Your site is beautifully designed, thoroughly optimized and exhaustively submitted to all the major search engines. So why are so few people dropping by? And why aren’t the Web hits you’re getting spurring sales?

Using a pay-per-click service will not only bring more people to your site, but it can also increase the chances that they’re exactly the type of visitors you want. Check out our rundown on pay-per-click options and turn those visitors into customers.

Drive toward traffic

The world of Internet advertising is an ever-expanding universe of revenue. A 2005 report by Borrell Associates estimates that online ad spending will hit $3.9 billion this year. That’s more than a 40 percent increase from the previous year, which is reason enough to stop you in your budget-planning tracks and think twice about how you’re spending your advertising money.

Your goal is traffic. If you can get 30 more visitors to your Web site a week by using online advertising, that’s 30 more chances you have to sell your product or promote your service. It’s a numbers game that, if you play it right, can work wonders for your bottom line.

Harness the power of pay-per-click

Contributing to the eye-opening numbers of Internet revenue, pay-per-click is an online advertising payment system in which you agree to pay a certain price in return for traffic to your Web site. At first, this might sound like a con — “You mean it’s not enough to have a great Web site … I need to actually PAY to have people visit?” Yes, you will have to spend money to attract people to your site, whether optimizing your site through site-integrated features such as keywords, site description and site submission (sometimes referred to as “organic” optimization) or through online advertising (or most effectively, both). Google, the Web’s biggest search engine, has more than 8 billion pages indexed, so your Web site (no matter how big) is still just a needle in the Internet haystack.

Not to worry, though. Gaining attention is easier than it sounds, and pay-per-click is one of the surest ways to get return on your investment. The beauty of this technique is that you pay only when someone actually goes to your site. And by someone, we mean a legitimate prospect. In non-Internet advertising terms, this would be like paying for a billboard based on how many people saw it and gave you a call or dropped by your offices for more information — not just how many people passed by it.

See how it’s done

Pay-per-click companies run things differently but in general, the theory of pay-per-click runs something like this:

You sell widgets, so you set up an account with a pay-per-click company we’ll call “ClickMe.com.” You tell them that you’re willing to pay 5 cents for the word “widgets.” ClickMe.com, in turn, puts a link and a summary of your Web site in a special section on a search engine’s results page anytime someone searches using the word “widgets.” Anytime someone clicks your Web site’s link, you pay 5 cents.

The trick is what keyword you pay for. If you’re too general, the chances increase that someone clicks on your site only to find out that it’s not what’s he’s after. For example, if you chose the word “dishes” for your tableware manufacturing company, you might have visitors who are actually looking for satellite dishes. If you pick keywords that are unique and specific to what type of business you do, the chances of “accidental” visitors decrease.

No matter what your budget is, there is a pay-per-click plan for you. Some companies, like the popular Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture), allow you to put a certain amount of money every month in your pay-per-click account. Once that money runs out, your link is removed until the next month when your account is replenished.

Check out the major players

Although there are a bevy of pay-per-click providers, you really need to remember just two: Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.

In the 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards this year, Google AdWords won first place hands-down as the Best Search Ads provider, followed by Yahoo!/Overture. Both of these programs have far-reaching networks of search engines. These programs are effective all by themselves, but form a potent one-two punch when used in tandem as they have separate coverage areas. What Google AdWords doesn’t cover, odds are Overture does.

Track your visitors and your programs

Once you’ve found the right pay-per-click company and keywords, you’ll see a noticeable rise in traffic with a minimal amount of money. But if you really want to leverage your pay-per-click budget, you’ll need another handy tool called a tracking program. Through tracking, you can tell what search engines refer the most visitors to your site and what keywords are most commonly used. You can then use that information to choose what pay-per-click vendor you use and how much to spend with them.

It’s also important to continually monitor the success of tracking programs. Some programs help you keep tabs, but it’s a good idea to keep your own spreadsheet that charts money spent, keywords, pay-per-click company and, of course, your sales for the same period of time. After observing the trends, you’ll not only find that certain combinations are more effective than others, but, more importantly, you’ll also learn a great deal about your online prospects and how best to reach them.

Need better results? Increasing Web visitors is just one business communications solution we’ve provided over the past 25 years. To explore some innovative ways to reach your audience, e-mail Matt Harlow or call 800-800-9547.

Ideas are our product. We work to analyze your markets, isolate your key brand benefits and send clear, focused messages right to your target audience. Messages that build your brand image and achieve what you’re really looking for … measurable results. We call it Communication with insight.^sm

Only one problem — no one knows your site exists.

Imagine trying to find a book in the library, but it’s not listed in the card catalog. What’s more, all the books are on the shelves in no particular order. What do you do? That’s the situation your customers face trying to find your Web site — unless you’ve properly promoted it.

Follow these tips to turn the spotlight on your site so it attracts the attention it deserves.

Create keywords to unlock greater visibility

To find a library book, you check the card catalog. To find a Web site, you use a search engine (Yahoo!, Google, Alta Vista, MSN Search). To make sure search engines list your Web site, you need to create keywords — invisible words on your site that people might use when searching online for your company, product or service. For example, a car tire manufacturer might use keywords such as “tire,” “car,” “auto,” “steel belt” and “radial.”

Once a search engine finds your site, the search engine will list it when someone searches using keywords on your site. The better your keywords match a user’s search words, the higher on the list you’ll rank and the greater chance they’ll find you.

When creating keywords:

• Use words and phrases people would use to find you. Remember variations on words (“tire,” “tires,” “car tires,” etc.).
• Use words associated with your logo, mascot, corporate colors or brand statement.
• List words that differentiate you from your competition, such as location, product names and trademarks.

Summarize in your site description

Another component to attract visitors is your site description. This provides users with a brief synopsis of what they’ll find on your site. Like keywords, it’s invisible on your site. It does, however, appear below the link to your site in search engine search results. It gives users extended information if they need it.

The tire manufacturer might use a description such as, “Manufacturer of a full line of car and truck tires. Find product information, company news, rebate offers and retailers near you.”

When developing a site description:

• Keep it short — 150-200 characters (including spaces and punctuation marks). Most Web users scan rather than read.
• Repeat and reinforce your keywords.
• Make sure your site description (and your keywords) repeats and reinforces the visible text on your Web page. This increases your chance of ranking high in search results.

Say “Here I am” by submitting your site

After creating keywords and a site description, you’re ready to submit your site to the search engines. You can do this manually by visiting each search engine and following its submission process. This is time-consuming, but yields the best results. Or you can submit automatically with help from software or Web site utilities. You’ll need to carefully monitor where the software submits your site to make sure you’re going to the appropriate search engines.

Use every opportunity

Even if the major search engines list your site, you should promote it using other methods to maximize visibility. Consider:

• Paid listings (sometimes called sponsored links) — This is good for jump-starting a new e-commerce site to generate revenue right away.
• Links from your business partners’ or trade organizations’ sites — This can increase your search engine popularity, because some Web crawlers count the number of sites linked to yours.
• Putting your Web address everywhere — Leverage print advertising, sales material, delivery vehicles, business cards, anywhere you can.
• E-mail promotions — Send your customers newsletters or promotions that link back to your site.
• Corporate e-mail signature — Include your Web address in your signature on all outgoing e-mail.

Creating a great Web site takes a lot of thought and hard work. So does promoting it. With the right steps to promote your site, more customers (and potential customers) will realize why they should do more business with you.

Getting your site to spill the beans

How do you get your Web site to share its secrets? Measure, measure, measure! And the only way to obtain the objective data that tells you what is going on inside your site is through Web analytics that track and collect visitor data, crunch it and produce valuable reports that help you improve your site.

There are two types of analytic tools: server-side and client-side. A “server” is the computer that houses, or hosts, your Web site. A “client” is a desktop or laptop computer running a Web browser that visitors use to view your site. The vast majority of businesses who have “tracking” on their sites use only a server-side tool that probably was installed for free by the site’s hosting company. When a user enters your URL into a Web browser or clicks a link in your site, the server “serves” the file for the requested Web page. Every time your server receives a request for a file, it “logs” or records it as a hit. Server-side reports are most valuable to your IT person, who can use them to analyze the performance of your site. It’s information that can help your IT person improve download speeds or troubleshoot errors that impact how your site runs.

However, when it comes to analyzing the marketing effectiveness of your site, server-side tools have their shortcomings. They report many of the same statistics as a client-side tracking tool, but they cannot measure user’s real behavior. Server-side tracking reports draw inferences about user activities and guess what the visitor was doing on your site when files were requested.

Client-side tracking tools analyze visitor activity directly on your Web site. These tools track user paths through your site. You can learn what keywords users entered to search for your site. What pages they visited and which ones they ignored. Client-side reports will tell you how long they stayed on each page. Whether they poked around your site or went directly to the conversion pages that impact your business – the pages where they purchase your product, download a coupon or ask you to contact them for more information. Once you have this information, you can analyze it to make guided decisions on how to improve the marketing effectiveness of your site’s design and content.

See for yourself the value of client-side analytics

To learn more about where your site users come from and how they interact with your site, check out Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/). It will help you determine which keywords are most profitable to your business, compare short- and long-term trends, trace your e-commerce transactions to ad campaigns and keywords, find out where you are losing conversions on your site, see which links lead to the most conversions and much more. Best of all, it’s free. To try it, create a Google account (also free) and alter the code on your Web pages a little. It takes a little work to get it up and running, but it’s well worth the effort.

Your site’s most valuable marketing secret: conversion ratio

The depth and breadth of information you can get from your Web analytics tools can be overwhelming. If you’ve ever gotten a raw report before, you’ve seen this for yourself. A professional Web analyst can trim the statistical fat from those reports so you get only the information you want and need. But the one statistic you really want is the one that impacts your bottom line: your conversion ratio.

The conversion pages, as mentioned earlier, are the places on your site where a visitor carries out a desired action that directly or indirectly nets you business. To compute your conversion ratio, divide the number of unique visitors to your conversion pages by total visitors to your site. A unique visitor is someone who comes to your conversion page for the first time in a fixed time period, typically a 30-day period. Total visitors are all of the unique and repeat visitors who come to your site within that same time period.

While conversion rates differ between types of sites and markets, look for your site to hit the 1-2% range.

Use what you discovered to improve your bottom line

If your site isn’t hitting that range, pinpoint the strengths and weakness on your site that influence conversion. To do this, track your site on a deeper, more detailed level. Start by sitting down with your team to determine a handful of measurements that impact your conversion rate.

For example, in a recent marketing tip we talked about how to create buzz to attract prospects. Let’s say you just launched a new product and your team wants to measure the buzz it’s generating. Since your Web site is often the first step in the information-gathering phase of the buying cycle, you can review your analytics report to see which keywords people typed into search engines to find your site. Brand-specific keywords and phrases punched into a search engine are indications of how well your product is catching on in your market. So your team may choose to track and measure product visibility via searches.

There are dozens of other things besides searches you can measure and analyze with your server-side and client-side analytics tracking tools that will indicate your brand visibility, such as:

• Referrals from e-mail. One person e-mails another person the link to your product page.
• Navigation path analysis. Is your product page near the top of a user’s visit? Studying users’ paths through the site tells you if they knew what they were after or if they were just browsing. A straight path to a product page tells you that a visitor already had some knowledge on the topic before they came to your site.
• Landing pages. Set up a separate product page with an easy-to-remember URL. Reference this URL in product ads, directory listings, coupons, press releases … anything. You’ll be able to gauge not only the product’s visibility, but also the effectiveness of your other marketing pieces.
• Product literature downloads. If visitors take time to download literature, you can be sure they’re interested in your product.
• Product-specific inquiries. Label and store all Web messages regarding your product. Compare these messages from month to month and from product to product to spot trends, customer concerns, etc.
• Time spent on the product page. How long a visitor stays on a page may indicate higher interest in its content.
• Number of unique visitors to the page. If you’re looking for buzz, then you need a lot of unique visitors to be exposed to your message so they can spread the word.
• Scrolling. This is an advanced analytic available on some client-side tracking tools. It tells you how many people scrolled down the page. Since most Web visitors do not scroll, it’s a great indicator (and more reliable than time spent on a page) that your visitor is interested.

To get the greatest value from your site, measure the same issues consistently over time. Also, don’t track your Web in a vacuum. Record all of your marketing (ads, direct mail, trade shows, press releases, etc.) so you can see how they impact your Web traffic. By doing this you’ll be able to see, for example, how a direct mail piece might increase site visits and thus conversions.

Once you analyze how your handful of measurements are impacting your conversion rate, you can then zero in on specific areas of your site and experiment to see how changes impact results. With continuous analysis and strategic site improvements, you can maximize your conversion ratio and make your Web site a vital part of your marketing effort.

Analyzing Web sites and offering insights into how to improve conversion ratios are some of the ways we help our clients net more business. To set up an analysis of your site, e-mail Matt Harlow or call 800-800-9547.

Ideas are our product. We work to analyze your markets, isolate your key brand benefits and send clear, focused messages right to your target audience. Messages that build your brand image and achieve what you’re really looking for … measurable results. We call it Communication with insight.

I’m also a big fan of Google’s RSS reader. Day after day, I use to visit the same dozen or so sites to keep on top of news, technology, what have you … until, that is, I started subscribing to RSS feeds with Google reader. Now all I do is go there, and the content from all my favorite sites is displayed nicely in the interface. It’s a big time-saver.