When it comes to driving traffic to your website there is little that can offer you a higher return on investment (ROI) than if you take advantage of all the freebies in the online world. However, though the strategies may be free they do include much of your time and efforts so really how free are they?

This is not to disparage the free stuff, far from it, but it is to say that paid advertisements should also have a place in your marketing strategy. There are so many different ways in which you can pay to advertise your website, but you want to be sure that you will be getting the best bang for your buck (or ROI). Here are some sure ways to drive traffic to your website that are cost effective as well:

E-Mail Newsletter: You can find companies that will put together e-mails in the form of a newsletter and they will include a link to your website somewhere within the newsletter. These newsletters will be sent out to an opt-in group of consumers and they will all be interested in your area of business. These newsletters are in the form of information, not advertisements so they have a good chance of being read. If the reader clicks on your link then bang, you have targeted traffic.

Rent or Buy Targeted Lists: If you have a flare and a knack for e-mail campaigns then all you need is a list of willing people and you can have at it. These lists are actually for rent or for sale and these lists can be a bargain if your e-mail campaign is good enough. Be wary when you do obtain these lists as you need to be sure that the names are all opt-in. If they are just random names then you will be risking having your campaign and yourself being classified as a SPAM producer. This is bad because online there is no quicker death than SPAM. SPAM is like the plague and when you get this classification nobody will want to come close to you. Knowing that don’t just go with the cheapest list. Anyone can throw together a list of names and e-mails in a couple of hours, but if those names do not want to be e-mailed then they are no good to you. Stick to lists that are derived from an opt-in scenario and you will be just fine.
Banner Ads: Banner ads were extremely popular back in the ‘Good Old Days.’ However the click through for banner ads is so low now that you literally have to wait months at times in order for the banner ad to pay off. Don’t pay too much for this type of advertisement and when you are looking at potential sites to place your banner ad on be sure that they have a high page rank with Goggle. Yes you will pay more for a higher page rank, but if you advertise on a low page rank website you will have to wait even longer for results than if you go with a website that has a higher page rank.

These three paid advertisement methods only scratch the surface when it comes to how to drive targeted traffic to your website, but they are all effective. Just keep in mind that there are literally thousands of companies out there that will promise you the world but not delivery you squat.

Many advertising companies will drive traffic to your website for a fee, but if this traffic is not your target audience then what is the point? By implementing the strategies above you can be sure that whatever traffic does come your way will be interested in what you have to offer.

When you consider what type of pay-per-click (PPC) campaign you are going to do you first have to have an objective in mind. Because there are different strategies that can be employed with PPC you need to know exactly what your goals are before you ever give your first bid. There are two questions you absolutely must answer before you begin your PPC campaigns:

1. What is your budget for your campaign?

2. What time frame will be given to determine the effectiveness of the campaign?

By answering these two questions first you will be able to better know what type of PPC bidding strategy you should use.

There are three PPC bidding strategies that are often used and each can be broken down into selection of keywords, strategy for bidding, and objective of the strategy.

Here is how the three break down:

Branding or market exposure: Your ultimate goal here is implied in the name; getting as much exposure for yourself as possible. This strategy will have you going after potential customers that may not know anything about your products or services. The hope is that once you attract their attention that they will indeed be interested in what you have to offer. This strategy grabs users when they are in their research phase of the buying cycle and are getting general information on whatever it is they are eventually going to buy.

Selection of keywords: With this strategy you want to focus on a wide range of keywords in order to gain the most exposure possible for yourself. Focus on keywords that receive the most traffic, which are also referred to as the head of your list.

Strategy for Bidding: in order to properly employ this strategy you have to bid high. How high? High enough that your keywords are at the top of the list so that your business name and your ad are seen as much as possible when a basic search is conducted.

Objective of the strategy: This strategy is done to gain you some notoriety and is not meant to be anything more than a short term strategy that is developed over time into a more measurable strategy in terms of your ROI. This type of strategy is great for the initial break through into the search engine results pages (SERPs) but will prove too costly if used too long.

Conversion or ROI Strategy: This strategy focuses on getting the highest possible number of conversions or clicks throughs and will hopefully show an effective ROI for all of your keywords. To accomplish this you must take great care in selecting keywords and need to be constantly refining your keywords to ensure a high ROI.

Selection of keywords: With this strategy you will give much focus to long tail terms that will help to qualify your potential customers before they ever get to your website. This is done by targeting keywords that generate a high number of conversions.

Strategy for bidding: This requires some effort on your part. You have to figure out which keywords are giving you the most bang for your buck or the highest ROI. After you figure this out you can bid higher for the keywords that are returning more and less for those that are underperforming.

Objective of the strategy: You want to generate as many conversions or click throughs as possible with this strategy. By constantly monitoring and adjusting your keyword bidding you can accomplish your goal without too much trouble.

The sales cycle strategy: This particular strategy actually takes a little of each from the first two strategies. Here you use both broad and targeted keywords to attempt to capture users in every phase of the buying cycle.

Selection of keywords: Because you are attempting to get the users at every stage of their buying cycle, your keyword selection will of course be very broad.

Strategy for bidding: Bid lower on the more general terms that a potential customer might use when they are just beginning their search and bid higher for keywords that are going to have a high conversion rate because it is what the potential buyers will actually be looking for. This is a three tier bidding approach. For example, you will bid lower on the keyword lawnmower because it is a very general term. You would then bid a bit higher for a self-propelled lawnmower as the person conducting this search is more definite on what they want. You would then bid the highest for a keyword like John Deere self-propelled lawnmower because a person conducting this search knows exactly what they want.

Objective of the strategy: This strategy is designed so that you will have visibility to a potential customer no matter how detailed they get with their search or regardless of what stage of the buying cycle they are in.

Regardless of which strategy you choose to go with you need to be sure that you are constantly optimizing and enhancing your campaign. You can try one or all of the strategies here, just be sure that you are not wasting your time and money by not following your ultimate goals and your overall business plan.
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For years it has been hotly debated as to whether or not Google would give brownie points to those who participate in their AdWords campaigns, which is a form of Pay Per Click (PPC). There are many ‘experts’ in the field who will tell you this is not the case and that there has never been an example of PPC adding to the validity or popularity of your organic rankings as the two are not one and the same. Still there has been growing speculation for some time now that Google does indeed give ‘special treatment’ to those who show them advertising dollar love and a recent study conducted by two NYU professors may have just proved the conspiracy theorists point.

According to professors in Anindya Ghose and Sha Yang in a recent study, the presence of organic listings on a search engine such as Google definitely impacts the click-through rates of PPC advertisements and the same is true for the inverse. This was the first experimental study that evaluated the impact of advertising on search engines examining all three levels of participants, which are the consumers, advertisers, and the search engines themselves, in relation to both organic listings and PPC.

If this is indeed true that Google organic listings are without a doubt being influence by PPC then why do you think that is? Google revenue perhaps? When you think about it Goggle is would be very motivated to have websites that advertise with them be at a higher ranking on their search engine. If more visitors find these websites then more visitors will have a chance to see the advertising making them more effective and thus making the website owners more likely to continue to advertise with Google. Once again it looks as though the all mighty dollar may have spoken.

Of course Google cannot come right out and admit this, nor would they if they wanted to. Organic listings are supposed to only be about SEO and relevance where as anyone can utilize PPC regardless of how SEO-illiterate you are. But just because you spend more money on the advertising side of Google’s AdWords than somebody else, does that meant that you should get top billing in the SERPs? No it does not and for those who spend many months or even years trying to accomplish top rankings the old fashion way it represents an absolute nightmare.

While the evidence is thin at this point in time there are bound to be more than just one set of professors who are curious enough to dig deeper into the on goings of Google and if and when this story is broken, it will be a bombshell. Ghose and Yang plan on releasing a paper titled, ‘Analyzing the Relationship between Organic and Sponsored Search Advertising: Positive, Negative or Zero Interdependence,’ but they have yet to say if they will charge for it or not. So in Google’s defense, these professors could just be looking to get rich quick. Then again, they may be on to something big. Even if their story is bogus it is sure to draw a multitude of interest from outside parties looking to find some dirt on the search engine powerhouse.

However, messing with Google is like messing with the Mafia and requires nerves of steel. Because Google is pretty much its own entity they have no one looking over their shoulder and are self-governed so there really are no set of rules that they have to follow that are not their own. To add to that, Google is constantly changing its own ‘rules’ on ranking and SEO requirements and if you decide that you want to cross them then you may not have to sleep with the fishes, but your website’s rankings certainly will.

Only time will tell what the truth is when it comes down to Google and the mystery of the great organic listing influenced by PPC. Just keep in mind though, it is Google, so if they do end up being in the wrong, they simply have to change the rules once again and then they will be in the right. For Google, it is good to be king.