Pay-Per-Click Advertising and How It Works
Pay per Click advertising is an extremely popular advertising medium today. For people seeking to market their products on the Internet, this is one of the quickest ways to initiate an advertising campaign and gain product exposure.
Pay per Click advertising is essentially a small ad placement lodged on the results page of a search for a specific keyword or keywords, and that placement is given in return for a specified payment (to the search engine) when a visitor clicks on the ad.
The advertiser does not pay anything to appear on the results page per se; payment for an amount they have bid for is done only when someone actually clicks on their ad and is routed to their website. The term “pay per click” therefore means what it says literally: the advertiser pays every time someone clicks their ad.
One of the first decisions you make in your planning for a Pay per Click advertising campaign is the budget and the level of risk you are willing to absorb. In terms of exposure, your best bet is with the larger search engines (like Google and Yahoo, which together account for 90 percent of all pay-per-click volume), because they have the widest market coverage and offer lots of assistance to their advertisers. However, they are the most expensive in terms of the amount you must spend to capture the visibility you want.
Choosing your keywords is the next step. You will find many independent tools that help you research keywords, free-of-charge. Many of them will also tell you the current bid price (which can be very dynamic) for certain words or phrases on the different search engines.
The third thing is to create the headline, which will appear on the results page, plus a description of the product or service or other promotional text. You can use only 200 characters maximum for descriptions, and you always include your chosen keywords.
Then, you must open an account with the search engine. Generally, opening an account is free; you are not charged until you have bid on your desired keywords and have funded your account. You have various ways of funding your PPC campaign. A usual method is via a credit card for a set amount, e.g. £100. When this deposit is exhausted, all advertising stops. Another way is to set a monthly limit; when reached, advertising automatically stops. This is a crucial choice and it can become quite expensive.
Once you have the account, you register your chosen keywords and specify the maximum amount you are willing to bid for them. The price varies, but naturally, advertisers who pay more get the keywords and the higher position on the results page. The highest bid gets ranked first. Research in Pay per Click advertising has shown that the five top positions generally get the most visitors.
The chance to place an ad without spending much makes Pay per Click advertising extremely attractive. As a business owner you may want to take advantage of this powerful marketing tool.