketing Cannot Be Measured

There are several tools and methods that can enable you to get hold of your social media marketing efforts. The click-through your company website, the comments on the blog posts, real-time blog advertising are just to name a few. You can also avail yourself with the statistics of Google Trends, Twitter search, Google Analytics, BackType and various others.

Myth no.5- It Can Be Done in-house

As discussed earlier, there is plenty of efforts and experience needed for successfully handling a social media marketing campaign. Since there are proper strategies to employed, relevant contacts and tools and much more, it is difficult to do it all in-house. It also needs search engine optimization, advertising, and much more. There is definitely a need for a well experienced professional social media company for it.

Social media marketing is hyped a lot these days but there is still no particular strategy or tactics to follow in this field that can be considered as a standard form.  However, there are certainly some proactive actions that have proven to be quite successful for the social media marketing. Here are these five important forms of actions for achieving success when marketing through social media.

First of all, it’s the declaration of the identity. A communication based on identity declaration happens to create really positive results for the online marketing. This enables you to declare who you are, what you do, where are you located and how can you be reached. Hence, it answers all the Wh questions of any visitor or prospective client. You can include almost all details here that you have mentioned in your about us page of your blog or website. There are plenty of such websites which can serve the purpose of an extended business card for you such as LinkedIn, Ziki, ClaimID, Naymz.

Next to follow action is establishing an identity through association. This kind of communication is established by being friends on MySpace, Orkut, Hi5, and other such similar social networking websites. This can increase the chances of customer conversion as they can associate themselves with you and your business since they already know you. This is further enhanced by the social bookmarking websites as your friends tend to bookmark your websites and share with others too. Hence, sites like del.icio.us, Furl, blummy, StumbleUpon can get you a lion’s share of publicity.

Thirdly, a communication initiated by the user. Here the user or the visitor of your blog or website can declare their identity or ask any question regarding you and your business. This is like ‘service to man is service to God’ certainly God here is replaced by business, its great service to your business in reality. The better you serve your visitors, viewers, friends with the information they need the better you will score on trustworthiness. For this, forums, groups, community sites are mainly the best options.

Fourth action is the communication initiated by the provider. This can really be an effective way of excelling in your business provided if you can take it in a positive way. This is to ask your customers or viewers to give their opinions, reviews on your business, products, services or anything that you are dealing in. welcome their useful suggestions, appreciations as well as their criticism too. One of the most important things here is to be polite and maintain the respect of the reviewer and appreciate the time that they have given to you. This can be done on social networking websites such as Friendster, Bebo, Consumating and MySpace.

The last action for successful social media marketing is in-person communication. Nothing works better than a one on one interaction between the two people. It doesn’t matter if the interaction takes place through chat or online call. This is certainly the best action for winning the hearts of customers. For this social media websites such as Meetup, BarCamp, and Eventful and so on are already there for your advantage.

So now that you know the kind of actions that can help you gain business through social media networking, make sure you make the best out of it. Wishing you all the success!