Buying Your Way to the Top with Pay Per Click Advertising

Imagine if you could advertise ONLY to people who have actually expressed an interest in doing business with you? That's basically what happens whenever a prospective customer or client types a phrase into a search engine that's relevant to your business. But how do search engines decide which sites are worthy of top placement in their search results? It turns out that some of the results are ranked by the search engine's computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using Pay Per Click Advertising.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC for short) is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business. Businesses buy advertising on specific search phrases, and are then charged each time a person clicks through to their web site.

How does this work?

Try running a search on a major search engine like Yahoo or Google for a common consumer product like "DVD players." When reviewing the results, you'll likely see a set of results labeled as "Sponsor Results" or "Sponsored Link". Some results may appear in the same format as the main search results on the page, while others are listed within colored text boxes along the site of the page. All of those results are paid advertisements from the sites listed within the ads.

The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. In the example search for "DVD players" the current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click ? one penny more than the #2 advertiser.

The ads are purchased through pay per click advertising suppliers, and the two largest happen to be owned by Google and Yahoo. Google's program is called Adwords and displays results on Google.com, AOL, Ask Jeeves, many smaller search engines. Yahoo's program is run by an acquired company called Overture, and the results appear on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and many other syndication partners.

Why should I pay for traffic?

For businesses that have had success with search engine optimization, the idea of paying for visitors is not particularly enticing. However, if you can make more money off a visitor to your web site than it costs to get them there, why wouldn't you pay for those visitors? Keep in mind that you can choose exactly what search terms you want to advertise on, and you only pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad, so it generally comes down to deciding how much you can afford to spend for those visitors rather than whether it's worth doing at all.

How much should I spend?

The main factors influencing how much money can be spent on a PPC campaign are:

1. How many searches are conducted per month using phrases relevant to your business?

2. How much are you, along with your competitors, willing to pay for those terms?

The average monthly ad spend on PPC advertising is a couple thousand dollars, but this varies immensely from less than $50/month for regionally targeted and niche businesses to millions a month by large national retailers.

The goal of any advertising campaign should be to bring in more money from the campaign than it costs to run it. Pay Per Click is no different, but the level of detail you can measure in PPC is significantly higher than most types of advertising. For example, with relatively inexpensive (some are even free) tools, you can determine which ads are generating sales or leads for your business. Beyond that, you can determine how much money you spent on a specific ad to generate a sale or a lead. By measuring what's working, you can aggressively advertise on terms that prove to be winners for your business while shutting down ads that don't deliver.

Tips for Success

1. Advertise on a large number of relevant search phrases. Brainstorm beyond the first dozen terms that come to mind to describe your business. Advertise on the terms used to describe your products, the product names, product codes, and the questions a prospect might type into a search engine that your services answer, and more.

2. Build unique ads for each search phrase. It takes a lot more time to write a unique ad for each search phrase relevant to your business rather than creating one ad for all of your search phrases, but the extra work will definitely be rewarded. Ads that are aligned with the corresponding search term receive more clicks, which will mean more targeted traffic, and in some cases paying less per click (on Google Adwords) due to the intricacies of how the advertising is priced.

3. Send visitors to the most appropriate page of your web site. If you place an ad for a specific product within your online store, don't send visitors to your homepage and force them to dig for what they just searched. This will frustrate your visitors and increase the chance that they'll hit the dreaded Back button.

4. Track your results. Spending money without measuring the return on your investment is not a good business practice. At the very least, consider installing the free tracking tools available through Google Adwords and Overture to measure which terms are delivering results for your business. Beyond that, consider using a 3rd party statistics tool with conversion analysis to compile the results of your various pay per click programs into one easy to manage interface.

Go for it

People are searching for what you sell at this very moment! If your site is not showing up near the top of the results, your competition thanks you.

About The Author

Ed Kohler is the President of Haystack In A Needle, Inc., a web marketing firm in Minneapolis, MN, offering search engine optimization and pay per click advertising consulting services.

HaystackInANeedle.com

kohler@HaystackInANeedle.com

---

How to Tap into the Google AdWords PPC Goldmine?

Dear friends,Google, the most populated search engine on the Internet,... Read More

5 Ways How You Can Boost Your Google AdSense Earnings

Google AdSense is a great way for webmasters to monetize... Read More

Can I Make Money Online with the Adsense Program?

Sure you can. If you will learn how many other... Read More

How To Get Banned From Google Adsense In Just 2 Clicks

The darkest nightmare a hardworking affiliate webmaster fears is receiving... Read More

Pay Per Click Advertising - How To Uncover Profit-Pulling Keywords And Make Your Sales Soar

Choosing to bid on the right keywords can be key... Read More

Pay Per Click Web Advertising Power Word Secrets Revealed

First impressions affect your relationship with someone for life. In... Read More

Niche Market Pay Per Click Advertising Should Be Your Priority

There are many forms of advertising nowadays. There's popups and... Read More

How to Save Money on the Adwords Network

Over the years I have had many accounts with Adwords,... Read More

You Wont Make Dollars If You Dont use AdSense

As the dust settles and the excitement caused by Google's... Read More

3 Adsense Tips To Dramatically Increase CTR

Here are three Adsense Tips, together with the required HTML... Read More

AdSense - 7 Keys To Empire?

There's a lot of buzz around about how you can... Read More

MSN PPC Advertising Behavioral and Demographic Targeting: Killer App. or Achilles Heel?

Examining the failures of the web content design of many... Read More

Web Advertising: Its All About the Click Thrus!

Working in research and development for a large infomercial company,... Read More

How To Win The War of Pay per Click Advertising.

Do you know what is the most important question among... Read More

3 Tips For Adwords PPC Management

Adwords PPC Management Tip No. 1Setting up an accountIf you... Read More

How To Increase Adsense Income

If you are already running Adsense on your site, you... Read More

Organic Natural Search Engine Optimization versus Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising

When you purchase visitors or "clicks" from a search engine,... Read More

7 Secrets for Pay-Per-Click Success

"Pay-for-Performance" or "Pay-per-Click" Internet advertising is making big waves lately,... Read More

Google AdSense Fraud - Deep Insight

It's worthwhile to examine Google's definition of Google AdSense and... Read More

Pay-Per-Click Fraud Exposed--Part II

According to Andy Jones, a member of the Best Practices... Read More

Want Higher Adsense Earnings? Then Optimize Site Navigation

Webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional... Read More

How To Use Pay Per Click Ads Without Ruining Yourself

It may seem to be a very expensive way of... Read More

How to Quickly Create an Adsense Site That Brings In the Bucks

One of the hottest crazes for online marketers is Adsense... Read More

Understanding Google AdSense

Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve... Read More

Google Adsense - A Website Income

Many of us have websites and as a matter of... Read More

The Sensible Way To Earn Money With Google AdSense!

Dear friends,Google AdSense has rapidly gained a status of an... Read More

Top Paying Keywords: How to Increase Your Pay Per Click Returns

There is no doubting the success of Google's Adsense program.... Read More

What is PTRE and Is It Worth Your Time?

PTRE stands for Paid To Read Email programs. Online companies... Read More

AdWords Analyzer Review - Pros and Cons

Adwords Analyzer (http://tinyurl.com/a3o3o) is a remarkable keywords research tool that... Read More

Google Adsense, The Smart Way To Earn

Do you want to get paid for posting ads on... Read More

Pay Per Click Advertising For Home Business Owners

The biggest stumbling block for most home business owners is... Read More

How to Profit from Knowing the Most Expensive Keywords

By knowing the most expensive keywords on the internet, you... Read More

Team Up With Your Competitors

Pay per click search engines are a great way to... Read More