Planning, Developing, and Promoting Successful Small Business Websites

Table of Contents

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a another short-term solution to raise website traffic. In PPC advertising, a website creates a small text advertisement that includes a link to the company website. Each time a user clicks on the link the to company website the company is charged a fee. PPC costs can range anywhere from a couple cents to hundreds of dollars. Some PPC keywords are incredibly competitive which can make paying for them incredibly expensive.

In PPC advertising a website developer bids on a keyword (or several hundred different keywords) to advertise their site when someone searches for that phrase. PPC advertising has become one of the best revenue models on the Internet, and it is what drives the growth of Internet giants like Google and Overture (now owned by Yahoo!). There are several other small PPC search engines, but Google and Overture have become the main providers. Some of the smaller PPC engines include espotting.com, kanoodle.com, findwhat.com, ah-ha.com, sprinks.com, xuppa.com, lifetips.com, turbo10.com and several others. Using these smaller PPC engines can be cheaper but will drive much less traffic than the larger providers. The key to success with PPC advertising both in the short and long term is finding niche keywords that help to acquire new customers. PPC campaigns should be monitored very closely to ensure maximum return on investment (ROI). One of the most beneficial aspects of PPC is that it is that every aspect of a sale from first contact can be monitored and analyzed. A business can devise a budget for customer acquisition by understanding how much each customer is worth (customer lifetime value). Setting up ways to measure each stage of this intricate network of statistics will be discussed in the website statistical analysis portion of this paper, but it is necessary to mention the availability of tracking important statistics in PPC campaigns.

Appendices
(All in a single document) Appendix 1-1: Overture Search Term
Research Tool

Appendix 1-2: Wordtracker Search Query Research Tool

Appendix 1-3: Google Sets Website Theme Research Tool

Appendix 1-4: Reach/ Acquire/ Convert/ Retain

Chart Appendix 2-5: Zehnder’s of Frankenmuth Information Architecture Flowchart

Appendix 2-6: Search Engine Themes Pyramid Information Architecture Example

Appendix 2-7: Webpage Download Time by File Size Chart

Appendix 2-8: Expected Locations for Common E-commerce Elements

Appendix 2-9: Website Usability Checklist

Appendix 2-10: Text Vs.Code Ratio/ Content Near the Top of Souce Code Examples

Appendix 3-11: Overture Bid Price Tool

Appendix 3-12: Webalizer Website Visitor Tracking Tool

Appendix 3-13: AW STATS Website Visitor Tracking Tool Appendix

3-14: Clicktracks Website Statistics
Analysis Tool

References
Author Notes

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Planning, Developing, and Promoting Successful Small Business Websites Table of Contents

Planning, Developing, and Promoting a Successful Small Business Website

Website Promotion and Analysis for Small Businesses Page 36

Pay-per-click Advertising Introduction

Planning, Developing, and Promoting Successful Small Business Websites

Table of Contents

Website Promotion and Analysis for Small Businesses
Page 36