Advertising your services or products on the Internet is



both extremely effective and extremely competitive. There

are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your

website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose

from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine

optimization campaign. Both pay-per-click and SEO are

targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of

search engine results as possible. One of the differences

is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign

versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that

most search engines, including some of the largest ones,

now offer. It requires a bid for a "per-click" basis, which

translates to your company paying the bid amount every time

the search engine directs a visitor to your site. There is

the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your

website traffic, your site often appears in the results of

other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and

disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor

your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very

effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never

have to tweak your web pages to change your position in

search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO

campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click

campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click

process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't

demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more

you know about search engines and keywords, the easier -

and more effective - the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding

war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on

search engine results. This means that you will have to

raise your bid to regain your position - which can

obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are

bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective

form of marketing for your business, you must do some

computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site

is worth. You can compute this value by dividing the profit

you make on your website over a given period of time by the

total number of visitors for that same time period. For

example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were

2,5000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50

cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which

your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show

a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you

are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost

considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way

around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be

paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything

you can about search engine keyword research. The good news

is there isn't a limit to the amount of keywords you can

add to your bid because additional keywords do not add

additional cost. This translates into a lot less hassle for

you because there is no need to optimize your site to index

a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than

others are, but they will not cost you anything except time

to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid. Of the

popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one called

Overture provides an online tool that will give you the

data on how often particular keywords are entered into

their search engine. They also offer suggestions for

keywords after you enter a description of your site.

In pay-per-click, this written description is crucial. You

must understand that the object of your description is not

to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as

possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy

your service or product go to your site. You must use

expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is

both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal

candidates to your site. This description is your most

powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is

that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important

that you bear in mind that the results of the top search

engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are

Overture and Adwords Select, usually appear on other

popular search engines. Because of this, the competition

for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find

that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click

to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on

that particular keyword and try another one. Remember: when

you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in

essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in

place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword.

It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a

monthly basis.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis

of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about

consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring

and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business

needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click

campaign is a success.