Pay Per Click – Be Warned
Providing your using an ethical Pay Per Click provider, PPC is an ideal method for obtaining instantaneous targeted web site traffic. If your not using an ethical Pay Per Click provider you are opening yourself up to PPC fraud and other issues which can have a detrimental effect on your advertising budget and web site.
The Pay Per Click Test
Recently I ran a test on a couple of 2nd Tier Pay Per Click providers, in other words NOT Google, Yahoo or MSN. One of the PPC companies selected is considered to have a reasonably good reputation, the other was an unknown to me but suitable for this comparison.
The Pay Per Click Keywords
The keywords selected for this experiment were long tail keywords (keyword phrases) of 3 to 4 words each. These keywords were chosen to deliver highly targeted traffic to the Landing Page specifically crafted for this test.
The Landing Page
The Landing Page created for the test was highly optimized to focus on the keyword phrases selected. The subject of the content was highly visible and clearly related to the keyword phrases. A Landing Page developed in this way should grab the attention of visitors immediately and encourage them to travel through the sales funnel to the conversion goal I selected, which was an additional information request. To ensure conversions would be reasonably easy there were no sales or credit cards required to meet the goal conversions.
The Keywords Used to Reach Landing Page
On completion of the test, analysis of the keywords used to reach the landing page showed not one of the keyword phrases I used in my keyword selection with the companies had been used to reach my Landing Page.
Of the keywords actually used to reach my landing page 43 had absolutely no relevance to the topic of the keywords I selected or to the content of the page. Only 6 keywords used to reach my Landing Page were even close to relevant but were such broad keywords, that it would be impossible to get targeted traffic from such words.
The Bounce Rate
The bounce rate was a phenomenal 97.6% which was extraordinarily high compared to my usual site traffic. However, considering the keywords which Internet users had used to reach my Landing Page this is not surprising. Had my keywords phrases been used to reach the site I am absolutely sure the bounce rate would have been much lower and the conversion rate much higher.
The Conclusion
It is very hard to make any concrete conclusions about the ethics of these companies at this time. They have had 48 hours to respond to my concerns and as yet I have not had a response to my concerns over Click Fraud. The keywords were not what I had selected, the bounce rate was extraordinary and the conversions were nil. At this time I have no choice but to consider these companies have very little in the way of ethics and would never consider using them for myself or my clients.
In conclusion I consider the only companies to do Pay Per Click business with are the major Search providers Google, MSN and Yahoo.
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