Understanding Pay per Click Advertising

Marketing Your Website Pay Per Click Advertising

Are you taking advantage of the cost effective pay per click search engines? You can drive huge amounts of traffic to your site for just pennies per click.

Even though some of the more general keywords have become more expensive, there are still plenty of good inexpensive ones left that will work just as well. Being too general with your keywords will not bring you targeted traffic anyway. So focus on keywords and keyword phrases specific to your product or service.

Some of the larger pay per click search engines are partnering with the major search engines like AltaVista and Lycos to increase your clickthrus. Take advantage of this by choosing keywords and keyword phrases that rank in the top three positions of each participating pay per click search engine whenever possible.

These sites will help you determine your best keywords and keyword phrases.

Now that you've determined your best keywords and keyword phrases it's time to submit them to the pay per click search engines. Here are a few to get you started.

Now to help you keep your bids on top, visit these sites that monitor your bids for you.

In a nutshell, you determine your best keywords and keyword phrases, set up your pay per click accounts, then monitor your bids for the best results.

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In Depth Information about Pay Per Click Advertising

Overview
All major search engines on the Internet have some form of paid advertising. This means you can pay to have your advertisement appear on the first search page. With pay per click advertising you only pay for the number of actual visitors to your site.

One of the quickest ways to get traffic to a website (especially when it is new) is to enlist the help of Google, Yahoo or Nine MSN. It takes a while for websites to get listed in the major search engines and often much longer for them to get a high listing for the keywords that you want.

The shortcut to getting your website listed on the first page of the search listing is via Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC).

Most of the major search engines have paid listings on both the top and sides of their search pages (just visit google and see).

This may sound a bit daunting to the uninitiated but it really is simple. All you do is sign up with one (or a few) of the major search engines and bid for traffic to your website. You offer to pay for each person to come to your website.

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Why Pay Per Click?
There are many great things about PPC; here are some of them.

You can put your toe in the water without blowing the budget. (Start with $20 if you want)
There’s no commitment. You can turn it on or off whenever you want at the click of a button.
You don’t pay for your ad to be displayed (unlike a newspaper, magazine or other forms of advertising)
Your ad only gets shown if someone types in a search for a keyword that you designate.
You only pay if that person clicks on your ad.
Its trackable – You can see
1. How many times your ad was shown
2. How many times your ad was clicked on (click through rate)
3. What search term your visitor typed into the search engine.
4. How many people made enquiries
5. How much each enquiry cost you
6. And Many other things

The good thing about all this is you are attracting targeted visitors to your website. Unlike all other forms of traditional advertising you are paying for people who have said they have interest in your product (they typed in the keyword that relates to your business didn’t they?) not just putting the ad up and hoping someone that is interested will see it.
Want to get an idea of how much you need to pay to get started? Well depending on how much your competition is willing to pay you could be paying as low as 10 cents per visitor to your website. If one in 10 make an order or enquiry then $1.00 per lead is a great price.

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How much does a word cost?
Want an idea how much other people are willing to pay for traffic? Try here:
http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/

Type in your keyword and see what others are paying. You don’t need to start with this bid but it gives you and idea of the market.

Google
The main player in the pay per click search engine market is Google. You can read more about their service by clicking here:
https://adwords.google.com/select/steps.html

Overture
Another player in the PPC market is Overture. Overture supplies the paid listings to Yahoo and Nine MSN. Although there is not as much traffic from these, Overture it is still good targeted traffic.

You can find more info about Overture at the following link http://www.content.overture.com/

Don’t forget that it takes a few people coming to your site to get a sale or an inquiry so start off slow and see how you go.