Lets first look at the logic behind Pay Per Click (PPC) internet advertising. Lets say you place an ad in a local newspaper with a circulation of 3 million people. Can you tell me how many people actually saw your ad? And of those that actually saw your ad can you tell me how many people were interested in your product or service? You can probably only tell me how many people actually responded to your ad by redeeming a coupon or calling your business.

That's where pay per click advertising has reversed the process by reaching actual people interested in your product or service. When someone types in a keyword or phrase that you are paying per click for, your PPC ad will show up in the sponsored search result. This is usually on the right side of the search result page in Google. Showing up costs you nothing, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on your listing and goes to your web site. Hence the term Pay Per Click. The biggest advantage is that the people that see your listing are the ones looking for your product or service since that is what they typed into the search engine. They are the people that are interested in your product or service and are usually ready to buy!

Now lets look at the cost. Since you only pay when someone actually clicks on your listing and goes to your web site, your cost for pay per click is controlled by you, by bidding on specific keywords and phrases. Bidding normally starts at .10 cents and your ad position in the result determined by your competitions bid on the same keywords and phrases. The higher the bid, the higher your position would be in the search result listing. Even though cost is a consideration for bidding, pay per click campaigns can be regulated by capping your daily spending amount to fit within your budget.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Is Not For Everyone

Normally pay per click campaigns work for sites that need immediate first page results in search engines. If you are new web site with a highly competitive product or service, getting normal top 10 search results would take time since these results are based on many factors including site popularity, which includes number of visitors and number of quality links to your web site from other sites, just to name a few. These links should be from quality sites not link farms. For example if Google were linking to your web site then you would probably rank higher since Google is a powerful leader on the web. If ABC whatever is linking to your web site then it would have no bearing on your ranking. Link farms can actually hurt your normal search results since it is a clear effort to fool the search engines into thinking that you are very popular.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great way to get your new site or an existing site with little traffic to the top search result pages. But remember that each time someone clicks on your ad you are going to get charged. So it is important that your site is set up to convert visitors into customers (See Marketing) or you will be wasting your time and hard earned dollars. The primary goal of an effective advertising campaign is to eventually get you natural results in the top 10 listings.

Which Search Engines Should You Do Pay Per Click With?

Not all search engines are the same. Google is the leader however a pay per click campaign with them can be costly. Yahoo is a little more affordable and would probably be a better place if you have a limited budget to start with. We will help to guide you in making a decision based on your budget and the results you want to achieve.

I will tell you up front if a pay per click advertising campaign will work for you. If your company is local and the number of people looking for your product or service is very low then this is probably not for you. But we can't determine this until we do a study to see exactly which direction you should take to increase your web site traffic and conversion of visitors into customers.

Step by Step Procedure - What's Included

1. Analyze your market.
2. Find relevant keywords and keyword phrases that relate to your product or service and the number of people looking for your site by keywords every month.
3. Find out what the competition is doing and paying for top positions in pay per click results.
4. Make recommendations on keywords and phrases to be used in your campaign within your budget.
5. Make recommendations on changing or redoing your web site page design to increase your conversion rate.
6. Implement changes or provide you with detailed instructions on making changes to your site.
7. Set up your pay per click campaigns on Google or Yahoo. Includes creating your account, campaigns and keyword and phrase selection.
8. Activate your campaign and monitor results on a daily basis which includes changing bid amounts to maximize results and keep costs down to a minimum.

Please note that you can manage your campaign yourself if you wish. I can show you how to do this after the campaign is set up.