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
results are ranked by search engine’s computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to 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 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 results, you’ll likely see a set of results labeled as “Sponsor Results” or “Sponsored Link”. Some results may appear in same format as main search results on page, while others are listed within colored text boxes along site of page. All of those results are paid advertisements from sites listed within ads.
The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. In example search for “DVD players” current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click – one penny more than #2 advertiser.
The ads are purchased through pay per click advertising suppliers, and 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 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, 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?
