If your listings don't pull as well initially as you hope, don't worry; you can always tweak them until you achieve desired results.

Finally, carefully select URL where your listing will point; in other words, your landing page. This doesn't have to be your "home" page - oftentimes, it's better if it's NOT your home page. Instead, consider linking to page that contains content/product/service related to keyword for which you're bidding.

Don't make your visitors jump through hoops; give them what they're searching for as soon as they click to your site if possible. For each additional step in process, you're losing a certain percentage of visitors. Granted, there are legitimate reasons to have visitors navigate a series of pages. Your goal is to eliminate *unnecessary* clicks.

Now that you have basics covered, where will you open your PPC account?

I recommend GoTo (http://www.goto.com). There is a $0.05 bid minimum and a $20.00 minimum monthly spend, but volume of traffic generated can be significantly greater than traffic from other PPC engines. GoTo Premium Listings (top 1, 2, and 3 spots) appear as search results on America Online, Lycos, Netscape, AltaVista and other large sites.

Here's a list of a few other pay-per-click engines you might want to consider:

FindWhat.com (http://www.findwhat.com) Sprinks (http://www.sprinks.com) Kanoodle.com (http://www.kanoodle.com) Brainfox.com (http://www.brainfox.com) Bay9 (http://www.bay9.com)

Once your campaign begins, it's important to monitor its progress. Since your rankings are based on bidding, you don't want to be outbid and lose traffic. The other side of coin is you don't want to pay more than you should for your ranking.

For example, let's say you have #3 spot for a keyword and you're paying $0.10. The #4 spot is going for $0.09, while #5 spot costs a mere $0.05. If, for whatever reason, #4 drops out of listings, you're still occupying #3 spot BUT you're overpaying by $0.04/click (you could maintain your #3 rank with a $0.06 bid). Not a huge amount, but with hundreds of listings, it's easy to see how it can add up over time.

That should be enough information to get you started on your PPC campaign. Now that you know basics, what are you waiting for? A PPC campaign could be just shot in arm your site needs!

4. Write articles Choose your best keywords and weave them into theme of your articles. Include a link to your web site in resource box at end of your articles. Submit your articles to ezine publishers and article announcement lists. This gives your article potential to be read by thousands of ezine subscribers. Your article will become linked to many web sites, resulting in higher rankings.

5. Participate in forums Find a forum that is related to theme of your web site. People visit these forums to look for content that answers their questions. Once you have provided helpful information, you can leave a link to your site in your signature file. If this is a highly trafficked forum, leaving your link there, will increase your site's popularity.

6. Monitor your rankings The best way to check how your site is doing in search engines is to check your web site statistics. A high quality web hosting service will show you which pages receive most traffic (hits and visits) and where it is coming from (which search engines).

7. Exercise patience Search engines typically take one to three months to spider your web site, so your changes will not be seen immediately. Think of steps outlined above, as a long-term marketing strategy for your web site.

Tip Generating a massive amount of traffic to your web site, doesn't guarantee sales. Here is a short list of factors that will also help convert your visitors into sales:

Professional site design Well-written web copy Fast loading times Simple navigation No broken links Optimizing for different screen resolutions Optimizing for main browsers

As you can see, improving search engine rankings that result in sales means continuous monitoring and refinement of your web site. Since 85% of your sites traffic (this is very targeted traffic) comes from search engines, it is well worth investment.

Herman Drost is a Certified Web Site Designer, owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Affordable Site Design, Hosting and Promotion Packages http://www.isitebuild.com