Finding A Decent Deal With Pay-Per-Click in 2004

Nathan Anderson
http://www.seoclub.com

The days of penny-per-click quality targeted traffic are
gone, as we all know. There's just too many people wise in 
the ways of PPC (Pay-Per-Click) search engines these days. 
So how are we supposed to find the best bang for the buck 
in a highly competitive PPC marketplace?

Testing: plain and simple.

If you're buying traffic from pay-per-click search 
engines, you need to be carefully tracking your traffic 
from each one, and keeping track of what the end result of 
these visitors are; to your bottom line.

The tools you'll need to accomplish this task are a decent 
head on your shoulders and a good traffic tracking 
software package. For the most complete tracking, I 
recommend higher-end packages like ClickTracks.

Once you have a decent method in place for tracking your 
visitors and what they do when they get to your site, you 
need to sign up for a number of different sources of 
highly targeted pay-per-click traffic. A great resource 
for managing many different PPC search engine campaigns is 
GoToast - give them a look.

I recently performed a test of three different sources of 
pay-per-click traffic. First, I evaluated and streamlined 
my Overture PPC campaign for some very specific, highly 
targeted keywords for my sales site.

Next I set up and managed/tweaked a PPC campaign at 
Google's AdWords. This is a bit more difficult to grasp 
than a normal "highest bidder gets the spot" PPC search
engine, but I feel like I've gotten a very good grasp on 
the challenges of AdWords by reading/listening to the 
Google AdSecrets program offered by John Gorecki - I 
highly recommend it.

For a third source - and sort of as a control for the 
test - I signed up for pay-per-click traffic from 
MarketingBlaster.com. This isn't a PPC search engine, it's 
a network of targeted Directories and sites focused on 
specific topics. I signed up for both their 10 cents per 
click and 5 cents per click packages. The difference 
between the two is in how targeted the visitors are, and 
how much traffic you can achieve with each type.

For the purposes of this test, I will use the 10 cent 
traffic, as that campaign is complete. After pulling the 
numbers apart on the two offerings, the conversion rate
to visitor cost was fairly close - so you really get about 
the same value from either package.

Okay, let's get to the numbers.

First, for the Overture traffic, my average cost per click 
was 88 cents for the range of different keywords I was 
bidding on. Yes, that's fairly high per click, but I'm 
bidding on some fairly valuable traffic.

Out of 240 clicks, I got 3 orders; which is about 1.25% 
conversion rate; which is acceptable when considering the 
industry and cost of the product involved. The larger 
question is: How much did those three orders cost? Answer: 
$211.20. 

Google AdWords fared considerably better. My average cost 
per click was only 47 cents. Out of 320 clicks, I got 8 
orders; which is a 2.5% conversion rate. Very nice! So 
those 8 orders cost a total of $150.40 - a dramatic 
difference in result.

MarketingBlaster was a very different story.

Out of 1000 clicks, I got 42 order completions. That's an 
amazing 4.2% conversion rate! Not only that, but the 
clicks only cost 10 cents each; for a total of $100. 
Really an amazing value.

Just for a bit of a disclaimer: I'm dealing with traffic 
that is interested in SEO or Search Engine Optimization. 
This is a VERY jaded group of people, and a group that is 
highly web-savvy. This makes them very tough to sell to. 
Perhaps these results are indicative of how the traffic 
came through to my site - from Overture and AdWords 
through an advertisement, and from MarketingBlaster as a 
recommended resource. 

However you try to explain it - MarketingBlaster just 
blasted the competition! I will continue to use them, and 
dump one of the other two... I'll let you guess which one!

Happy Clicking!

-Nathan

Nathan Anderson is an internet marketing consultant 
and SEO expert. He is author of Search Engine 
Optimization Tactics and co-owner of the SEO Club,
which can be found at http://www.SEOclub.com/