Pay Per Click is an internet advertising model where advertisers pay publishers every time one of their ads is clicked. Basically, it is a way businesses ‘ buy’ traffic into their website(s) instead of ‘earning’ them organically. Search engine marketing is, so far, the most popular form of PPC. PPC is way more effective than CPM (cost per mile) as companies only pay for the number of times their ads have been clicked rather than when it has been seen or viewed. It helps you accurately read data, adjust marketing campaigns and assess the effectiveness of such changes. So, if you’ve heard little to no information about pay-per-click advertising and would like to learn how it works or its pros and cons, this guide contains everything you need to know about this marketing model. Let’s first review the meaning of PPC and then dive deeper; shall we? What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising? Also known as cost per click (CPC), Pay-per-click (PPC) is a digital or online marketing model where marketers or businesses place ads on publishers’ platforms like blogs and YouTube. And then pay every time a visitor clicks their sponsored (ad) link. This model is popular on search engines like Google and Bing and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. One unique thing about pay-per-click advertising is that advertisers only incur costs for the number of clicks their ads get, making it more effective than CPM. So, instead of marketing your website organically, like through SEO and content marketing, you can ‘buy’ website visits. With search engine advertising, firms bid for keywords related to their offerings for their sponsored links to appear at the top or bottom of the SERPs when users search for the keywords. For instance, when you search for “digital marketing course” on Google, PPC ads from Google, Facebook, and Coursera appear. These companies only pay if one clicks the ads. How the PPC Model Works Keywords form the basis of the PPC marketing model. As seen above, online ads (or sponsored links) appear when one searches for keywords related to the marketer’s business offers. Searching for digital or email marketing and getting PPC ads about pet foods is highly unlikely. Therefore, keyword research is mandatory for companies that rely on pay-per-click advertising to analyze the terms their potential customers search for and bid for those keywords. This way, you’ll receive many clicks from the right audience and, eventually, boost sales. This marketing model is beneficial for marketers and publishers. Publishers that target high CPC keywords in their content have higher chances of getting high-paying ads, increasing their revenue when users click such ads. Publishers like me can offer content for free and make money online through PPC monetization models, mainly from Google Adsense and Media.net. This model is equally effective for marketers as users who click their ads and visit their website are more likely to buy or subscribe to their business offers than those who only view their ads and don’t click. When the PPC campaigns are well-targeted, the cost per click paid by the advertiser will be less than the value of each visit (click), saving on advertising costs. Pay-Per-Click Advertising Models Marketers usually determine PPC advertising rates using flat-rate or bid-based models. 1. Flat-rate Model Advertisers using the flat rate PPC model incur a fixed rate per every click. Publishers offer different rates for different areas on their websites. For instance, placing an ad on the header may be way more costly but effective than placing the same ad on a site’s sidebar or footer. However, most publishers are open to negotiation. They can lower the PPC rate if the advertiser offers a longer-term or high-value contract. But such terms are highly unlikely when using ad networks like Google Ads or Media.net (for Bing and Yahoo search engines). 2. Bid-based Model In a bid-based PPC, advertises quote the maximum offer they would be willing to pay for an advertising spot in an auction. The publisher then launches auctions using automation. Every time a user triggers the ad spot, an auction and a winning bid ad are displayed. However, the bid ‘winner’ is determined by the rank, not the bid’s value. In addition to considering the amount of money offered, the rank depends on the quality of the advertiser’s content. This way, relevant ads are shown to visitors, increasing their likelihood of clicking. Types of Pay Per Click Advertising You can use different pay or cost-per-click internet marketing options to drive traffic and sales to your website. The common ones include: 1. Search Engine Marketing Search engine advertising is the most common type of PPC marketing. It is provided by popular search engines like Google (through Google Adwords) and Bing (through Bing Ads). These providers show your ads on the SERPs when users search for the keywords you have bided for. All you need is to write an excellent ad copy, select the most appropriate keywords that will connect you to the right audience. Then connect the ad to the landing page of your website. What is Google Ads? Google Ads is the most popular PPC advertising system globally. This ad platform allows advertisers to create ads to appear on Google search engine results and its other properties. Here’re some ads that appear when you search for digital marketing jobs on Google. Many businesses have bided for the keyword, but only two ads appeared on the top of SERP. And these companies will only pay if I click their links. After searching for the term the second time, the ads disappeared from the top of the SERPs and appeared at the bottom. What happens is that every time a search is initiated, Google automatically digs into the pool of advertisers. And then chooses the most appropriate set of ‘winners,’ and displays their ads ad different positions on the SERPs. The winners are selected based on many factors, including the user’s location, quality and relevance of the advertiser’s keyword, and

Video marketing, part of content creation strategy, use videos to promote a brand, products, or services. It is an effective way for businesses to engage with their target audience and build relationships with their customers, especially because videos are attention-grabbing. Through videos, businesses can capture the viewers’ attention, convey emotions and offer a more immersive experience way more than any other form of content, like text and images. And your videos can easily be shared across social media, increasing reach and visibility. More so, video marketing helps marketers increase conversions and sales. In fact, research by Hubspot shows that over 97% of marketers claimed that this form of marketing helps their users understand their brand better. Including videos in your landing pages can potentially increase conversion rate by 80% and build brand loyalty and credibility. Effective Video Marketing Strategy With more people preferring videos, especially short-form ones, over text and images, there’s no better time than now to adopt video marketing. Just develop and execute a successful video marketing strategy, and reach more audiences for your business. Here’s what to do: 1. Define the Target Audience The basic step for any digital strategy is to define the target audience. You have to get this right to avoid targeting people who want nothing to do with your brand or products. Take time to understand the demographics and characteristics of the people your brand want to reach. The following tips can be used to define the target audience: Remember, you’re not just finding an audience for your videos but potential customers for your business as well. So, you must be specific about whom you want to do business with. 2. Set Realistic Marketing Goals Setting clear and meaningful goals will help you create an effective video marketing strategy for your business. So, what do you intend to achieve, and when? Do you want to use videos to increase brand awareness, generate leads for your business, drive sales, or boost website traffic? Or are you seeking to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry? Maybe to boost your brand reputation and credibility? Be specific and realistic while formulating your goals. More so, align your goals with overall business objectives, and make sure they are measurable and achievable. You also need to set timelines for each of your marketing goals. 3. Choose the Right Platform Don’t make the mistake of sharing your video content on platforms that your target audience rarely uses. You have to monitor your audience and identify their favorite video-sharing platform. Then create content well-optimized for these platforms for maximum results. Besides your audience, you should also consider your preferred platform’s features. Notice the ones best suited for your marketing goals and the video content you’ll share. And consider the costs of using each platform and whether it alights with your budget. The five most common video marketing platforms include: Find the best platform for your videos depending on the type of content you’re creating and your target audience. Or even share videos on your own platform, like an app or website. Then proceed to the subsequent stages to create an effective strategy. 4. Develop a Content Plan For various reasons, developing a content plan for your video marketing strategy is important. For instance, it helps ensure your business consistently produces and shares high-quality videos. It also ensures that your content is relevant and resonates with your target customers. Then it helps you be organized in your content creation, which saves time and resources. And allows your business to track and measure results and make necessary adjustments. So, after identifying your target audience and setting goals, I want you to create a content plan. What type of videos will you be producing? Is it product demos, tutorials, or case studies? What distribution channel will you be using? How often will you be publishing videos? Having a plan will help you remain consistent and focused in your content creation journey. That way, you can attract more engagement and increase your brand awareness online. 5. Create Engaging Content Creating engaging videos involves producing high-quality content that resonates with your target audience and elicits an emotional response. But to do so, of course. you must have identified your audience, right? Doing so helps you address the main problems they are facing. While creating your content, you can tell a story to make it more engaging and memorable. And make it visually appealing and relevant, with clear audio and good production values. Also, be concise enough to avoid clutter and distraction and increase audience retention. Your videos should add value instead of being a replication of what other creators have already said. Offer your audience helpful tips, insights, or solutions to their problems. And engage them by asking questions, responding to their comments, and fostering a sense of community. 6. Optimize for Search Engines Optimizing your videos for search engines involves a series of SEO best practices to increase their visibility and performance on search results. The basic step involves knowing what main keyword your video targets and then mentioning it a few times during the production stage. More so, you should write compelling video descriptions and naturally include the target keyword and its variations. And include the target keyword in the video title and tags. Creating a transcript also helps search engines understand the content and context of your videos. As seen below, optimizing your videos will increase their visibility on video-sharing platforms like YouTube and search engines like Google when people click the video tab. That way, you can get more views for your videos and, at the same time, increase website traffic. 7. Promote the Videos Online Publishing high-quality videos isn’t enough – you must actively promote them to reach more audiences and target customers. So you can use different marketing strategies, including sharing your content on social media, embedding videos on your website, or hosting webinars. You can collect emails from your audience and send them notifications

Website SEO analysis is the process of evaluating and improving a site’s visibility and ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It aims to increase organic (free or non-paid) traffic to a website by improving its ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). An effective SEO analysis includes various factors, like optimizing content for specific keywords (on-page optimization) and building and auditing backlinks (off-page optimization). It also involves monitoring and improving website structure. analyzing content and analytics. It helps you identify technical and content-related issues that could hinder your site’s ability to rank on search engines. For instance, you can identify and solve mobile responsiveness or duplicate content problems. So, regular analysis increases visibility, traffic, and conversion. Complete Website SEO Analysis Guide Website SEO analysis may seem complicated, especially for beginners with little information on how search engines work and how to improve their sites. However, there are free SEO checklists and tools that will make your work much easier. Here’s what the process entails: #1: Keyword Research Before you analyze your website or competitors, you must know what keywords you want to rank for. To do so, you have to understand your target audience first. Then use tools like Semrush to find phrases they are using to find content or products. For instance, if you’re a content writing agency, one of the keywords you may be targeting is ‘content writing services.’ According to Semrush, this phrase has 2400 searches in the United States. The tool also shows you other related keywords you can target to rank for. You can also get keyword ideas for your website from your competitors by monitoring their top pages and keywords. Or even using google and YouTube autocomplete features. Here’s a comprehensive keyword research guide with best practices and awesome tools. #2: On-Page Optimization You should select at least one target keyword for every article on your website. Then make sure it is well-optimized for the phrase or term. For instance, you should include the target keyword naturally in the SEO title and headings (H1, H2,…), meta description, and within the body. When linking your articles internally, you should include the target keyword as the anchor text. And include the term in the URL of your article, in the alt text and file name of your images, and write high-quality content. Check if your site is mobile-friendly and make adjustments. However, avoid over-optimization or keyword stuffing while analyzing and editing your content. It is a practice of inserting many keywords in your website content and tags to artificially increase your page’s ranking on search results and drive more traffic. It is not only against Google’s policies but damages your site’s user experience and credibility. #3: Off-Page Optimization After solving issues within your website that could damage your SEO results, I want you to monitor your external factors like backlinks and social shares. Identify websites that may want to link to your website (or those you have linked to) and email them for link insertion requests. Even better, you can ‘steal’ and outrank your competitors’ links. Here’s how to steal links. Checking and increasing link quantity is not enough; you must continuously audit your backlinks and ensure they are high-quality and relevant. Also, share your content across the web, including repurposing it and sharing links on social media and Q&A platforms like Quora. #4: Analyse Website Content While auditing your website content, you should consider some aspects, including quality, relevance, and freshness. Write high-quality, relevant, and verifiable information to your preferred audience, include data and reference other websites, and be authoritative. The SEO analysis also involves solving any duplicate content issues on your website. Although writing a few articles on the same topic is advised, you should ensure every article shares unique information. And refer people to related content through internal linking. And finally, make sure your content is relevant and fresh by regularly updating it. That way, you can improve user experience on your website and increase your search engine rankings. In fact, regularly updating your content will help you target more keywords and increase traffic. #5: Analyze Website Structure Some technical issues can also hinder your website’s appearance and performance on search results. You should submit your sitemap to Search Console for Google and Bing webmasters for the Bing search engine. Doing so will help them to crawl your website and index your pages. Check the navigation menu structure and URL structure to enhance the user experience on your website. And sent the canonical links while redirecting old pages to new ones to solve any 404 issues. You can use internal links to help your users navigate through your website. #6: Analytics, Tracking & Improvement Website SEO analysis is a continuous process. You should continuously analyze and track your website and pages’ performance on search engines. And you may use free tracking and analytics tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and Bing or Ahref webmasters. You have to keep writing new content and updating old ones to maintain its relevance to your audience. And keep up with the algorithm updates for all the popular search engines. Then adopt the recommended best practices to improve your site’s search visibility and traffic. Most importantly, you should analyze your competitor’s website. And identify new content ideas your audience may be interested in and new backlink opportunities. That way, you can know how to optimize your website content and increase traffic and conversions. Importance of Website SEO Analysis Website SEO analysis, whether for your website or that of your competitors or clients, is very important for various reasons. Some of these include the following: Conclusion: Now What? Website SEO analysis is a vital process that helps you optimize your website for better visibility and performance on search engines like Google and Bing. Although it involves analyzing many factors, the process is not as complicated as it may seem if you follow the right procedure. Specifically, you need to: So, go ahead and analyze your

YouTube keyword research process involves finding relevant topics or phrases for your video content. It shows you the terms your audience is using while searching for information on the platform. This guide has the best practices, tools, and mistakes to avoid along the way. Knowing the words or phrases people use to find videos will help you optimize your content to rank higher on YouTube searches. You can use popular keywords in your titles, descriptions, and within content. Then get more organic views, and grow your YouTube channel. The research process doesn’t have to be complicated. But you must adopt the best practices, use tools, and avoid the mistakes discussed herein. That way, you’ll manage to optimize your videos to rank higher on search. And promote your brand while earning from your channel. YouTube Keyword Research Process YouTube keyword research helps you find a highly demanded but less competitive niche or topic for your channel. And gives you unlimited content ideas for your videos. Here’re a few steps you can take to conduct comprehensive keyword research for your channel: #1: Identify your Target audience You should first understand whom you want to create content for, and what type of content you’re seeking to create. What’s your goal: to educate or entertain? What are the age group, location, and interests of your target audience? Are they experiencing any problems? The choice of your audience will depend on the products or services you’re aiming to sell, currently or in the future. For instance, if you’re interested in selling marketing courses, you can choose freelancers as your target audience. Then create videos on digital marketing topics. #2: Think and List Topics Before you think of using research tools, I want you to think of some topics your target audience may be interested in, and list them down. You can use different approaches, including identifying what problems your audience may be facing or analyzing your own problems. Put yourself in your target audience’s shoes, and come up with different topics and questions they might want answers to. Doing so will help you understand your niche and strategize your channel. Or even suggest different playlists or categories for your content. #3: Use Keyword Research Tools Use different keyword research tools like Semrush and Ahref to find relevant search terms and phrases. The tools will show you the competition, search volume, cost-per-click (CPC), and search intent for your keywords. They help you prioritize what topics to create videos on first. Let’s assume you want to create a video about ‘content writing services.’ Based on Semrush, this keyword has a global monthly search volume of 7.4k, mainly from the US (2.4k) and India (1.9k). The tool also shows you 732 variations, 16 questions, and 530 related keywords. The keyword has a high keyword difficulty of 61%, a search volume of 2.4k in the United States, and a CPC of $9.09. Most importantly, you get to understand the search intent (transactional). Therefore, most people searching for it online are looking for information. #4: YouTube & Google Autocomplete You already have some topics you’re interested in creating content around. But before you start creating your videos, I want you to head to YouTube/Google search. Then start typing any target keyword into the search bar, and take note of the content suggestions that come up. You can check the ‘people also ask’ section for relevant questions to include or answer in your content. For instance, check out the topics related to the question – what is keyword research? Answering these queries will increase the relevance and visibility of your videos. #5: Analyse your Competitors Before creating any videos, find your competitors, or people you’re sharing similar content and target audience. What keywords are they using in their video titles, tags, and descriptions? How are they using them? Also, monitor the trends; what videos or topics are getting more views. You can also get inspiration on what your competitors are doing to increase engagement on their channels. How often are they publishing their content? How have they categorized their videos? Check how their viewers are commenting or questions that they are asking to get ideas. #6: Optimize your Videos for Search For every video, identify a relevant target keyword you’re aiming to rank for. You should then mention it, alongside its synonyms, variations, and long tail versions, while creating your content. And then include it in the SEO title (preferably at the beginning), description, and tags. You can answer relevant questions about your topic. That way, you exploit everything your target audience wants to know about the topic, and increase engagement, views, and audience retention. These metrics show YouTube that your content is great, and boosts your rankings. #7: Monitor Results & Keep Improving After publishing your videos in your niche, you should collect feedback from your audience, and make the necessary adjustments. YouTube will show you the main search terms people use to find your videos online, and you can edit your description and tags to include them. You can also use the search terms to create your next content. By doing so, you can attract more views, as people already associate your channel with such type of content. Just keep monitoring your videos, and replicate the process while creating your subsequent YouTube videos. Best YouTube Keyword Research Tools Keyword research tools help you find relevant phrases and topics for your videos. They enable you to optimize your videos for the YouTube search algorithm. The best research tools include: Mistakes to Avoid when Finding Ideas The main mistake most creators make is failure to understand their target audience. Before creating any video, you need to know why and for whom you are creating it. What answer is your audience looking for, or interested in, and why? Failure to do so will cost you views. More so, you have to fight inconsistency at all costs. When it comes to building an online community and loyal followers, consistency is vital. So,