2009 May | The Gravytrain Blog - SEO, PPC, Web Design, Social Media & Marketing

Well, hello there and happy Friday!

Welcome to our new feature. Each week we’ll be bringing you a round up of some of the best blog posts/articles we’ve read relating to Search Marketing – so here goes!

SEO

Stephan Spencer (via Search Engine Land) rants about a site which despite being ‘unfriendly’ to search engines, still ranks well.

Small Business SEO

Sugarrae (Rae Hoffman) wrote an excellent post on how small businesses might increase their online presence. She’s used lawn care to illustrate her example, but the ideas can easily be applied to any business.

Search Engines

Google Searchology 2009, saw the launch of some new developments – Google Search Options, Wonder Wheel, Google Squared and Rich Snippets - see Matt Cutts’ thoughts and Danny Sullivan’s Live Blogging coverage.

Blogging

Preparing to launch your blog? Or maybe just considering your options? Don’t miss Lucy Langdon’s fantastic blog launch checklist on SEOmoz.

Social Media

There’s been a whole lot of noise about Twitter, but I couldn’t agree more with Dr Pete’s post about the real power of Twitter on SEOmoz.

Jennifer Horowitz talks us through the seven deadly sins of social media - check yourselves boys and girls :)

Web Design & Usability

OK, so this post wasn’t written this week, but I think it’s fantastic. Dr Pete’s created a really rather marvellous cheat sheet to designing a usable website. The man’s a genius.

PPC

Joe of PPC Hero wrote a great post about broadening exposure on the Google Content Network - now many advertisers elect not to run on the content network, but for some clients we’ve seen some really good results – if you’re thinking about trying it yourself, it’s a must read.

Aaaannnnd Finally, Friday’s Funny

Well there;’s not much point in doing this if we can’t make you smile. 1000 Awesome Things is a blog – where in, as the name suggests they count down 1000 awesome things. Kinda like a daily reason to be cheerful – enjoy and have a lovely weekend.

Is there something I’ve missed? Hit up the comments

Puzzled by PPC?

Don’t feel bad, whilst the overriding concept is simple, in practise PPC Campaigns can quickly become complicated.

But don’t worry, we’re here to help. Over the next few weeks we will be running a series of posts designed to give an overview of what PPC is all about, and give some handy hints and tips to improve your campaign along the way.

So, first things first. Are you sitting comfortably? Got your tea / coffee / water / G&T? Then I’ll begin.

What Is PPC?

PPC stands for pay per click. You might also see PPC referred to as Paid Search – it’s all the same thing.

So, you know what it stands for, but what does PPC mean? Well it’s advertising. Now where PPC differs from traditional advertising is that you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad (hence pay per click) rather than being charged for your ad to appear.

The PPC Model was created by Bill Gross, founder of GoTo.com (which later became Overture, and is now part of Yahoo) in 1998; and Google began offering PPC in 2002. PPC really changed the landscape of advertising on the internet – as prior to it’s inception most online advertising was based on ‘impressions’ – i.e. how many times the advert was viewed.

Why is there so much hype around PPC?

On the face of it PPC looks really good. PPC ads appear on search engine results pages, so effectively you are putting your message directly in the path of those looking for your products or services. As such – it’s a very powerful model in terms of targeted advertising. However, a poorly managed PPC campaign can burn through money and offer little in the way of return.

Which Search Engines Offer PPC?

All of the major search engines offer PPC advertising. however each search engine’s PPC programme has it’s own little nuances. We run campaigns for our clients on Google, MSN and Yahoo – however not all clients elect to run campaigns on all of the search engines.

Which Search Engines Do People Use?

In the UK, Google is strongly favoured – for the four weeks ending 9/5/09 Hitwise rank the top five search engines (measured by volume of searches conducted) as follows:

Google (.co.uk) 77.37%

Google (.com) 13.26%

Yahoo 2.86%

Ask 1.65%

Live (MSN) 1.49%

As such, you can see that by advertising on Google alone you can capture over 90% of the searches completed in the UK. Therefore many clients elect only to run their campaigns on Google.

The UK PPC Market

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau:

- Between Jan and June 2008 £981million was spent on paid search in the UK, accounting for 58.3% of the total amount of money spent on online advertising. – this represents year on year growth of more than 20%

- To put this in context the UK advertising market as a whole grew by just 0.7% for the same period, meaning that Press, Direct Mail, Outdoor, TV and Radio all experienced falling revenues

So, PPC continues to grow – but how do you take advantage of this potentially powerful media without getting burned? Be sure to check out the following posts in the series – we’ll be talking you through the processes we implement for our clients, so you too can create a PPC Campaign that really works for you.

Image credits jhritz

May 2009

An Introduction to PPC – Part One

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