[Mark Z]

Does each PPC company charge different rates for the same keywords?

What have you guys found to be the most reasonable companies?

Is there an art to the PPC campaign, what makes one company better than another?

Do they charge you for unique hits or every hit even if the same guy hitting your link 20 times a day? What if your competitor hits your link 25 times each day?

[RonnieG]

Does each PPC company charge different rates for the same keywords?
Yes. Google, Yahoo and MSN rates are all different, for lots of reasons.

What have you guys found to be the most reasonable companies?
In what way? Charges? To use and work with? To understand?

Is there an art to the PPC campaign?
Yes. Art and science.

What makes one company better than another?
Ease of use, rational and understandable rules, and many other things. ROI being at the top of the list.

Do they charge you for unique hits or every hit even if the same guy hitting your link 20 times a day? What if your competitor hits your link 25 times each day?
Each has various ways to detect and limit (not prevent) click fraud. If you/they can prove your competitor is doing it, the competitor can be locked out of their programs. In my experience, click fraud has not been a major issue.

[Mark Z]

Ronnie,
I know you're the king of PPC campaigns. I'm looking to jump start my wife's new site. She is an attorney. Where do you suggest I start? I was thinking google, how do I get started?

[RonnieG]

Google would be the place to start. Don't try all of them right away.

• Go to adwords.google.com and get signed up. Google has pretty good "Getting Started" and online help for AdWords.
• Study whatever you can find online, including here, about keyword and subject specific ads, landing page quality, and other techniques. The basics are pretty much the same for any kind of business.
• Keep it simple to begin with. By that, I mean a few simple broad match and phrase match keyword phrases, appropriate for her legal specialty.
• Disable Content Network ads, and geo-target her service area only. There is no sense in allowing Google to show the ads nationally.
• Don't use any of Google's "automatic" or "optimized" bidding methods. Manual, max bids by keyword phrase is the best way.

[Mark Z]

Ronnie,
I'm deliberating between paying to have her featured in a directory that is already on page 1 of google for the major keywords which are
Michigan Divorce Attorney
Michigan Divorce Lawyer
Michigan Family Law Attorney
Or do I do the ppc campaign? The issue is these keywords on google's ppc campaign are like $6.50 each click, thats steep. Thats like 2 clicks a day and I'm paying $500/month. Is it really worth it?

[RonnieG]

Call me for a 10 minute chat.

[Mark Z]

Give me 15 minutes Ronnie, whats a good number to reach you?

[Mark Z]

Ronnie,
Thanks for he phone call yesterday. For those of you who don't know Ronnie, he is a wealth of information if you are looking to do some PPC. I never realized how much of an art PPC is. I always thought you get in touch with google or yahoo tell them what business you are and they put you up a little ad. NOT THE CASE! You can actually spend a lot more money on your ads if you don't know all the ins and outs. People run the same ads and spend double the amount of money just because they are not doing it right. Ronnie has been doing it for a lot of years and learned the hard way. I just wanted to say thanks to Ronnie and I will be in touch shortly after I get the content developed on the site to my satisfaction. No point in bringing traffic to a site that isn't ready to convert.

[jamesww]

Ronnie,

Would you mind letting me know how to go about starting my PPC on google?

[RonnieG]

There are dozens of basic PPC starter guides at retail bookstores and some online, so I don't get into that area. But none of them really address specifics for real estate. That's where hard-earned experience comes into play. See my 2nd sig link below.