What Is Pay-Per-Click? When To Use It - And When Not To

The only way to really guarantee top placement is to use pay-per- click advertising. (This is an advertising mechanism in which you pay for every click of a potential customer.) Most search engines offer this on a bidding basis, and if it generates more money than you spend on it, it can be sound business advise. In most cases, you would DO THIS LAST - after you optimize your web site and implement other promotional techniques. If you do an effective job with your website optimization and promotion, you may already come up top naturally and not have to use pay-per- click for several keywords. (This is expecially true for MSN or Yahoo.) Or if you choose to make a big (temporary) advertising campaign while you are optimizing (and have the money for this), then you may consider this.

Some keywords will cost more than others, depending on competition. Some will generate more paying customers than others. Do the math as you go along. Figure out the return on investment. This is seldom a one shot deal and often takes a few months of tweaking to get the optimum pay-per-click bid amount for the different keywords.

YOU WILL FIND SEO COMPANIES THAT GUARANTEE YOU TOP PLACEMENT FOR YOUR FAVORITE KEYWORDS. THIS IS HOW THEY DO IT. They use pay-per- click as part of the package and point to the pay-per-click listing, showing you your top placement. The natural links are normally much cheaper in the long run, since once you achieved a top ranking without pay-per-click you will have a steady stream of customers without having this kind of per-click fee.

Google is, of course, an exception. For the first year you will not likely rank for most of your desired keywords despite any valiant efforts on your part. During this period, I would encourage using Google's pay-per-click (AdWords). Although Google is the slowest to recognize your natural ranking - it will give the greatest return in the long run. While you do this - use the information they give you while you manage your pay-per-click keywords. See what is used most often - and what gives you the most sales (conversions). They have tools to help you with that.

ANY SEO FIRM that promises or guarantees top placement for competitive keywords is either selling you pay-per-click or is being boastful. Be wary with your money. You don't need an SEO expert to sign up for pay-per-click. You may use one to help you find the right keywords or perhaps to handle optimization techniques. If they are selling you a package, pay-per-click is often a justifiable part of it. However, don't let such a promise be a decision factor in selecting an SEO expert.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites. http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com | http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com

Are Your Internet Marketing Efforts Escaping the Dreaded Kuske Principle?

At one point in college I studied to be a teacher. And I had a professor who knew education theory like most of us know our names. And I learned an incredibly valuable lesson from him that I've found holds true in just about every area of life.

Unfortunately, the lesson wasn't something he tried to teach me. It was, though, one of the most important lessons I've ever learned and one that guides everything I do in Internet marketing. And that's why, with both apologies and thanks to him, I've given the principle his name: the Kuske Principle.

As I say, Professor Kuske was an encyclopedia of information about education. But he wasn't all that successful at practicing it.

You always knew when Professor Kuske was about to impart a particularly important point. He would lean way back in his chair, put his fingertips together in a steeple and start tapping them. A smug expression would creep over his face. He would let loose with the vaguest, most obscure question you could imagine, then sit back and wait for us to answer.

We never had any idea what he was getting at. The first couple of days, some of us made fumbling attempts to answer. But nobody ever answered his questions right. No matter how close you got, it was never quite what he wanted. And his expression would grow more and more smug until he finally answered it himself.

Now, I know he was following good educational principles, trying to get us to think through the questions and figure out the answers for ourselves. But his questions were so vague that there was no way in the world ANYONE had a ghost of a chance of getting them right.

Eventually, we gave up even trying to answer. Every time he asked a question, everyone quickly stared down at their notes until he proudly revealed the answer.

The great life lesson I learned from him came when I ventured out to teach my first practice class. I quickly grew frustrated with my students. They didn't even try to answer my questions. They just stared down at their desks.

And then I noticed.

I was leaning way back in my chair. My fingers were tapping together in a steeple. And I realized I was asking questions every bit as bewildering as Professor Kuske's best mind-muddlers.

Without intending to, I was patterning myself after Professor Kuske.

What I realized is that when people learn a new skill, they subconsciously pattern themselves after bad examples rather than good. I've seen this at work in just about every field I've been in since then. And Internet marketing is no exception.

Why is it that new business owners write copy for their site that is either terminally dull and lifeless or drowning in hype? It's the Kuske Principle at work. Why do new web designers cram every distracting animation and do-dad they can into their site? Again, it's the Kuske Principle.

Good writing, good design, and good marketing come across to us as so natural and, well, so right that we're simply caught up in it. We lose sight of all the techniques and craftsmanship that made it so effective.

Bad writing, bad design, and bad marketing, on the other hand, are so blatant in their attempts to manipulate that we are painfully aware of all the awkward pieces that are badly cobbled into them.

Sure, we're turned off by bad examples, but when called upon to write copy or design a site or market a product, what techniques for doing so come to our mind? Of course! Those wretched techniques that were so obvious are ingrained in our minds as the way that task is supposed to be done.

So how can we avoid falling victim to the Kuske Principle in our businesses?

The moment I realized what I was doing in the classroom, I started searching my memory for classes I enjoyed and learned the most in. And I started to consciously watch those teachers who made classes a joy and an adventure. I consciously studied the ways they taught.

It takes that kind of conscious effort to discard the bad examples and learn from the good. But consciously studying those examples of good marketing that you come across - the ones that we would otherwise simply get caught up in - is an education you can't buy at any price.

Keywords: internet marketing, training, starting business online

About the Author Jeff Baas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA More Details about starting small business online here. Jeff Baas is a long-time student of the steps to success required in a wide variety of disciplines. He's found the same principles lead to success in virtually every field, and failure comes when people try to skip around them. See these principles applied to Internet marketing in the Seven Steps to Starting a Small Business Online in the articles, product reviews and free marketing strategies newsletter at http://www.onestopwebsupport.com