Outsmart Competitors at PPC Search Engines

Bidding at PPC search engines isn't cheap anymore. But, don't give up. You can still find cheap keywords.

Baseline
Whatever the bid prices are, you cannot make money if you bid higher than you can afford. Before bidding, calculate your maximum bid price .

Product Specific Keywords
A few years back, you could find a lot of cheap keywords by looking for variations of keywords related to your website. Unfortunately, many of those variations have also become too expensive to bid on. To find affordable keywords, you need to look for keywords related to each "product" you sell. For example, if you sell sports equipment, don't just look for variations of "sports equipment." Look for keywords of your products, like "ice hockey stick" or "snowshoes." These product-specific keywords aren't searched often, but they are affordable. Most importantly, if you directly link those product-specific ads to specific product pages instead of your home page, you will get a better conversion rate.

Misspelled Keywords
You may also bid on commonly misspelled keywords. Surely, misspelled keywords are cheap, but there is a question mark on conversion rate. Some say conversion rates are good; other say not. Do your own test before running a full-scale ad campaign.

Find Real Competitors
You don't always have to outbid all other competitors. You only need to outbid others who have the same product lines as yours. For example, if you are selling DVD movies and are bidding on the keyword "DVD," you need only to outbid other DVD movie sellers; you don't have to outbid the bidders selling DVD players. Do a web search with the keyword you are bidding on, at the PPC search engine you are working with. The search result will show you who is selling what. You'll see who you have to outbid.