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This article is part 2 of 3 in a series written by Matt Walker, VP Technology Services for the SBA Network. You may contact him at mwalker@sbanetwork.org with any questions on the issues raised.

1. Search Engine Optimization
2. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
3. Internet Viral Marketing

When prospects are looking for solutions to their problems, they often start with the Internet.  Using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN, these prospects are presented with regular search results (as discussed last week) and also small text ads that appear alongside the search results.  These ads are inexpensive, highly targeted, and turned Google into a multi-billion dollar company, pennies at a time.

How do they work?  An advertiser uses the search engine's website to select specific keywords for which their ad will be displayed.  They create their all text ad with a link back to a website.  They also enter the price they are willing to pay each time the ad gets clicked on. Then when the keywords specified are searched upon, the ad is displayed, and if clicked on, the advertiser pays the search engine for the traffic.  Because the search engine gets paid each time the ad is clicked on, instead of each time the ad is displayed, this is known as Pay-Per-Click advertising.  When implemented properly, this can be one of the most cost effective ways to generate business online.

Overall it's a simple process, but generally takes knowledge of best practices, experience, and testing to have a successful campaign.  The most important tasks in maintaining a successful new campaign are:

• Selecting Proper Keywords
• Creating Compelling Ads
• Proper Bidding
• Testing
• Refining Landing Pages

For the rest of this article we'll focus most of our attention on selecting keywords using Google's AdWords program, but the techniques discussed work with all Pay-Per-Click providers.

Warning- the below content may be too technical for some readers. If this is you, don't feel bad- you can e-mail me for answers to any questions you have about these techniques at mwalker@sbanetwork.org. We are also presenting a hands-on Internet Marketing Workshop on November 7th in Long Beach, CA. At this workshop, we will be teaching how to implement these techniques. Contact Cory Halbardier at cory@sbanetwork.org to get more details about this event.

Proper keywords are the bedrock of any successful pay-per-click campaign.  To research keywords, I recommend using the Keyword Tool built into Google AdWords.  This tool allows you to seed a search with a website address (it will analyze the content and find relevant keywords) or a brief description of the website you will be advertising.  Perform this search, and you will be presented with a list of potential keywords.  This list provides estimates on advertiser competition and approximate monthly search volume. 

The ideal keyword will have little advertiser competition, and a high search volume.  Add all keywords that you feel represent terms on which your prospects will search.  You should use the drop down box for "Match Type" and add each keyword twice more to ensure that each word is entered as a broad match, phrase match, and exact match.  The reasons for using these match types and what they mean are beyond the scope of this article, but if you'd like to know more e-mail me or come to our Internet Marketing Seminar on November 7th where we will be discussing this in far greater detail. 

At this stage, you want as many keywords as possible- we will refine these later in the process (usually discarding 99% of them).  So if you think your list is unwieldy, don't worry, we will be shrinking it very soon.

Now that you have your keywords, create an ad and use a moderate bid to get things started.  Where this ad links on your website is not important...yet.  At this stage you want to get your ad running for as many keywords as possible, just to gather information about keywords.  Let these ads run for a bit to gather data about search volumes.

Now that your ads have been running for a few days, use Google's reporting tools to see which keywords generate the greatest amount of searches (this will be reflected by the number of impressions your ad garners).  At this point, you should keep the keywords with the greatest number of impressions, and focus your efforts on these (since they generate far more searches than the rest of the keywords on your list).  The rest of the keywords can either be paused or deleted, whichever you prefer.

It is typical for a campaign to start with a hundreds or thousands of keywords that are pared down to less than ten.

Take the best performing keywords and create separate ad groups for each one.  Each ad group should contain the keyword with the broad match, phrase match, and exact match.  Now you should write ads that are tailored specifically for each of these ad groups.  Use the search term in your ad copy if you can, and make this ad link to a landing page on your website that is specifically about the keyword.

This may seem like a lot of work just on refining keywords, but it is imperative to follow this process for your AdWords campaign to be a success.  This process will allow you to create highly targeted ads that achieve very high clickthrough rates, allowing you to purchase traffic for less than your competitors (and also present prospects with content that matches with what they are looking.)

Using the proper keywords can help you follow rule 1 of Mark Deo's Rules of Attraction- Become a bigger fish in a smaller pond.  By finding the keywords that generate the greatest search volume, and focusing our efforts on areas in which prospects express interest, we are able to refine ads that dominate small groups of keywords, instead of spreading our effort across large numbers of keywords that generate few searches.

To learn more about this process, and how to refine your ads to dominate these small keyword groups, please come to our Internet Marking Seminar on November 7th in Long Beach.  Go to: http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp for more details.

Next week we'll explore Internet based Viral Marketing, and how it can be used in conjunction with SEO and Pay-Per-Click to generate business online.

For detailed advice on any of the techniques mentioned, or for an analysis of your website and some specific recommendations on what you can do, please contact Matt Walker at mwalker@sbanetwork.org.

For more information about the Internet Marketing Workshop being held November 7th in Long Beach, go to: http://www.sbanetwork.org/classes/upcoming_classes.asp or contact Cory Halbardier at cory@sbanetwork.org.