Great post on PPC marketing for your blog.

Pay per click marketing can be very effective for getting the word out about your blog. This is especially true if you have affiliate programs you promote there. Many bloggers know what pay-per-click is, of course, but they don’t have a full understanding of the various elements of it.

Following is a brief overview of pay-per-click, and three key factors that go into making up a successful pay-per-click ad.

Definition of Pay Per Click

Pay per click is simply a paid way of driving traffic to an online presence (blog, website). The marketer pays a fee every time a web surfer/visitor clicks on their ad.

The overriding goal of pay-per-click campaigns is to drive “qualified” traffic to a site. Once there the visitors are then asked to do something, ie, make a purchase, subscribe, call for more info, ask for a free quote, etc. You, the marketer, determine what action you want the visitor to take.

While these ads are small, they can be extremely difficult to write – if you don’t know what you’re doing. Following are three key areas every pay-per-click ad should pay attention to.

3 Key Elements of a Successful Pay Per Click Ad

Keywords: This is where you make or break your pay-per-click ad campaign. Your keywords should of course be highly relevant to your niche. This should be reflected in your landing page (the page visitors land on when they click on your ad).

You should spend a good amount of time doing extensive keyword research before you write your pay-per-click ad because what you think may be a popular keyword or keyword phrase may not be.

Headline: Your headline is what potential visitors see first, so it is yet another vital part of your pay-per-click ad. Some internet marketing experts say that you have less than three seconds to grab a prospect’s attention — and you have to do it in 25 characters or less (the headline of a pay-per-click can only be 25 characters (not words, characters)). Hence, each character is a precious space.

Pay Per Click Ad Writing Tip: If you don’t remember anything else, remember this – get your main keyword(s) in your headline. Remember the goal is “targeted” traffic. Your keywords drive targeted traffic.

URL: Your URL should also contain your keyword where possible. For example, if you have a site selling antique dolls, an excellent URL would be antique-dolls.com. This not only tells the potential visitor what your site is all about, it tells search engines too – and this is what pay per click is all about – making it easy for search engines to properly categorize your site so that they can deliver “targeted” traffic to your site.

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