Paid options can be a great source of traffic for your blog.
But it’s all about the right kind of traffic.
With paid search you can get the right kind of traffic for your blog. Not only can you get the right traffic, you can get lots of the right traffic.
With paid search, though, you’re spending money on top of your time so the stakes are high.
In the following guide we’ll cover the biggest opportunities you have to market your blog posts using paid search.
Google AdWords
There are a ton of good posts out there about how to effectively use Google AdWords so we won’t focus on the things that have been said before.
We’ll focus on a single strategy that will help you promote your blog posts instead of a general website or ecommerce store.
Step 1 – Publish A New Post
You can use this tactic for every one of your new posts since a key component of blogging is to publish only valuable blog content.
Step 2 – Select Only Specific Keyword Phrases
The biggest and broadest keywords are expensive per click. That’s no surprise.
For blog marketing with paid search you don’t need a ton of traffic to make your efforts effective. You’re trying to get the right kind of people interest in your posts and your brand.
Look for terms that have low competition (instead of high or medium). These terms will usually have less than 1,000 monthly global searches and even less in your local area, which is your local country.
It’s important to determine if you are targeting global readers or readers in a specific location. Only you can determine where your absolute ideal readers are located.
AdWords provides you with the Keyword Planner.
You have a couple ways to build your campaigns.
First, enter in the URL of your post. Google will suggest ad group ideas as well as keyword ideas for campaigns.
Second, enter in keywords you want to target with the blog post. Form your keywords and the suggestions you can build your campaigns. Ideally you want keywords with high traffic and low competition, but this is obviously not always possible.
If you feel strongly about a certain keyword with high traffic that also has high competition you can invest in the cost per click (CPC) to get the traffic.
Step 3 – Create Simple, To-The-Point Ads
The best ads, like the best blog headlines, touch on key emotions with potential readers.
Your ad headlines and description will need to be even shorter and to the point than your blog titles.
Create a title that describes exactly what the post is about. Then in the description, describe what the main benefit is for the potential reader. Write the description as an offer to the person looking at the ad.
Here is an example:
Search Term:
Social Media For Business
Ad Headline:
Social Media For Business
Ad Description:
Connect With Your Customers On Google+. Get Your Free Google Business Page.
That’s an ad created by Google for Google+. It’s clear what the ad is for. It speaks to the person seeing the ad and makes a clear offer.
Step 4 – Turn Off The Content Network
Go to Campaign Settings and choose Google Search Only. The default is for Google to show your ads both in search and on its content network, which are the sites that have AdSense. It’s best for now to focus solely on the paid search part of AdWords. Once you master search you can move into the content network.
Step 5 – Learn What Works And Create Content Based On Your Findings
The popular advice for using an ad network is to test like crazy. Obviously you’ll want to test to see what kind of ads work best for your content.
But here’s another piece of advice.
As you see the type of ads and type of content that do best on Google AdWords and other networks, create specific content based on your findings.
Million of people use Google to search for information. For many search results, paid ads take up the majority of what’s above the fold.
If you see that some of your posts are doing better than others or if you notice an opportunity to create something more relevant and more appealing to searchers then create specific content for specific keyword phrases.
Then you can target the term for both organic and paid search.
Step 6 – Bid On Competitive Blog Keywords
Do your competitors have a lot of traffic for their brand name on Google? If they do you can target those keywords with the ads you use to send traffic to your blog.
Your competition likely doesn’t use AdWords to promote their blog posts so there probably won’t be much competition for the ads on their brand-related blog keywords.
When you put an ad up for their brand term the searchers will see your relevant post and go to your blog post instead of to your competitor’s blog.
Yahoo Bing Network
More than 163 million searchers use Yahoo and Bing each month. Of that number, 54 million don’t search using Google. In some cases, the Yahoo/Bing network is cheaper on a cost per click (CPC) basis too.
When using paid ads to market your blog posts, don’t get forget about Yahoo and Bing.
For this section, though, we’ll share a few steps for using the Yahoo Bing Network to market your blog posts with paid search.
Step 1 – Broaden Your Keywords
With Google, costs are competitive. More brands use Google to attract visitors to their websites and landing pages so the costs are high.
On Yahoo Bing, things are less competitive. For your blog marketing efforts this means there is an opportunity to focus on the broader search terms.
Use the same keyword research you do for organic search and for paid ads. Target broader keywords with more potential traffic payoff than you would on Google.
Step 2 – Location Target To Get Your Exact Customer
Do you know where your best customers are? With Bing Ads you can focus on specific locations to promote your blog posts. Most local businesses focus on promoting their business pages, but there are plenty of searchers looking for lists of things to do in cities and states.
Use the Geo-Targeting feature on Bing Ads to promote your top list blog posts. There will be very few, if any, other ads with this type of content.
Conclusion
Using paid search is not the first thing people think about when it comes to promoting their blog content. For that reason alone it’s an opportunity for you to gain an advantage over the competition.
By using the strategies above you can ease your way into the paid options for marketing your blog content. It will help grow your blog traffic bringing more leads and sales to your business.
Find other ways to promote your blog via social media, and more, with our other guides on building your blog audience.
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