Pay Per Click marketing is an Internet based method of advertising that allows advertisers to bid on 'keywords' in an online auction format. Since you pay only when someone clicks on one of your keywords, the idea is that you pay only for results. Unfortunately, it's not always that simple as I found out when I first started using Pay Per Click(PPC) advertising with my Oldies Internet radio station. Deciding to use PPC advertising to get the word about my Oldies station, I sat down and came up with a large list of keywords that described out business. I was surprised to discover just how many keywords related to Oldies music, and over the next week listed them with a couple of PPC search engines.

Over the next several weeks, we were pleased to discover that were getting loads of traffic to our Oldies website. It was almost magical; one day a few visitors, the next day a virtual deluge of traffic. Unfortunately, we quickly realized that while our traffic statistics were looking great, we weren't converting much of the traffic to buyers. Since we were using several PPC search engines including Google and Yahoo and were getting lots of clicks, I figured that the ads we were running was not the issue, but the problem lay somewhere else. After doing a good bit of analysis, I came to realize that the real problem with our advertising was with many of the keywords that we were using. In place of keywords that were relevant to the theme of our website, we were using many general terms that could literally mean a thousand different things. For instance, instead of using words such as 'Oldies Radio Station' or 'Oldies Music', I was using vague words such as 'music', 'radio', 'internet radio', etc. Once I realized the mistake I was making, I refined my list of keywords, and greatly improved our results.

With PPC advertising, you pay every time someone clicks on one of your keywords, and it's therefore imperative that you are using the proper keywords that accurately describes your business or product. A good way to develop a good list of keywords is to sit down and write everything that comes to mind about your website or business. After you have completed this, go back a few days later and take some time to analyze each word or phrase that you have written down to see if these words still accurately describe your business. If you are like most people, you'll find that many of the keywords you originally listed just don't hold up to scrutiny and you'll be able to discard many of them. When generating a list of keywords, strive to eliminate vague or general terms, and look for keywords that are relevant to what your business is about.

In relation to this, some PPC advertisers take the 'more is better' approach with keywords. Part of the reasoning behind this strategy is that by having lots of keywords some will cost you much less than others, bringing down your average cost per click. A major problem with this approach is that many of the keywords are so general in nature that you wind up wasting lots of money on keywords that have no relation to your site. For instance, when I started advertising my Oldies site, I listed every word that I could think of that had any relation to the word 'music'. While this approach did get us lots of clicks and traffic, most of it was wasted because the word itself means so many different things as to be useless as a keyword. When generating your list of keywords, you need to keep in mind that more isn't necessarily better.

Another point worth mentioning is that some keywords are so competitive that their cost is beyond reach for the average PPC advertiser. Keywords such as 'food', 'travel', 'music', etc., are expensive and may cost you several dollars or more a click with a top search engine such as Google. Don't make the mistake of trying to compete with advertisers that have huge advertising budgets. On the flip side, a keyword is only expensive if it's costing you more than it's producing in profit. While a keyword costing $2 a click could bring you back $5 in profit, only time and testing will tell. You might be better served to start with less costly keywords and if these produce a profit, later expand to the more costly keywords.

Pay Per Click advertising can be an excellent way to grow your business. What could be simpler then to sit down, come up with a list of keywords that describe your business or product, list them with one of the PPC's and instantly start to receive an endless flow of prospects and business. While there are many factors that determines success, using the right keywords is one of the 'keys' that opens the door to success with Pay Per Click advertising.