I was going through my email box today and an email from Search Marketing Standard caught my eye.  If you aren’t familiar, Search Marketing Standard is a magazine that  focuses on the world of paid and organic search.  Today’s email had an offer for a free whitepaper from one of their advertisers that caught my eye and I thought I would check it out.

Seven Ways to Stop and Prevent Click Fraud  is of course a pitch for the services of ClickForensics, a Search Engine Auditing firm that provides services to help merchants optimize their paid search.   They site some interesting numbers in their report including:

72.4% of all sites in the Yahoo Publisher Network and Google Ad-sense are parked domains or Made for Ad sites

That translates to “low quality sites- nothing to qualify or compel high quality visitors” in my book.

They also talk about the different sources of click fraud including “botnets” and competitors and some steps you can take to maximize ROI on your paid search campaigns.

Just got my weekly email from Practical eCommerce and - per usual, they had a really good practical tip that is a good one for newbie Pay Per Click marketers.

Bidding for Position No.1. I often see new AdWords advertisers over paying for clicks because they are pursuing the No. 1 position. I think they assume that being in position No. 1 is always best, but I think when you consider the additional cost for position No.1, often times positions 2-5 are a much better value.

- Mat Greenfield, website conversion expert, and founder of Conversion Results

Getting top ranking on competitive terms can be really pricey and the difference in clicks may really not be worth having that 1st spot. How many more clicks would you be able to afford if you went with number 3-5 instead? Do the math and make an informed decision.

Practical eCommerce is one of my favorite publications (print and digital) and I highly recommend it to anyone who does eCommerce and/or online marketing of any kind.

God Bless,

Wade