Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click advertising, also known as PPC and considered search marketing, is using the search engines and contextual networks to drive traffic to any one website either keyword driven or content driven. PPC is seen as “sponsored results” for searchers in search engines and websites that use portals such as search engine and contextual networks to monetize their content.

The pay per click model of search marketing is used by anyone from work at home individuals running their own business or affiliate sites, to the largest companies in the world. PPC has given the opportunity for small businesses (and large businesses) to take their business to the next level.

The pay per click model is used by any advertiser looking to generate a lead, sale, sign-up and donation.

The pay per click model is based on just that, paying per click on any given ad you make up for a given word or website you target. Bids on ppc start anywhere from .01 cents to over $40 per click! It usually always depends on the competition bidding on a certain keyword or targeting a website and/or location of a website.

Pay per click has nothing to do with SEO (search engine optimization) and is not linked but some of the ideas are the same which I will mention a little later.

In recent past years, the PPC game has changed with thousands of businesses competing for same keywords and niches. At the same time, the search engines have implemented guidelines such as Quality Score to monitor spam and provide the best possible content for users.

How Does it Work?

Starting a pay per click campaign is no simple task. You can lose a lot of money in literally minutes if you don’t know what you’re doing and if you do not do the adequate research it takes to build a successful campaign to drive to your website.

Nevertheless, the process of setting up a ppc campaign is fairly simple in the process and most platforms give step by step instructions as to how to set up your campaign.

The big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) provide PPC platforms known as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter. Each engine has its guidelines which are known as Quality Score which calculate what you will pay for any given keyword (given you are doing a keyword based campaign).

Your minimum bids can change at anytime either increasing or decreasing in amount due to click through rate and advertiser competition.

Google is the leader in pay per click hence driving the most amount of traffic and leading in market share for search. You may pay $1.50 for a keyword such as “health insurance” for positions 1-5, meanwhile you may pay $1.00 in Yahoo for the same keyword. The search engines base this price on data they’ve gathered over the years.

What is Quality Score?

While quality score may be the worse thing that has happened to some advertisers (because of bid increases) it is the best thing that has happened to others. Quality Score is really used by Google to determine the cost of the keyword you are bidding for.

Quality score goes from Poor, Good, and Great. Having a great quality score doesn’t guarantee you will be in the first page but can get you a very good minimum bid even down to a penny!

Quality score is purely based on your websites content. As they say in search engine optimization, “content is king,” the same could be said for pay per click advertising. If you have good content for the keyword you are bidding for, not only should you convert well but the engines will give you a good minimum bid.

Search Engine Pay-Per-Click Channels:

Google Adwords

Yahoo Search Marketing

Microsoft AdCenter

LookSmart

Miva

Search 123

Ask

Comparison Shopping Pay-Per-Click Channels:

Shopping.com

Nextag

PriceGrabber

Shopzilla

Amazon (ClickRiver)

Other Channels:

Facebook Ads

Kontera

 

 

On top are sources I’ve used that have proven results, I encourage you to find others and always test (do research before!)