This is the third and final post in a series about how small businesses can save money on pay-per-click advertising. Read the first post and the second post for more tips.

Diversify your ad networks

Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing are the obvious choices for pay-per-click advertising, while MSN adCenter and Ask Sponsored Listings nip at their heels. But beyond the big four are a number of pay-per-click opportunities to capitalize on, and the bids are often cheaper than with the major search engines.

If you sell products for the average consumer, the best way to diversify your pay-per-click portfolio is with shopping sites like Shopping.com, BizRate and PriceGrabber. You can submit your product information, including pictures and pricing, and bid for prime placement. If you primarily sell to other businesses, diversifying your PPC portfolio can be much more difficult. You’ll have to hunt down niche sites related to your industry.

Watch ‘em like a hawk

When you’re on a limited budget, you don’t have the luxury of letting your PPC campaigns coast. If you’re setting up PPC ads for the first time or doing a major overhaul, you’ll want to check back frequently to make sure you’re getting satisfactory results. Set a cap on the amount you can spend per day and see how close you come to that cap … or how quickly you hit the cap.

Pay close attention to your click-through rates. If an ad is getting a lot of views but very few clicks, you may be targeting a keyword that is too broad or not relevant enough. You also want to take a close look at how you wrote the ad, and whether it could be rewritten in a way to attract more clicks. Most PPC networks allow you to write multiple ads for the same keyword, so you can rotate the ads and see which one gets the best results. Most importantly, pay extra attention to your conversions … are customers clicking, but not buying? Focus on the keywords that generate money, not browsing.

Many books have been written about marketing websites on a budget, and by no means is this a definitive guide. These are just some of the more important lessons I’ve learned through my experience as a small business webmaster and in-house SEO. Feel free to contact me at thewoman [at] seowoman [dot] com or in the comments section if you need more advice or clarification on any of these tips.

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