As a small business owner, everyone knows you have many hats to wear. In doing so, some things can be pushed to the back burner, meaning your business can end up suffering.

Take search engine optimization (SEO) and the importance it plays with your company website and bringing you customer traffic. Even if you are not an SEO expert by any means, the need to have some knowledge of how your website can benefit you is critical.

One aspect of driving buying traffic to your freewebsiteis pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

 

Conversion is the Name of the Game

So how do you get traffic that comes to your site converted into buying and not just browsing?

Whether through a Google AdWords campaign or other online search marketing vehicle like Yahoo or Bing, your goal is to have not only people clicking on your ad, but then turning as many of them as possible into purchasing customers. Remember, the aspect of quality over quantity should never be overlooked when trying to drive traffic to your site.

As noted, the economics of what you spend on your PPC campaign and what you get back on it is very important. In order to avoid racking up a negative cash flow, you should avoid spending more on your PPC efforts than what you get in return in a single conversion.

Before you embark on a PPC campaign either in-house or through an outside Internet marketing specialist, keep some factors in mind:

* You will only pay for those advertisement clicks that a visitor initiates;

* Customization is key with PPC, as you have regular budgets, time of display, and position that means you only spend the necessary funds to get your information out there.

* You and/or the individual in charge of your PPC campaign needs to compile your click-through-rate so that you can measure the metrics involving used keywords and terms;

* Speaking of keywords, it is very important that targeted keywords are chosen. If you sell life insurance, you want to use terms like life insurance quotes, life insurance premiums, affordable life insurance, life insurance needs, etc. Never go into a PPC campaign blindly and using keywords that do not correlate to what you are trying to sell;

* Be sure that your keyword, advertising copy, and landing site all coordinate and present a unified message;

* Over time you can decrease your PPC spending as your organic rankings increase, focusing in on keywords that convert well as opposed to those that simply rank well;

* You stand to save money with PPC advertising as opposed to other traditional forms of advertising such as print.

 

When all is said and done, remember that pay-per-click campaigns are relatively inexpensive, largely targeted, and results can be measured to see what is and is not working.

PPC are those three letters that need to be in your online business verbiage if you want to see profit and not those four letters that every business owner fears …. D-E-B-T.