In any e-commerce endeavor, if your landing page copy needs much work,
the major search engines operators ARE going to consider click throughs!

It only takes a few seconds to give your prospect that “first impression”.
If that first impression is the wrong one, they will reach for the “back button”!

What makes any copy “work” is always the emotional chord that is struck in
the heart of the reader!
If you want to improve conversion, DO NOT write your own copy! There are
proven and tested methods that can improve them by 100 to 800 %!
Need help? Email me at st********@ao*.com
URL http://www.truth-witness.com (this is all about HIM).

Those are some great tips for pay-per-click advertising. When properly researched, prepared and tracked pay-per-click can be a very effective means of adveritising, especially if you are having difficulty getting natural results for a particular, desired keyword.

Thanks for the tips.

1) On Google, it’s not entirely true that your position depends on whether other people bid higher than you. Google takes into account the click-through rate and recently, the quality of the landing page. If your click-through rate is higher than your competitors and your landing page is better aligned with the content of your ad, you can jump ahead of your competitors even though they are bidding higher than you. With Yahoo’s move to a new sponsored search platform, click-through rate and landing page quality should come into play in their rankings as well (reportedly after the first of the year for all advertisers and already for some who have opted to switch to the new platform). MSN AdCenter (which I have not used yet) also apparently takes into account click-through rate and landing page relevancy.

2) To minimize the “negative side” of too many (irrelevant) clicks, it is important to write your ad headline and text carefully so that the searcher clearly knows what’s in store for him/her if they click on your ad. For example, if you’re selling something, make sure (through carefully crafting the headline and ad text) that the searcher will know you are offering something to buy. Many people who click on paid ads are simply researching a topic or are in the research phase of their buying cycle. By writing your headline and ad well, you can minimize the number of clicks from people who are just doing research and (potentially) direct people who are in the research phase of the buying cycle to more informational pages.

3) Churches and ministries who want to use pay-per-click advertising should be careful to identify what will constitute a “conversion” for their purposes. Usually, a church or ministry is not looking for product purchases, but they do want a “conversion” of sorts (“conversion” in the direct response advertising sense – not conversion to Christ, at least not initially!) – they want unbelievers to attend a church gathering for the first time, or they want believers to volunteer for their ministry. It’s important for a church or ministry to put tracking systems in place to know if their pay-per-click advertising efforts are successful.

One ministry I work with seeks believing volunteers. It was fairly simple to set up a signup form on their website and track the signups back to paid search engine ads. Recently, this ministry paid a very small amount and had over a hundred volunteers sign up in about 3 1/2 weeks. As I said, tracking that performance was fairly easy.

Tracking response from unbelievers is not so easy because we’re not looking for them to signup, only to make contact with us (preferably in a face-to-face gathering). We want to be careful not to treat a new visitor like a number and dehumanize them, so it’s important to track response from unbelievers in a more informal way.