OuterBox’s eCommerce Blog
Pay Per Click Optimization – Reducing Risks and Making Money
As we’ve been analyzing our most successful clients and working on marketing plans, we’ve seen a pattern…. Pay per click advertising. It’s true. If you can optimize your pay per click campaign it can be very successful and sometimes the results are exponential. Spend a dollar and make two I often say. Who wouldn’t take that? That’s a much better return on investment than I’ve seen on any of my stocks in the last few years! Pay Per Click advertising can be scary, so we really do need to take a good look to understand what it’s all about and how we can reduce risk. It’s all about stats and numbers. It’s not a guessing game and if you make it one you’re setting yourself up to potentially lose a significant chuck of cash. Spending $5,000 a month or $200,000 a month can seem out of the question, but it’s not when the ROI (return on investment) is there. In this article we’ll look more in depth on whether PPC (pay per click) is a method of advertising you may be interested in and if you feel it’s a method that’ll work in your business model.
Will PPC work for me? This depends on a few factors. I’ve listed the main factors below:
1) Conversion Rate (what percent of users purchase after visiting) – A typical conversion rate is 1.5% on the low end. We usually use this number.
2) CPC (cost per click) – How much will it cost for each visit
3) Average Sale – How much is the average sale
4) Profit Margin – How much do you make on each dollar purchased
4) Potential Visitors – How many visitors do your keywords allow you to receive. Each market and industry has a certain amount of searches per day.
These 3 variables can usually tell you if you’ll make money. An example is a client’s marketing plan we’ve been working on.
We’ll do this based on 10,000 visitors purchased.
20,000 visitors @ $.50 (CPC) = $10,000.
20,000 visits at 1.5% conversion rate = 300 orders.
300 orders X $340 (average order) = $102,000 in sales.
$102,000 (total sales) X .30 (30% profit margin) = $30,600 profit.
Well, the numbers don’t lie. That’s a lot of money to make. Yes, it was a $10,000 investment but it was a 300% return! This is how you make money. The saying “you have to spend money to make money” is the first thing ever business man and business woman knows. PPC is the perfect example.
The biggest thing to look at is whether or not you have a product with a decent profit margin. If you don’t, any advertising is tough. The next variable we need to take into consideration is the CPC. The cost per click is going to let us know if this is possible. If the most per click was $3 for the industry in the example above, PPC wouldn’t be profitable. As you see, it’s a science and not a guessing game. Guessing is expensive. Guessing loses our clients money.
The next step in pay per click optimization is looking at the conversation rate. A 3% conversion rate in the example above would yield results that would be out of the world. Huge numbers. The numbers we’d all like to see. The way to achieve a conversion rate above and beyond the industry average is to optimize the pay per click campaign. The way this is done is to remove keyword that are not converting, run ads move often during times that visitors purchase the most and be sure clients are being driven to the page on the website that converts on the highest level for the keyword. This is done through constantly monitoring and updating the campaign. Creating powerful landing page for specific keywords that have clear calls of action (COA) is also a very important step.
Remember, spending money to make money is necessary, but spend wisely. If you’d like help in creating a successful PPC campaign, contact us.
Your Website Being Copied – Problem for Duplicate Content?
Before we begin, if you’re not sure what duplicate content is, it’s content or text that’s exactly (or for the most part) the same on multiple websites or multiple pages within a site. Google and the other search engines look down on this as you should be developing unique content that you’ve written yourself and also not be using the same content on multiple pages. Now we’ll get into the post to figure out what happens when someone copies your website.
Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but I have to admit I’m not thrilled to find the OuterBox website has been copied… multiple times. From web design companies in other countires to whole pages of content, people have stolen our design, graphics and content in various forms. I couldn’t even believe my eyes when I realized a company from across the globe stole our entire website. They used the exact design just by saving all of our graphics and code and then using Photoshop (or paint possible) to change the language on a few of the buttons. Either way, it was our site destoryed to match another language and help another company sell. As frustrating as this is due to the fact that someone stole our hard work, there may be other complications as well above and beyond being very annoying.
Duplicate content can be an issue and it’s very tough to spot other websites from copying what you’ve done. Using a duplicate content checker program we search text we’ve written to see if other website also have the same content on their page. Another easy way to do this (and free) is to go to Google and search for a line or paragraph of your text within quotes. Example: “This is the text you’re checking to see if other sites stole”. The results will bring up any other pages that have this exact text in it. If other people stole your code it means Google may not realize that your content is unique and may not realize that you wrote it. We’ve found however that Google does try hard to figure out who the unique content belong to and they realize people do steal content. Our website for example has been hijacked many times but has not had a major impact at this point. It’s still something we watch our for and we are proactive in always having duplicate content removed.
What to do: Usually contating the website that copied your content and asking them to remove the stolen content will result in them taking it off. Sometimes website in other counties are less responsive, but it’s worth a shot. Another option is to contact the hosting company the website is on and file a complaint of a copyright violation. If done properly and they rule in your favor, they should shut the website down.
I recommend on a somewhat regular basis going through and looking for other site that may have copied yours or specific content. The most important pages will be your main landing pages and the pages that rank the best in the search engines. You want to be sure that people have not copied these. Remeber, as you grow people will try to copy you. Feel flattered, but also fight back! You wrote it and you deserve for it to only be on your website.
