Shopping Portals: A Working Strategy for Advertising

For many smaller businesses and webmasters, the Google AdWords program may be more of an exercise in frustration than a valid advertising strategy. The Big Three search engines can get awfully pricey awfully quick for businesses that don't have deep pockets for promotion and advertising. The sponsored listings and pay per clicks spots for any competitive keyword can run you several dollars per click, and less competitive keywords don't deliver enough to make the expense worth your while. Shopping portals, which are growing in popularity with the average web user, offer a much more cost-effective alternative to buying clicks on the bigger search engines. A smart, keyword-focused strategy using PPC advertising on shopping search sites can bring your website traffic that converts big time.

Research

Before you do anything else, find out exactly how pay per click advertising works on the shopping site you've chosen. Usually, advertisers place bids on keywords starting as low as $.01 per click. The highest bidder on a keyword will get the top spot in the search results when someone enters that search term into the shopping search engine, the second highest bidder will turn up in the second spot, and so on. You only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad, but you pay for the ad whether the person actually buys after they reach your site or clicks away without making a purchase.

Choosing keywords that convert into sales is an art form that starts with research. Very often, the best search keywords will be those that have at least three words, which are known in the business as "long tail keywords." The research is important for two reasons. It will ensure that your chosen keywords will actually convert into sales when customers click through to your website, and it will help you figure out which keywords people actually search for when they're looking for your product. You want to strike a balance between search terms that people will type into a shopping site search engine and search terms that describe your product as precisely as possible.

Imagine that your website sells five different DeLonghi coffee makers. Lots of people may enter the term "coffee makers" into the shopping search engine, which often translates into a lot of competition for that search term, and higher bid prices on the keyword. Not only that, anyone who isn't looking for a DeLonghi coffee maker will be disappointed if they click through to your site and find that it's the only brand you sell. "DeLonghi coffee makers" will have less competition, which usually translates to a lower price per click. And since it's more targeted, those who click through to your website will be those who are most likely to buy a DeLonghi coffee maker.

Research shows that more and more people are skipping the major search engines when they shop online and going directly to shopping portals, such as Amazon.com. Why waste your advertising money on a middleman when you can place your PPC ads directly on the shopping portals that people use to find the things they want to buy?

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For more information and informative related articles and links about this subject matter and content, please visit Majon's Shopping | Malls | Shopping Sites directory: http://www.majon.com/directory/shopping-malls-shopping-sites. Also visit our Shopping Directory Marketplace for more related sites.

About the Author

+Chris Robertson is a published author of Majon International. All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2011 (Fri Mar 25 2011) Majon International. Majon International is one of the worlds MOST popular internet marketing and internet advertising companies on the web. Visit their main business resource internet marketing web site at: http://www.majon.com