Click fraud is one of the most pressing concerns among PPC advertisers. Even though search engines try to minimize the problem, people are concerned about click fraud. In a recent survey of nearly 50 percent search marketers had planned to monitor click fraud. The key to fighting click fraud is to have a plan tailored to your own campaign.



Even though the major search engines monitor click fraud, you can take certain measures to help them.

? Monitor your CTR (Click Through Rate). Look for sudden changes such as a sharp increase.

? Watch for changes in conversion rates. If your ad campaign normally converts at 2 percent, and it suddenly drops for no obvious reason, it might be a sign of click fraud.

? Observe how quickly you go through your daily budget. If it used to take your business to go through your daily budget in ten hours, and now it only takes 4-hours, it could indicate click fraud.

? Check your log files for suspicious IP addresses. Some PPC search engines offer IP address filtering.

? Monitor your account for traffic from unusual geographical locations. If you haven't done it already, turn on geo targeting.

? Scrutinize your conversion rate.

Market Research With PPC

PPC is a great tool for testing. Let's say you want to introduce a new product, but you are unsure about the name. After a brainstorming session, you could come up with a few potential names. Then, you could set up a PPC campaign for each of the product names. Within a day you would have you own research project running. What used to take weeks or even months, can now be done in a matter of days. Market research through PPC costs money, but it is a lot less expensive than traditional methods.

Landing Page Strategies

Creating the appropriate landing page for your campaign can be the difference between failing and succeeding. Link to a landing page not your home page. Your website might list 500 products while you are bidding on 100 keywords. For best results you should have a landing page for each keyword you are bidding on. If the searcher ends up on your home page instead on the landing page for the product they are looking for, you are making the buying process more complicated. Nothing hurts conversion rates more than a convoluted buying process. The simpler you manage to keep the process, the better conversion rate you can expect.

Great landing pages have the following characteristics:

? No navigation. While we are told that navigation is part of good web design, landing pages shouldn't have any. The reason is that you don't want the visitor to click off the page. You have spent good money to drive them to your landing page, so keep them there. The only reason to have any navigation on a landing page is to help with closing.

? Pay special attention to your link text. People are more likely to read links than regular text. Make sure the link is appealing and easy to read.

? Use the keywords throughout the page copy. If the searcher landed on your page after searching for ?keyword a,? make sure ?keyword a? is loud and clear throughout the page.

? Don't try to fit a book on your landing page. People glance at web pages. Write simple concise copy. Leave ample of white space to make it easy on the eyes.