Pay-Per-Click Advertising – The Basics

 Search engine optimization can take a long time to show results. The Google sandbox alone can delay optimization results by 6 to 8 months. So, what can you do to get traffic while you wait? Pay-per-click [“PPC”] campaigns fill the time gap. This article discusses the basics of PPC advertising.

What Is A PPC?

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.

About the Author

Halstatt Pires is with Marketing Titan- an Internet marketing and advertising company in San Diego, California comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

 Halstatt Pires

More Articles 

diy seo prt3, advertising - mark white
DIY SEO prt 3 Advertising The next part of our campaign is the advertising bit, having a site that no-one can see is like having a shop with no windows or doors, everyone will shop elsewhere as they don’t know what you have to offer. We have...

Why Ezine Advertising Doesn't Always Work? - Ken Kovach
Why Ezine Advertising Doesn't Always Work? Explore How to make it Work for You! It's a well known fact that Ezine advertising is one of the best methods of Advertising and for the most part brings the best results. Now with that said and done...

10 Ezine Advertising Strategies For Starters - Diane Hughes
Copyright 2005 Diane Hughes If you're like most ezine advertisers you wish to generate FAST Sales by sending your message in front of thousands ezine subscribers. Some spend hundreds in ezine advertising hoping to generate a BIG profit...  but it...

Customer Preferences in Online Advertising-Part 2 of 3 - Karon Thackston
In part one of this series, we discussed the fact that studies show information leads over entertainment. We discovered that Web site visitors are primarily looking for information, and therefore, ads should be more information-oriented. The...

The Unwritten Rules of Advertising on Forums - Martin Avis
There are thousands of newsgroups and forums online. They provide a fascinating and useful insight into the minds and methods of others who share our interests. They also act as an amazing resource for finding out almost anything you need to know. ...

Scientific Advertising (is) for Dummies - Linda Cox
Perhaps the most revered of all marketing books is "Scientific Advertising" by Claude C. Hopkins. And why not? It's been dampening enthusiasm, mauling budgets and scuttling good ideas for nearly a century. "Sacrilege!" I hear you cry. "'Scientific...

Soooo many advertising methods... So little time! - Sheila Garghill
The Internet seems to scream "Use me"! It is the perfect medium for advertisers in just about any field. From Pokemon to The Senior Citizen's Page, it's ALL here. Here's what the Mass Institute of Technology says: The rate of the web's...

Some Advertising Is Doomed To Fail - Diane Hughes
When people are concerned about the lack of response to their advertising, usually they complain about one of two things. They either say, "I put it in all the popular ezines but nobody responded" or "I followed all the copywriting 'rules' but...

Cheap Internet Banner Advertising - Friend or Foe? - Mark Williams
For years internet banner advertising dominated the World Wide Web. Everyone was bidding ridiculously high amounts of money for banner advertisements. Then came the dot com crash and banner advertisements lost its luster. Internet banner...

Small Business Marketing And Advertising: Branding vs. Direct Response - Joel Walsh
Too often, small business advertising and marketing campaigns prioritize branding at the expense of direct response--i.e., actually getting leads and/or sales right now. That is almost always a foolish and even dangerous proposition. Small Business...