The Clickable Search Engine Marketing Blog

This may be an odd way to begin a series about driving revenues outside of Google AdWords, but, here goes: it makes sense to start on Google AdWords.

Google’s market share in the PPC space isn’t simply a majority; it’s an overwhelmingly majority. As I mentioned last week, nearly two-thirds of all PPC spending happens on Google, with Yahoo at about 20 percent and Microsoft at about 10. (The other 10 percent is split between smaller search engines such as Ask.com.) That said, “10 percent market share” still corresponds to nearly one billion searches. Whatever it is in relative terms, that is still a huge number―and a huge opportunity.

And yet, you should start on Google AdWords: maximize the opportunity on the largest network, and move on from there.

Unless you’re bidding on extremely high-traffic terms, it is actually possible ― and, when you’re first launching your campaigns, desirable ― to get impressions on nearly all of the traffic for your keywords. Later, you can drop ineffective keywords. But before finding the desirable traffic, it’s important to get a sense of the total traffic.

Of course, there is one way to do this that is completely free: using the AdWords Traffic Estimator. Simply enter your keywords (start with broad match); leave the “CPC” and daily budget fields blank; and set the appropriate location targets. AdWords will generate an estimate of the Avg. CPC you would need to appear in the top three positions, the average number of clicks you would get in a day, and the corresponding daily budget you would need to capture all of the traffic.

The Traffic Estimator is quite out-of-date, however. A more valuable tool is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Enter a keyword, click “Get keyword ideas,” and the tool spits out the total search volume in the previous month.

Done―right? Not quite.

When I asked Matt Mack, Clickable Assist Account Manager, he said that the AdWords’ traffic estimation tools are extremely valuable, but that their estimates “don’t necessarily correlate to the live environment.” And the difference between the estimates and the actual numbers is significant enough to justify doing your own experiments. This means taking an aggressive approach when you launch your campaigns. You’ll maximize impressions―and, while you’re at it, improve your Quality Score.

Now that you know exactly how much traffic is available on a given search network for your terms, it’s time to determine exactly how much of that traffic you should bid on. That is, how often can you display your ads while meeting your conversion goals? We’ll consider that question next week.

Here’s a pretty basic problem: Price your offering too high, and your total sale volume will be

The opportunity to make money on Google AdWords is vast, but it isn’t infinite. Over the past few

If you’ve maximized your search advertising revenues on Google and Yahoo, it's time to expand