Internet advertising, such as Google’s Pay-Per-Click program (also called “Adwords”) has garnered so much attention over the last few years, that many small and mid-sized businesses have started thinking of it as a “must have” for internet marketing.

It’s not.

However, PPC is a great way to completely blow your advertising budget and get nothing in return. If you don’t understand PPC, it will eat your lunch.

I first saw the potential $$ damage of PPC advertising when I started taking screenshoots of Google Adsense Ads in a particular niche that I wanted to enter. I noticed that every 2-3 weeks 95% of the businesses that were advertising in the niche stopped advertising - to be replaced by another group of advertisers who again, only lasted a few weeks. If they were making money with Google’s system, they would not have quit using it, correct?

The companies were essentially burning through their PPC budget, not making money, and then quitting. The unfortunate part (for me at least) is that they were driving up the cost of a click. It’s hard to compete with someone willing to spend $2 - $3 dollars on a worthless click.

That being said, however:

Adwords can help you create a phenomenal income stream and a hugely successful advertising campaign. But you have to set it up correctly.

Here are the top mistakes that I see companies make and what I insist they correct so that they don’t waste their ad budget.

1) Poor or No Search Engine Optimization. Look - when your website shows up in Google or Yahoo’s search results, and someone clicks on the link, you have just gotten a “free” click. Now, many small businesses complain and tell me that it is impossible to rank highly for some terms. Often that’s true, often it’s not. Regardless, being optimized for PPC keywords can not only get you some free clicks but also save you money on your adwords campaigns.

2) No Analytics or Tracking Program. Google Analytics is free. It takes moments to install on your website and it gives you tons and tons of information.

Do you know what keyword gives you the most traffic? Do you know what source brings you the most traffic? Do you know what your “long tail” keywords are? That is, the 80% of all search traffic that is unique and largely does not fit into your seemingly “most important” keyword phrase. Do you know which pages on your website get the most traffic? NO? Then, you’re not ready to maximize a pay-per-click campaign.

Plus, when you start using Adwords, you will want to measure and track each each click and its result for you. Did you get the sale or email sign-up? How many? How often? Which of your successes is due directly to your campaign and which was due to other factors such as natural search results? To make the most of a pay-per-click campaign you need analytics.

3) No Landing Page Testing. Here’s the big one: If you have not tested your landing page (the page that your visitor will reach after clicking), then you are likely burning money. If you are going to pay to send a visitor to a webpage, you want to make sure that you will get a specific result from it.

How do you know that your landing page is working? Are the colors inviting? Is the headline correct? Do you have the correct visual elements and sales copy? The only way to know for sure is to test, test, test, TEST.

Get a google account, sign up for the website optimizer and test versions of your landing page against each other. At minimum, test different headlines. That is, keep the entire page the same and change only the headline. If headline “A” creates more sales or conversions than headline “B,” then you have a winner. You can then move on to testing another element, perhaps you will want to add some graphics. Here are a few example of increasing landing page sales using google website optimizer.

Are you starting to get the picture? If you do your homework, or if you are qualified to work with me, and I do it with you, then you will begin your PPC campaign with all the right tools for massive success:

1) A webpage that is SEO’d to bring in free traffic and save you money on your clicks.

3) A landing page already optimized to make sales.

Now, you are ready to make money with Google Adwords.

One thing a good SEO gets in the habit of doing is back-link analysis. That is, they find out out what websites link back to their client websites as well as to competitors websites.

The reasons for doing this are many and varied. One is to find potential links for you and your clients’ websites. You may find a highly regarded blogger, link directory or influential website from which you can get a link. Another reason is competitive intelligence. You may find out information about your competitors business strategy, business partners and new projects.

If you want to know a simple and effective way to use Yahoo Site Explorer (the latest version as of today), click through to my brief screenshot tutorial. It will take you less than 5-minutes to read it and you can begin using the information on Yahoo’s free tool immediately: Brief Yahoo Site Explorer Tutorial.

A short list of companies that did not exist 15 years ago. Some are worth billions. Others are simply used by millions:

• Google
• Yahoo
• YouTube
• FaceBook
• WordPress
• Typepad
• Twitter
• Blogger

What are they going to say about you and your company 15 years from now?

What new technologies, businesses and trends will exist 15 years from now…that you don’t even know about yet?

That haven’t been invented yet?

With the demise of Yahoo’s free Overture service and Wordtracker’s drastic curtailing of their free trials, you may be wondering, “Where can I go for quick and free keyword data?” Here are a couple of free services to consider:

Trillian’s Keyword Discovery

Trillian has a free search term suggestion tool. It’s gives you over 100 terms, in order of occurrence, the way Overture used to do it: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Seo Book has pulled together a nice resource that includes info from WordTracker, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php

I will add other services to this post as time and energy permit.

cheers - Ryan Nagy

This topic will be old-hat to most SEO experts and consultants, but I wanted to mention it as it has come up in several client conversations recently. When you create Press Releases on PRWEB.com and other press release sites, the links that you have in the release do NOT pass Google Page rank to your website.

How do I know this? I know it from Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team:

…a legit press release can get you written up by reporters, or editors/sites may subsequently choose to link to your site. But the actual content of the press release itself doesn’t directly affect a site. For example, on http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/10/prweb296086.php those hyperlinks don’t help avatarfinancial.com (in Google).

Directly from Matt Cutts’ comments on his blog: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/