A PPC search engine allows you to bid for placement in search results. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and most others bolster their organic search results with sponsor advertisements. If you search on Google, links in blue across the top and the little ads down the right side of the search results are PPC listings. In one form or another, similar listings appear on every major search engine.
How Does It Work?
When you use a PPC, you will bid for placement in the search results under particular keywords. Instead of optimizing your site to appear high in the listings, you simple pay for the position. While this may sound great, keep in mind you are paying for the listing and have to watch the return on investment closely.
To get started, you must open an account with the PPC in question. The two biggest PPCs are Google Adwords and Overture. You will need to register with the PPC, provide a credit card number and, depending on the PPC, deposit money into the account. Next, create ads with a title, body text and link to the landing page of your site. The title of each ad should correspond to a particular keyword you want to promote. If at all possible, include the keyword in the actual title. Finally, you will be asked to bid on placement in the search results.
Bidding for placement is not as simple as it my sound. Ideally, your ad should be in the top 3, but never below the 10th position. This has to be balanced, however, by the return on investment of the campaign. If you sell a product that produces a $10 dollar profit per sale, you probably can't afford to pay $.90 per click. If your site converts 1 visitor out of every 100 into a sale, you will spend $90 for every sale. Obviously, that is going to work out very well. The one caveat to this situation is a business with reoccurring revenue.
If you site charges clients a reoccurring monthly fee, you can bid in excess of your immediate profit margin. To do this safely, you must determine how long the average customer will stay on your site. For example, if you make a $10 profit per month and the average customer pays for 5 months, the total profit is $50. In this situation, you can spend $20 or $30 to obtain a customer and still turn a profit. To properly manage a PPC campaign for a reoccurring charge site, you must recalculate the profit per customer ever week to protect yourself.
PPC Cons
Why not just use a PPC campaign instead of pursuing search engine optimization? There are a number of reasons. First, you are paying for each click with a PPC, which requires a budget and may impact your cash flow. Second, PPC bidding is competitive and that translates into higher costs, so much so that a profit may be hard to make. Third, many people simply do not click on PPC ads with the figure being as high as 20 percent. Fourth, you run the risk of having people click on your ads with no intention of buying, whether they are just browsing or are trying to exhaust your advertising budget.
PPCs definitely have a place in the online marketing field. Manage your campaigns with an eye for detail and you should fine.
Ask Pay Per Click
Does the following scenario sound familiar?
You've done all the behind-the-scenes work on your e-commerce business. You've researched your products and pricing. You've chosen a domain name and found a dependable hosting company along with developing a very well designed, customer friendly website. You're all ready to start making sales. Time to sit back & count the money as it rolls in, right? Well, not quite yet. You need customers. (Oh yeah! Customers!)
So now you submit your website to all the popular search engines and directories, fully expecting a fair amount of traffic to start showing up on your webstep. NOW it's time to sit back and start counting your money, right? Not really. You now realize that virtually no one (except maybe your mother) is visiting your website. How are you going to make sales if you have no real visitors? It can take weeks, months or even longer to get a new website pushed up in the rankings in the better search engines.
This is the point where many webmasters turn to pay-per-click (PPC) programs. But just is a PPC? PPC advertising means having your ads placed on different search engines and/or directories, then paying a set amount of money each time a visitor clicks on your ad. Hence the name ?pay-per-click.? (Ingenious, huh? Shame I didn't invent it.)
So now that you know what PPC is, where do you start with choosing a program? If you type in ?pay-per-click advertising? in a Google search, you will most likely see over five million results. Not all of the results will be PPC companies, as many will be articles, tutorials, etc., but it can be mind numbing just trying to gather a little information--to say the least.
Here's a very short list that I've put together of some of the top PPC advertising companies along with a few ?pros and cons? for each one. This is by no means meant to be an all-encompassing guide to pay-per-click advertising. Consider it just enough to give you a little background on the PPC ?biggies?.
GOOGLE ADWORDS:
Pros: Not only is Google one of the most-used searches on the web, their PPC ads are also placed on other networks, including AOL, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink and others. Quick sign up and no monthly minimum spending or monthly fees. Very good support and their CTR (click-thru-rate) can help lower your cost per click.
Cons: There aren't many. There is a five dollar set up fee and they do have a $.05 minimum bid per click.
YAHOO/OVERTURE:
Pros: They offer a large amount of traffic. If your ad ranks in the top ten, they place your ad on other high traffic engines/directories. They were the original PPC company. Very helpful keyword selector tools.
Cons: High cost?per-click rates. Slow customer service (compared to others). Minimum $0.10 bid requirement and they also have a minimum spend-per-month.
FIND WHAT/MIVA:
Pros: Normally lower cost-per-click rates than Overture. They offer an easy-to-use website with user-friendly tools. Delivers traffic at much lower cost than many other PPC companiess.
Cons: May have a wait of up to three days for keyword approval. Seems to be getting better though.
SEARCHFEED:
Pros: Bids start at $.01 with no minimum spend or monthly fees. Mass keyword submission available. Dependable and helpful customer service. Use-friendly tools help with keyword selection.
Cons: Lower traffic than Google, Yahoo and others, especially on lesser-used keywords. Typically you can expect a couple of days of waiting time for program approval.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Choices abound, but please do some more research before spending anything. You'll be glad you did. Pay-per-click can be a great tool for your business, but it can also be very expensive. Do yourself a favor and read up on each program before jumping in. It can be a costly learning experience if you act in haste.
IN CONCLUSION:
PPC companies & services vary widely, but can give you a good return for the money spent. Used properly, pay-per-click programs can give your website a tremendous boost, helping to get it in front of the people looking for exactly what you have to offer. It can also be a great way to give your business a ?jump start? during slow times. Hopefully I've given you some good PPC starting points & you're site will soon be meeting or exceeding your traffic expectations.
Both Halstatt Pires & Craig Binkley are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Halstatt Pires has sinced written about articles on various topics from Realestate Marketing, History and Ezines And Newsletters. Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - providing internet marketing through .. Halstatt Pires's top article generates over 368000 views. to your Favourites.
Craig Binkley has sinced written about articles on various topics from Online Business, Site Promotion and PPC Advertising. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Craig Binkley is a husband, father, and home business owner. Visit our Work From Home Directory located @ http://www.workfromhomehelper.com for legitimate work from home business opportunities.. Craig Binkley's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.
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