Non-profits can advertise for free with Google through a Beta service called Google Grants. I don’t know how long the program has been available, but I just found out about it today. It looks like a good program.

To qualify, you must have a current and valid 501(c)3 designation from the IRS. The program is available to non-profit organizations within the U.S. and outside of the U.S. in certain designated countries. But if you are a religious or political organization then you need not apply. Google Grants does not support those organizations.

According to program guidelines, Google notifies recipients of the grants every quarter and promises to let non-profits know whether they qualify within six months. But if you are a current advertiser through Google AdWords then you don’t qualify. Furthermore, the following limitations are placed on non-profits that take advantage of the Google Grants program:

• Maximum $1.00 bid per keyword
• $10,000 cap on each campaign
• The $10,000 cap can be stretched to $40,000 if you consistently reach that limit

For more information about the Google Grants program for non-profits, head to the program’s details and policy guidelines pages.

Some pay per click advertisers go crazy on keywords. By that I mean they select a list of keywords loosely related to their ad and make sure all of those keywords are used in their optimization efforts. It’s like a “wish list” of words you hope searchers will find your ad by. But that isn’t the best approach.

You’ll do better, especially if you are new to pay per click, to pick just a handful of keywords that are directly related to the content in your ads and use only those keywords. Make all other keywords inactive. For instance, if you are selling blue widgets and your pay per click ad states that you have blue widgets made in China then you likely want to keep your keyword list small and related only to blue widgets. Useful keywords might include:

• widgets
• blue widgets
• widgets made China
• widgets in China

That’s your starting list. Next, take your list and make the keywords more specific by narrowing the match types, like this:

• [blue widgets]
• [widgets made China]
• [widgets in China]

You might also throw in a few, only a few, variations, such as:

• Chinese widgets
• Chinese blue widgets
• [Chinese widgets]
• [Chinese blue widgets]

Don’t get carried away with this. The idea is to keep your keyword list small and to use only keywords that are related directly to the words in your pay per click ad. You can expand on this list later.

Before you go full force into an ad campaign you might want to split test your ads to see which ones are more effective. This is a rather simple process, but it’s detailed and time consuming. If you rush through it you could end up spending thousands of dollars trying to run ads and getting clicks outside of your target market. Split testing can save you the headache.

First, to split test your ads, you need to make sure they are comparable. Only slit test ads that use the same keyword. If you are running a PPC campaign, for instance, where you are trying to sell Champion spark plugs then you don’t want to split test ads that use “Champion” and “spark plugs” as keywords, respectively. You want the same keyword for both ads - “champion spark plugs” or just “spark plugs.”

Next, make sure all other elements are the same and only test one thing at a time. In other words, either give both ads the same headline and a different ad description or vice-versa, but don’t each ad their own headline and ad description. That won’t tell you anything. Let’s say you want to find out which headline produces the most click throughs. You’ll write two headlines that use the same exact keyword phrase and make every other element in each ad exactly the same. Run the ads for a week, or three days at least (it’s vitally important that you run both ads the same length of time), and see which one gets you most click throughs.

After you’ve tested headlines and chosen the one that is most effective, go on to test the ad descriptions using the same method. Continue this process until you’ve tested each element of the ad to see which pieces work best together. After your split test is done, go ahead with your full-fledged ad campaign.

You might be tempted to place Bidvertiser ads on your blog or website. If you are then consider a slight difference between Bidvertiser and Google AdWords that gives Google AdWords an edge.

Bidvertiser allows you to select categories that you put your blog or website into. By selecting a category you are telling Bidvertiser that you want ads in that category displayed on your website. If you have a niche website then that is fine. But if your website is of a general nature and you discuss items that are outside of that category niche then you’ll have non-relevant ads on your pages.

Google AdWords, on the other hand, is capable of finding out what keywords your pages are optimized for and displaying ads that are relevant to your pages. The AdWords system can do this no matter what your blog is about. If you have a niche blog it will display ads that are relevant to your niche. If you have a blog or website that discusses a wide variety of topics then no matter what topic you are discussing, Google AdWords will display appropriate ads on your pages. This is why I prefer Google AdWords. It’s also why I prefer Yahoo! Search Marketing.

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You may be too late for any new SEO efforts, but you’re just in time for new pay per click advertising campaigns.

According to the Google AdWords Retail Industry Newsletter, 117 million online shoppers spent $33 billion last year at Christmastime. That was a 21 percent increase over 2005 and it’s highly likely that more people will spend more money this Christmas than last. The newsletter also reports that the heaviest online days for shopping last year were December 13, December 11, and December 4. All this means that online advertisers are approaching the best time of the year to start their new pay per click advertising campaigns. There’s no time better than now.

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Is there such a thing as too many simultaneously run PPC campaigns? The short answer is no, but there is a right way and a wrong way - or you could say a smart way and a not-so-smart-way - to go about launching them.

What you don’t want to do is launch all of your PPC campaigns at once. If you own more than one company then you probably already run several PPC campaigns. You likely run at least one for each company you own. But what if you are running PPC campaigns for just one company? I recommend you stagger your campaign launch dates for maximum effectiveness.

If you launch several PPC campaigns simultaneously, you run the risk of losing effectiveness. In order to be more effective in all of your campaigns, you should stagger their launch dates by no less than two weeks apart. This will give you enough time between launch dates to measure the initial effectiveness of each campaign before moving on to something else. You might even move your launch dates to one month between them to give you more time to analyze each one’s initial effectiveness. One thing remains sure whichever way to do it: Launching multiple PPC campaigns too close together can cause you to lose money and be less effective on each campaign - and that’s bad for business.

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Does it matter when you launch your pay per click campaign? Does your launch date matter relative to other important dates? I think it does.

You should time your PPC launch to coincide with any other important advertising initiatives you have going on as well as any specials you might be promoting.

For instance, let’s say you are gearing up for Christmas. You know that Cabbage Patch Dolls will be marked down 25% between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but you are just now in the throes of your Thanksgiving holiday specials, featuring the Gay Batman Figurine at a 19.3% discount. Obviously, you don’t want to start your pay-per-click campaign marketing the cabbage patch dolls in October. That would be a better time to promote the Batman Figurine. Now the question is, when DO you start your pay per click campaign for Christmas?

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Off line, you can run your TV and radio ads early. You might start advertising your Christmas specials two weeks before Thanksgiving because you know people aren’t going to run right out the door the minute they see your ad on TV and start swiping up dolls. Online, though, it’s a different story. People are more likely to buy right now than they are to put off a purchase. If they put it off then they will likely buy it off line instead. That means you should have a different strategy.

The best time to launch your pay per click campaign is when you’re ready to start taking orders. If you know the special begins the day after Thanksgiving, but you don’t have your online order taking process in line yet then you don’t want to launch you pay per click campaign. Unless the idea is to send people to your website and have them call you for orders. But if you are taking orders online then you shouldn’t launch the PPC campaign until you are ready to take the orders. It is absolutely essential to have everything else in line before you launch your PPC campaign because the moment that first ad goes live, you could potentially get an order. It CAN happen that quick so you’ve got to be prepared for that.

There’s been a big argument over pay-per-click advertising since its inception into the Internet marketing realm. The SEO purists argue that pay-per-click advertising isn’t necessary because 80% of your traffic comes from organic search. Since that’s where most of your traffic is going to come from then that is where you should focus your efforts.

On the other hand, pay-per-click advocates argue that pay-per-click advertising delivers more targeted traffic than SEO. They claim that the 20% of the search traffic you get from pay-per-click advertising are from people more likely to buy from you. Another argument says that people who see your pay-per-click ad will see you as a more serious advertiser and do business with you before they will someone who relies only on search.

Why You Might Not Pay-Per-Click

All of these are valid arguments. I agree with the advocates of pay-per-click on all of their points. But there may be other reasons you don’t want to use pay-per-click advertising. But I think this argument qualifies very few people. If you have a product or service that is very low-priced and the cost of pay-per-click advertising is too much for you to gain any serious ROI then you probably don’t want to use it. Let me rephrase that:

If the cost of your product is such that pay-per-click advertising requires you to spend more per click that you can hope to convert into sales and make it worth your while then you might want to stay away from pay-per-click. For instance, if you sell a $3 e-book and all the keyword phrases that would drive traffic to your website cost you over $1, in order to profit you would have to convert 1 out of every 3 visitors that come to you through pay-per-click. If you can’t do that then you’ll lose money. That might not be so good for your business.

An exception to this rule, actually two of them, might be when the long-term benefits of branding your company make losing money on your pay-per-click campaign more profitable in the long run and - the second reason - when you have sufficient conversions coming from your organic efforts that you still profit overall the loss on your pay-per-click is insignificant in comparison.

Apart from these arguments, I think most companies can benefit from pay-per-click.