It drives me nuts when I’m helping a client who trusted a, so called, “professional” to help them with their optimization or pay-per-click campaign, and all they did was flush their money down the toilet.

I’d like to take a second to make an announcement to all those “professionals” out there who insist on preying on the naivity in the marketplace …

STOP PRETENDING YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING MORONS!!!!

Sorry for the harsh words and tone but I am tired of it. The more of this garbage that happens in the marketplace, the more the industry I love gets muddied up.

We’ve finally gotten to a point where the search engine algorithms are becoming very accurate and the old “used car salesman” approach of telling everyong (via email) that you promise to get them a number one rank on Google for $20, are dying down.

The only problem is now we’ve got a bunch of inexperienced people who are making claims to be Google Adwords experts, and they have no idea what they are doing. Just because you’ve seen an increase in your traffic since they’ve taken over your PPC campaign, doesn’t mean they are doing a good job.

How can you tell?

The first thing you can do is measure if the amount of quote requests, sales volume, or contact inquiries have increased since you’ve begun receiving this new “wealth” of traffic. If the answer is “No,” then you may want to either find out why, or find a company that knows what they are doing.

Why do I have such a strong opinion on this? Let me show you …

Let’s say you happen to be a health insurance sales person working in the state of Michigan. If that were the case you’d definitely want an ad to display anytime someone searched on the keyword “Health Insurance” … right?

Well that’s probably what one of these “professionals” might tell you so they can make an impact and increase your traffic. I personally would encourage you to STEER CLEAR of this term!

You may find it difficult coming to terms with my stance on this keyword, until you have the complete picture.

At first it looks very promising since it is extremely relevant to what you sell. Plus that keyword is searched for an average of 7,480,000 times each month. The second closest keyword to that amount of search volume is searched for, only 246,000 times each month.

Alright, now you may think I am even more crazy, but please stay with me here. I promise it will save you a ton of dough!

If you wanted to have your ad appear every time someone searched on the keyword “health insurance” in the State of Michigan, you’d receive, on average, between 21-26 clicks per day. Those clicks would cost you somewhere between $7.27 and $10.08 each time someone clicked on them and visited your site. This could cost you as much as $260 per day, or $8,000 per month!

Now you may be thinking that’s not bad if I am making sales. I agree if that were the case!

The problem you would run up against is the average commercial intention of someone searching with the keyword “Health Insurance” is a touch under 50%.

Basically what that means is more than 50% of the time that someone conducts a search using “Health Insurance,” they aren’t even interested in making a purchase.

That doesn’t sound like as good of a deal … does it?

Well there are quite a few so called “professionals” who believe that “a click is a click.” In my opinion that is about as far from the truth as possible!

I believe a click is only as good as the probability the person clicking might actually be interested in doing business with you.

A perfect example of this is, if you chose to focus on the keyword phrase “individual health insurance,” you’d improve your chances immensely! The commercial intention of someone conducting a search using this keyword is a touch over 90%.

You won’t get near the amount of traffic increase by choosing these type of lower volume keywords, but you will definitely receive quality visitors who is looking to do business.

Make sure you keep this in mind when you are either conducting your own PPC campaigns, or if you’ve hired a “professional.”

If you are running a PPC campaign it shouldn’t be an expense. It should deliver a very clear return on your investment.

Finding the information I just provided to you is available to ANYONE. It can be found out in only a few minutes, and it won’t cost you anything. If you would like to find out exactly how to find it on your own so you can check and see if the “professional” running your campaign knows what they are doing … just leave a comment. If I receive enough, I’ll provide step-by-step instructions on how to quickly evaluate your keywords in the coming days.

Watch out posers!!! 🙂