How does one generate pay-per-click free leads? First of all, free leads do not necessarily mean you don't have to pay any money. What the statements means is that you pay for your lead generation, but the cost you put out costs less than what you earn as income from the lead flow generated from pay-per-click. The idea is to make more than what you pay. This means that anything above and beyond what you have paid for lead generation is profit, but not only have you made a profit, the money earned has paid for the lead generation you purchased. Not bad!

I decided to write this article because I was helping someone with his pay-per-click campaigns, as I often do for people. He wanted to setup a campaign and wanted to know how to do so without having to spend a lot of money. Does this sound familiar? Who wants to spend a lot of money when you can spend a small amount and still get the same results? After helping him, he stated that I should create a video or an article showing people what I know in regards to pay-per-click. I thought about it and I decided "why not". I have had success using pay-per-click whereas many online professionals have not and I would like to help those who are struggling.

Set A Budget:

To generate pay-per-click free leads, you first need to set a budget. To establish your budget, you not only want to set the amount of money you want to spend per day, you also want to decide how much you are willing to spend for each lead. I usually set a budget of about $300-$500. I prefer to spend $3.00 or less per lead.

Once you have your budget and lead cost established, then you want to think about what the focus of your campaign will be. In other words, you want to focus on who a target market. Since I am in the home business / internet marketing / network marketing arena I will select keywords relevant to these topics. I don't make my niche market to broad. I try to keep it as narrow as possible. For instance, "internet online business", "starting a small business", or "online business system", just to name a few, are specific, not broad.

The keywords used are usually either long tail or money tail keywords. If you select short tail keywords, then, again, you are creating a campaign that is too broad. If you create a broad campaign, use a lot of negatives and continue to add negatives to narrow the focus of your campaign so that you are not spending money on keywords that are burning money. .

Free Lead Generation Tools:

I have purchased tools to help me help me with my pay-per-click campaigns, but you don’t have to. Assuming that you are on a very tight budget, you probably would like to use free tools and there are a number of them to pick from. They include:

• Google Keyword Tool helps me to find keywords relevant to my main keyword.

• Google Insights lets me see what other keywords I can use in my campaign, but better yet, it also can indicate which keywords to use as negatives.

• Google Trends, gives me some idea on how that keyword is doing overall and it informs me of the countries, cities, and languages are using the keywords. I focus on countries and cities.

• Google Search allows me to locate other keywords to use in my campaign or to use as a negative in my campaign.

Using Google Keyword Tool and Other Tools:

When I use the Google Keyword Tool, I try to select relevant keywords that will cost me around $3.00. There is a column that gives on, on average, the average cost per click of a particular keyword. You will need to include the "Avg CPC" column to be added. Volume should also be included. Refer to both of these columns. Once you are in the Google keyword tool, you have two choices. Either select keywords that have a volume of 10,000 or more or select a lot of low cost keywords that don't have as much volume. For example, if my primary keyword is "starting a home business", some of the keywords I see that cost around $3.00 and have volume of over 10,000, include "how to start a business", "start own business", "start business", etc. Keywords that are low-cost, cost around $3.00, have volume for the same primary keyword, include "starting an internet business", starting a home based business, "homebased business", etc. For search marketing, I use exact and phrase keywords. For content marketing, I use phrase and broad. For each, be sure to include your negatives. The Google Keyword Tool also gives you a list of negatives.

Another way to select keywords is to use Google and put in your keyword, then look at your competition. There is a free tool that you can use to look at what keywords are being used by the top sites. Sometimes this tool will show you the keywords and other times it will not, but when you do find the keywords used by your competitor, include it into your campaign. The tool I am referring to is called, "Free Meta Keywords Tool". Do a search on this and you should be able to find it. You should see the name "Apogee web consulting" at the top. I have successfully used this tool. Another tool I have used is called Textanz. I use this tool to analyze frequency of phrases that are relevant to my keyword.

One other way to look at the keywords of your competitors is to use the Google Keyword Tool. Take the website of your competitor, click on the website content button, and put in the website address. Look for keywords that fit your criteria; low cost, less competition.

Using Google Insights:

Google Insights gives more insight on how a keyword is doing. I use this tool to decide on whether a keyword is profitable. The information provided is shown with a graph. Be sure you are looking at the last 90 days. Using "starting a home business" as an example, the graph shows me that it looks to be a keyword to use in my pay-per-click campaign. I see also that the United States is the only country that has an interest, so the U.S will be the country I would select to market to. It also shows me keywords that I can either add to may campaign or add as a negative.

To verify whether this is a good keyword to use, I will also type this keyword into google search. The results of my search show me that the keyword has a high volume, which is not what I want. I want a keyword that has less than eight ads and a lower volume, preferably less than 500,000. Why? Because it will be easier to include my ad on the first page of Google and I will have a better chance of a prospect taking a look at my ad. If you are unable to find a keyword from your list of keywords that fits all of the criteria of being low cost and having less competition, then you can either continue using the keyword you have selected or select another primary keyword.

Using Google Trends:

The next tool I use is Google Trends. This tool provides information on, not only how the keyword is performing, but how the keyword is performing for each country. You can click on the links of the countries and see whether there is more information associated with that country. If there is, I will include it into my campaign as a country to market to. If I don't see any results, I will not include. It is your choice how you want to use this tool. If you get results by clicking on the country, you will see what sub regions and cities have an interest. If you want to market to certain cities, this would be one tool you can use as well as Google Insights. For my keyword, "starting a small business", I see the United States and United Kingdom are two countries that have an interest in this keyword.

Improving Return On Investment (ROI) :

Once you have your campaign up and running, you will need to track your account stats. Check on your stats and create customized reports. Keep a close eye on your keywords. If you have a limit of $3.00 per lead, then any keyword that is $4.00 and above, shutdown or delete. This enables you to stay within you budget. Monitor closely your campaign; especially in the beginning. Monitor your ads and websites. Add keywords and add negatives as you are monitoring your campaign. To include additional keywords, often times, I will input the keywords into the Google keyword tool that were generated when I first entered my primary keyword. You can either add them to the same ad group or create another ad group. I like to create another ad group just to separate the various keywords in their own group.

Over time, you should start to see which keywords are your money keywords; the ones generating you the most clicks, conversions, and return on investment. Often, I will use the money keywords to create a separate campaign. If you are using Search, you have to pause or delete the keyword from its original campaign. If you are using Content, the keyword can remain within its original campaign. But, try to avoid using duplicate keywords. Google only shows one ad per advertiser on a particular keyword. There is no need to duplicate keywords in different ad groups or campaigns. By doing this, you enhance the performance of your campaign. Because you know which ads, keywords, and website is working, you should generate more leads and conversions.

With everything that was just explained, your cost per lead should be around $3.00 and you should be generating revenue and profits, which means you are generating pay per click free leads. I know that the research seems to be a lot of work, but the work is necessary. The initial step of researching for keywords will get you started in the right direction. All that remains now is to continue to modify and test your campaigns to get the results you are looking for.