The objective ? To acquire around 100 backlinks for a site I run, at around 1$ per link. The links needed to be themed, with a slight twist on the anchor text used, and present on SE friendly sites. No directories, commenting, forums or networks etc.

Basically, I just wanted to acquire some productive backlinks that appeared organic, and gave my site a boost in the big three.

Of course the other objective was to save time over doing it myself, and pay the relevant party once happy the criteria had been met and the links appeared in Googles cache (common terms of payment for linkbuilding).

OH BOY was I in for a surprise. Talk about micro management. By the time they were through, just 15 of the links they provided met my criteria, and around four hours of my time was spent checking their work.

Needless to say, they were 2 bit operators masquerading as pros. Why they thought I wouldn’t notice the use of automation, or the PR of the pages the links were appearing on, I’ll never know, but the sites they submitted to (25% of which were forums or directories) barely managed to be on theme or even remotely related.

This led me to the conclusion that outsourcing was not as straight forward as I originally thought, and I decided to follow up with my friend who was working on the SEO Freelancers web site.

He explained that outsourcing is just part of the picture. In fact, there’s a LOT of people willing to take outsourced SEO work. Far fewer who actually deliver. He said ratings were one way to qualify a provider, but they needed to have a reputation elsewhere as well. A quick search on Google would have sorted that one out.

But the real clincher he said, was another new service (also managed by SEO Freelancers) called Submit Watch, which apparently would have saved me hours, and alerted me of problems within minutes of the campaign commencing. He didn’t go too far into it (more of that NDA stuff), but said it was some sort of proxy scenario and is due for release around the same time as SEO Freelancers goes live.

All I can say is I’ll believe it when I see it. SEO Outsourcing is supposed to be easy !

Basically, it’s a reverse auction site for SEO & SEM pros, and it’s got some seriously kick-ass features that I’ve never seen before in a services auction site.

They are planning to offer their services free of charge for the first three months of operation, including a service they’ve nicknamed ‘OutBid‘, an SMS feature for those who want to be alerted when new jobs turn up or their bids are accepted.

All told, it’s looking good, and I can’t wait to see it go live (I’ll be using it myself to outsource). I’ll be posting a more in-depth review of the site once it goes live - but until then, you can get more info by visiting their placeholder page at:

SEO Freelancers & Outsourcing

While browsing last week, I came across an interesting site. The site is clearly designed as a promotional tool for the various interests of its operators, and indeed the commentary attempts to steer readers toward whatever they happen to be pushing. But the interesting side of the site is the commentary on their PPC campaigns, and how they approach quality scoring, keyphrase selection reduction, and how they ultimately reduce CPC.

I find it interesting because they describe specific numbers and metrics, the actions taken to remedy problems, and the ongoing evolution of their campaigns.

Interestingly, enough data is provided to reproduce their PPC scenarios. Few if any vaguaries or ambiguities are present. It’s what sorts the marketing hype and bollox from the actionable advice you can test for yourself.

If you’re happy to look past the persistant product/services plugs throughout, the site does offer some insightful approaches to setting up a PPC campaign. I make no assertions as to the effectiveness of their tools or products - that’s for you to decide. But the info is definately a handy read.

The site is PPC Riches, and can be found here

Underlying the PPC process however are 2 critical principles of operation. They’re critical, because unlike CPA or Cost Per Action, a lead doesn’t need to be generated, nor an action of any sort performed except the click itself - the end user may click through to an advertisers site, then move on, which of course is useless to the advertiser.

Another key consideration of Pay Per Click is it’s susceptability to fraud, or exploitation by third parties; after all, anyone can click on an ad irrespective of intent. In fact, where anti-fraud measures are in place, it’s not uncommon for competitors to repeatedly click on an ad to disadvantage a competing publisher !

So as can be seen, it’s necessary to have a process in place that regulates not only the audience to which ads are displayed, but employs significant anti-fraud measures to prevent advertisers and publishers from losing money.

Add to this the need to keep such an environment competitive, and you have a system with major overhead. Essentially, there are many purveyors of Pay Per Click Advertising services but few that consistently deliver. Publishers of pay per click advertising content also keep a watchful eye on these programs, and quickly drop one if its purported not to pay out as agreed, or over zealous where click fraud is concerned. Unfortunately, none of the Pay Per Click Advertisers out there disclose the means by which they arrive at a decision to declare activity fraudulent, thus many publishers feel that it’s often used as an excuse not to pay them.

Naturally, aside from making direct arrangements with a web site operator, it fits that search engines accommodate pay per click advertising in one form or another due to the highly targeted nature of the audience. If you’re selling blue widgets, and someone searches specifically for blue widgets, chances are, they want what you’re offering (whether its information or the product itself). If they search for blue widget shop, or buy blue widget, chances are they want to do just that; buy a blue widget.

Of course, you’re not the only vendor of blue Widgets out there, nor are you the only one aware of Pay Per Click advertising, so how do you compete ?

The most common model is a bidding system such as the one used by Google’s Pay Per Click advertising program Adwords. If your competitor bids 10c per click, and you bid 15c per click, your ad will likely out rank theirs (appear above theirs, or in a more prominent position). Of course, it doesn’t just come down to money.. there’s the matter of quality too !

Imagine a scenario where there are 10 ads in a column up the right hand side of a Google search results page (like this). Imagine then that these were ordered excusively by bid price. As an end user, do you defer to the most prominent ad, or click on the one that you find most engaging; most significant to your needs - remember, you just searched for something, and the ads have been mapped to your search term by their advertisers.

Naturally, you click on the one you find most appealing.. even if its the least prominent advertisement ! This is because the quality of the ad has made it appealing to you. Its specific, and describes something you’re after.

Some systems will factor this quality assessment into their pay per click advertisement rankings, and increase the cost of an ad according to its quality score. The Google Adwords Quality Score is a perfect example.

At the end of the day, this means you need to do your research and you need to know which search terms truly describe your offering. You need to know how to write ads that are engaging and encourage the user to click through. But of MOST IMPORTANCE - you need to know which keywords lead to sales. For example, I could give you a list of 10,000 keywords related to advertising, but which ones are being used by people who want to SPEND money on advertising services, ppc affiliate programs or Pay Per Click research tools (assuming thats what you’re promoting).

Pay Per Click advertising is rarely straight forward, whether you have the budget of a small nation, the IQ of the worlds smartest tactician, or the knowledge and experience of a decade in online advertising.

Research doesn’t end with setting up your campaign in Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter, or Yahoo Search Marketing either. You need to closely watch the activity, understand how to map search terms via clickthroughs to your conversions.

After a week or so of testing a variety of search terms, you will have spent a considerable sum.. but you’ll also know which keywords work for you, and which ones don’t - so be ready to spend some money to find your pay per click advertising niche. There’s always supplemental methods, such as Key Compete to see which keywords your competitors are using, and keyword research tools like Keyword Elite to drill down to the less obvious candidates, but you will still need to spend some money testing the water.

If you’re new to Pay Per Click Advertising I offer you the following observation. You know your product. You probably know your audience. Make sure you use a program that’s built for and specializes in Pay Per Click advertising.

Over the easter break, PPC Reference will be visiting five (5) blogs and depositing EASTER EGGS in their comments. Popular in the SEO/SEM sectors, they’ll include Matt Cutts blog, Shoemoney, and Tech Crunch to name a few.

The easter eggs will be passwords that grant access to our easter eggs pages here on PPC reference which contain highly profitable, virtually non-competitive keyphrases (from an SEO perspective) that are ready to turn a quick buck via Adsense, Afilliates, or arbitrage.

We’ve done the crunch work - all you have to do is find them. Each easter egg will be released to the first 7 distinct IP addresses to ensure recipients get a fair go.

Happy hunting folks, and remember, not everyone is as fortunate as you !

Ingredients:

Each easter egg is the best likely candidate for SEO PPC of over ten thousand related search terms. Each has been evaluated against a variety of criteria, including KPI, top 10 competitor on and off page optimization, minimum 1K-5K searches per day and a relatively high clickthru rate (as projected by Adwords). They also have a high median Adwords bid, show no seasonal trends, with highest search volume via Googles US/UK audiences.

As an added bonus, at least 2 of these Easter Eggs may have domains available for registration in their primary audience TLDs (though not for long I suspect).

Gusto:

High Volume Keyword Research: Keyword Elite
Competitor Keyword Research: KeyCompete.com
Cross Checks/Projections: KeywordDiscovery.com

Happy Easter :)  

Bidvertiser Setup
Bidvertisers ads are contextual, so like Adsense, Bidvertiser dynamically determines the most appropriate ads for your site. In my book, this is a great way to protect advertisers and a good way to ensure readers (thats YOU), aren’t annoyed by intrusive, off topic content just because it happens to pay well. Initially, it took around 5 minutes for Bidvertiser to assess the content of my site and start serving contextually relevant ads - although right now, they seem to have reverted to the original, off topic content.. I’m hoping this changes soon, but take a look for yourself and see what you think.

Bidvertiser doesn’t appear to provide feed content either, so if you’re viewing in a reader or the like, sorry, but you’ll have to visit our site to see an example of what their ads look like. Now, down to the meat of it..

Bidvertiser Code
As expected Bidvertiser provides embeddable Javascript to facilitate ad retrieval, but centralizes layout definition at the ad server. Essentially, the Javascript acts as a placeholder which calls the ad script. Unlike Adsense, you dont have to update this code (ie modify your template or web page) every time you change ad parameters. In fact, you’ll probably notice the complete absence of configuration parameters in the Javascript. I found this a pleasant relief from the norm being able to change, colorize etc from the Bidvertiser interface rather than having to cut and paste with every change.

Bidvertiser Ad Units
Bidvertisers publishers interface allows selection and colorization of the ad units which are Adsensesque in layout, with the usual array of banners, skyscrapers, rectangles, and button formats.

Part of the Bidvertiser Publishers interface also provides for ‘Free Design’ which is a powerful feature affording not only the usual colorisation features, but sizing of the layout and font manipulation. Unfortunately it appears locked at just 2 cells (ad units) so it is a little restrictive. I decided to proceed with the ready rolled banner and vertical.

Bidvertiser Controls, Metrics & Reporting
In terms of campaign management, Bidvertisers controls are easy to use and well structured. Reporting is the usual impressions, clicks, revenue format with date filters, while a series of preformatted report views are available at a click. There is also a competitive ads interface, allowing you to designate the ads you don’t want appearing on your site. This is handy because it also reflects the highest bids per ad.

Bidvertiser Payouts
Although I dont yet have any metrics or payouts (I only just put the ads up), I did take a look at the current bids on a variety of topics. Many were at the 2c mark, but there were also some in the higher end at $3+ per click. Bidvertiser payouts are much Like Googles, in that you wait until the end of next month to receive this months revenue. The minimum payout for Bidvertiser is 10$ Paypal, or $50 by check.

Bidvertiser In Action
The ads will be featured on two sites, one being this site, obviously all about PPC and relatively difficult to convert, while the other, a niche product site is relatively easy to convert but with average traffic. Both sites are promoted exclusively through organic (unpaid) SE listings.

Bidvertiser Drawbacks
I don’t doubt there’s more than one, but the one that I noticed off the bat was the need to create distinct ads per site. Indeed the code is portable and might well work across multiple sites, but the TOS state that clicks originating from sites who’s ad code is not unique to that site will not be counted. Basically, you have to create distinct ad code per site, and that’s not good if you operate a network of hundreds of blogs.

Bidvertiser Wordpress Widget
Worth a look is the Bidvertiser Widget for Wordpress, a handy add on if you run a Wordpress blog. Bidvertiser have built this widget to make life a lot easier for those of us who are really after quick implementation. 

Thats the Bidvertiser wrap right now, lets see how the ads perform over the next week. If you have questions please feel free to post comments..

If you would like to be included in this list, leave a comment remembering to provide your location, and contact details. The objective of this list is to provide a reference for people seeking PPC Consultants or guidance. Note that those who respond to both our PPC Advertising Firms post within the designated period, and comment on this post, will be hilited accordingly.