Before you get yourself into the Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising venture, understand that there are 10 important things that you should know so you won’t get stuck in an advertising mess including wasting a lot of your time and money.

1. Landing Page. You should create a specific landing page for every PPC campaign. Don’t combine the products or services that your business is providing into just one landing page or even making your home page as your landing page.

2. Keyword Layout. To uncover the best arrangement of words, experiment with the keyword placement of your PPC ad. Try all possible line arrangements and take note of your click-thru rates, as well as, analyze whether your conversion rates remain the same or have changed.

3. Call to Action. Constantly utilize a call to to action like ‘click here’, ‘start now’, ‘join now’, ‘learn more’, and ‘don’t miss out’ to prompt your readers to click on your Pay Per Click ad, rather than letting your potential buyers advance to the next advertisement to see if it might provide something better.

4. Pay Attention. Monitor your PPC campaigns daily. There are many cases that your PPC advertising platform will freeze your campaign ads for a variety of reasons. For example, Google will stop ads that are ‘underperforming’. Pay close attention to your campaign and make changes when necessary to make sure all of your adverts stay active and make a lot of impressions.

5. Trademarked Names. Avoid using trademarked names like ‘Ebay’, ‘Amazon’, or ‘Walmart’ with Google Ad Words since these names could get you in trouble and even an Ad Words account suspension. Worst, you could be prosecuted for using these trademarks without consent.

6. Conversion and Traffic. Create a balance between convertibility and traffic levels on your PPC campaign. Does a free trial of the product or service get you a high conversion rate but low sales? Or you fancy a lower conversion rate but higher sales from sincere buyers? It’s your choice.

7. Contextual Advertising. Contextual advertising programs permit you to choose where your PPC ads will be published. Particularly if you notice an unusually high click-thru rate with the content network, or a low conversion rate, capitalize on this program.

8. Bid Higher. Getting your PPC ad on the first page of the search query has been proven to dramatically increase impression-to-click conversion rates. This has a compound effect with Google Ad Words since your ad positioning is determined by your bid multiplied by your click-thru rate.

9. Top 3 Slots. The top 3 slots get the most unsolicited clicks or ‘test’ clicks, and for sure you don’t want to pay for these, do you? So, avoid these top 3 slots and instead, aim for the succeeding positions which are still listed on the first page of the search query.

10. Landing Page Test. First optimize your landing page to achieve an optimum conversation rate. Second, to generate maximum targeted traffic to your site, always test your landing pages.

Knowing these 10 simple PPC search marketing facts is the first step to a successful PPC internet advertising campaign. I hope you find this useful and I wish you luck on your online advertising investment.

In the decade or so since the search engine was first invented, the field of Search Engine Optimization has evolved. Some obsolete information and old wives’ tales still persist, and these can damage your standings.

The myths and obsolete techniques fall into a few broad categories:

- Keyword density: There are many number of magic formulas touted on the internet, claiming that if you reach the perfect number of keyword instances per page, your rankings will go up. While you do need to have the keyword somewhere in your text in order to have your stated keywords considered relevant, artificially inflating the number of instances is a bad plan. First, it simply decreases the quality of your content. Second, the search engines may begin classifying your site as too spammy, and actually downgrade your rating.

- Tags and META: Loading keywords into your page headers and the meta data of your site is also an old trick that’s now likely to get you classified as spammy. Only keywords that are relevant to your content and specific to what your users are searching for should be included.

- Links: Some fraudulent SEO services, and some outdated pieces of advice, will associate your website with link exchange systems and link farms. Since the search engines keep track of these farms and exchanges, and using them is considered trickery, being part of them can actually significantly downgrade your rating.

- Submission to search engines: Once upon a time, submitting your site to search engines was a long and arduous process, which was nonetheless necessary to get a good place in the rankings. These days, search engine submission is generally not needed at all, since the engines automatically search for new sites. If they don’t find yours quickly, manual submission is quite easy and there are a few top search engines that have most of the market share.

Conversely, there are a few relevant and current strategies for climbing the ranks of search results. (It should come as no surprise that these are broader and more difficult or time-consuming to implement than the myths would suggest.)

- Unique content: Consistently offering high quality content that is valuable to your users, unique on the web, and from original sources is by far the best way to attract users – and search engines – to your site. If your site consists of copy, providing a unique value in information filtering, commentary and analysis, or other user-friendly services.

- Voice of authority: Along with unique content, offering an authoritative voice is a good way to increase your links and therefore your page ranking. Either become an authority yourself or offer interviews, quotes, or guest content by noted authorities in your field. If well-respected people and organizations recommend or reference your site, your popularity will rise.

- Professional networking for link sharing: As a web master, blogger, marketer, or business owner, professional contacts matter for a wide range of activities. Additionally, you may ask these people to link their sites with yours, or to provide expert and authoritative content for your site.

- Crawler files: Having a robots.txt file that is updated, accurate, and properly configured can make your site easier to catalogue correctly. Building the site’s architecture in a crawler-friendly manner can give your site a slight edge that may be worth pursuing. Do remember that search engine developers are concerned with their users and serving them appropriate content. They’re smart enough to outwit most technical tricks.