What is Pay Per Click Advertising?  How Does it Work?

Pay Per Click search engines are the most straightforward form of Internet promotion.  To get your site ranked highly for a specific search term (keyword phrase) you simply have to out bid your competitors. 

Your site will appear on that search engine as well as the related search engines under “sponsored listings”.  On Yahoo they appear at the very top or bottom of pages one, two or three depending on the position of your bid.  On Google the “Adwords” listings appear on the right of the regular listings.  Other search engines place the sponsored results mixed in with other regular listings or sponsored results from various pay per click engines.

Once your site is listed, every time someone clicks on the link that goes to your web site from that search engine or one of its partners your account gets debited for the amount you bid on that term.

Each PPC search engine has their own partner sites.  For instance if you sign up with Google Adwords and get a term placed high enough, that search term will also appear on Earthlink, AOL and Askjeeves.  Each of these partnerships are contracted with the PPC advertising search engine with their own set of rules.  These are not necessarily known by the advertiser.  Therefore, you can’t completely count on where your site will show up on the partner sites.

Usually, if you are placed in the top three spots, your term will appear on their partner sites

The important factors to consider when using PPC promotion are as follows:

Is your site ready?  This holds true any time you are considering promoting your site.  PPC or any other type of web site promotion can get people to your site but keeping them there or getting them to use your services or purchase your product is up to your site and what you actually are offering.

What search terms should I use?  To select the keyword phrases you should use think like a prospective customer or client.  What would he or she be likely to type into the search engines to find a site such as yours.  Then, remember that niche phrases are usually less expensive than the more general and are far more likely to bring you truly qualified traffic.  For instance, “electronics” might be a tempting search term if you are selling a variety of electronic equipment.  However, your return on investment will be higher if you use a term such as “Hitachi dvd player”.  If you are selling real estate in the Glendale and Pasadena areas of Los Angeles, “los angeles real estate” would be too general a term.  “glendale real estate” or “Pasadena homes” would be far better.

Which Pay Per Click search engine should I use?  The three most popular pay per click search engines are Overture, Miva.com and Google Adwords, with EPilot.com following behind.  The last two get considerably less traffic than the first ones, however the bids are normally significantly lower. If you have a family oriented site including Ah-Ha in your promotion plans is probably an excellent idea.

Why should I use Ultimate Site Promotion?  At Ultimate Site Promotion we have years of experience in working with pay per click search engines.  We can help you choose the search terms and the PPC search engine which will give you the maximum return on your investment.  By researching and choosing the right terms at the best price in the right search engine we will make your search engine marketing campaign work for your site.