Pay-Per-Click Advertising
But pay-per-click can fill a few important roles: Campaign- and issue-based traffic: If you have a short-term campaign for a new product, service or special issue, pay-per-click can be a great way to generate buzz. This is in addition to their 'natural' search results, which are still powered by a combination of keywords found on your site, link popularity and other formulae. Other engines, such as MSNSearch or Yahoo, display P P C listings as 'sponsored listings' in the same column as the natural search results.If someone clicks on your PPC listing, they arrive at your web site. The overall rule of thumb? Online stores are a great example: You know that each click generated is a real potential customer, so spending money to increase the number of clicks makes sense. If you need to focus attention for a finite amount of time, PPC is perfect. Why PPC is GoodPay-per-click advertising can generate traffic right away. But it's risky: You can spend a fortune, generate many visits, and end up with nothing to show for it. Why PPC Advertising is BadBut PPC advertising can cost a fortune. Niche terms: If you are trying to generate traffic for a highly specific keyphrase, PPC can often provide bargains. It's easy to get caught up in a bidding war over a particular keyphrase and end up spending far more than your potential return. Natural search engine optimization is a PR-based, long-term attempt to grow your brand and image. While you certainly want your listing displayed on Yahoo, AOLSearch and MSN, you may not want your listings showing up and generating clicks from some of the deeper, darker corners of the Internet. Most pay-per-click services distribute a segment of their results to several search engines.
How it fits into your Internet marketing strategyIan Lurie, Portent Interactive, Seattle, WADecember 29, 2003Pay-per-click marketing is a great way to get visitors when you need traffic and you need it now. But these tracking tools aren't 100% accurate, and at the time of this writing the smaller PPC providers don't deliver any conversion tracking.And watch out for junk traffic. As a focused advertising tool. The Role of PPC AdvertisingMost businesses can't afford to solely rely on PPC advertising. That sounds great on its face, but it can get expensive in a big hurry.Also, ROI can be very hard to measure. Focus, focus, focus.
The resulting traffic may look good in statistics reports but is very unlikely to generate a return.Finally, pay-per-click advertising does not scale. It's simple: If you spend enough, you can get top placement, and potential customers will see you first. Some PPC engines, such as Overture, offer convenience features such as 'autobid' that will automatically increase your bid amount to maintain a particular rank. It's too expensive, and bid amounts inevitably climb. Pay-per-click advertising, however, should be handled like any other form of paid advertising: Gingerly, and with a clear, quantifiable short- or medium-term goal in mind. That provides unmatched ability to adjust to market conditions.PPC can also be a bargain: Sometimes, you can find keyword 'niches' for which the top bid is around $.10 - in that case, PPC is a great option, because you can generate traffic to your site for a fraction of the cost of any other form of paid advertising.So, balancing the good and the bad, where does PPC fit in? In other words, concentrate on conversions, not clicks.
Compare that to natural search engine optimization, where you invest a fixed amount of time and/or money to achieve a better rank, and your cost per click goes down as you draw more traffic. For example, you might not want to pay the top bid for 'bicycles', but 'Landshark Bicycles' is probably a lot less expensive ($.10 per click as of this writing, actually). Some PPC engines (Adwords and Overture, specifically) provide conversion measurement tools, so that you can track whether your pay-per-click campaigns are generating the desired result. If you place the highest bid for a specific keyword or set of keywords, then you rank number one in these paid listings. You can start a pay-per-click campaign within, at most, 24-48 hours, and you can generally change the text of your ad in mid-campaign, so adjusting your message is easy. So, if you bid $.15 per click on 'widgets', and that's the highest bid, you'll show up first in line. And you are charged the amount you bid. This article will provide you with a high-level view of pay per click marketing, provide some general strategies and provide an example of what to do, and what not to do.What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?On its face, pay-per-click marketing, or PPC, is pretty simple: Search engines and services, such as Google or Overture, provide listings on a per-bid basis. If 100 people click on your P P C listing, then the search engine or PPC service will charge you $15.00. If you get more traffic, you pay more money in direct proportion to that traffic - your cost per click stays constant, and your overall cost increases. Direct-response business: If you sell a product or offer a service that folks can purchase the moment they arrive at your web site, pay-per-click is a great tool. If folks are searching for the keyphrases on which you bid and you've placed a well-written ad, you will get clicks the moment the ad is activated.So PPC advertising is fast: With some systems, such as Google Adwords, you can generate targeted traffic within a few minutes of opening an account.PPC advertising is also nimble: Where natural search engine marketing or other forms of advertising can lag weeks or months behind changing audience behavior, you can adjust most pay-per-click campaigns in hours or days. On Google, , PPC listings show up in the Adwords column on the right-hand side of the screen.
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