There’s a way to use Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising that’s rarely talked about, but that can be highly effective, and that can save you a lot of effort and money.

Trying to determine the proper keywords and keyword phrases to optimize your articles and blog posts and press releases for is an art. You can never know all the phrases people might use to find your product or service or website.

Here’s a quick story that blows my mind and should blow yours too if you are trying to keep up on the different keywords related to your practice and website…

A while back, Google released a statistic that 20% of the searches they receive haven’t ever been typed in before.  In other words, 1 out of 5 searches is brand new in the history of their search engine.  If our prospects are searching on terms that have never been searched on before, what makes us think we can anticipate them?!

Furthermore, some, or even many, of the keywords you do try, even if they get you a good volume of clicks, will turn out not to convert. That is, people will click on a keyword, but not make an appointment or schedule a consult or at least opt in to your email list to get your special report—and that’s just a waste of money.

So, a lot of skilled Internet marketers start by running a PPC campaign.

You do your keyword research, and put up good content, and create good landing pages well-matched to your keywords, and write good ads, and split test them to keep improving them—in other words you follow “best practices” in creating a PPC campaign.

But as discussed above, if you aren’t even sure exactly what people might be typing to find your business, how could you know exactly what keywords to show your ads for and bid on?

Using a feature in AdWords™ called “See Search Terms,” you can see exactly what somebody typed in to trigger your ad to show and subsequently click through to your site.  A detailed discussion on PPC match types is beyond the scope of this post, but here is the basic thought…

You advertise on a broad keyword – let’s say “plastic surgery.”  When you advertise this way, Google will expand that search to other keywords it thinks are related – for example “face lift re-do expert los angeles.”

Now you might never have thought of this particular keyword, but because it is so specific, the searcher is probably already pretty educated on the issue and ready to make a decision.  So, even though there won’t be a ton of traffic on that particular query, it will probably have a very high conversion rate into appointments and consults and cases for your practice.

By monitoring results and using an analytics program so that you can track these conversions to determine what keywords actually lead to phone calls or opt-ins or consults, it becomes very powerful.

In 60 or 90 days, or maybe less, you’ll know exactly which keywords get a good volume of clicks, and perhaps more importantly, you’ll know that your website and your sales process can convert the clicks.

If you can get a good volume of clicks, but not the conversions you’re looking for, either they’re the wrong clicks, with no “commercial intent,” or your conversion process doesn’t work.

Once you figure all that out, you’ll know exactly how to create your articles and videos, and you’ll know exactly the keywords to put in the titles of your press releases, and in your blog posts and in your LinkedIn profile and on your Facebook page.

Yes, you’ll spend some money buying traffic, but in the long run you’ll save money, time, and effort, and you’ll know exactly how to expand your marketing efforts on the free side.

Have you done this?  Tell me about it below…