Pay Per Click

What Is Pay Per Click?

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines. Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you choose keywords you would like your site to appear for when a search is performed. You decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose.

Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword “red widgets”, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic search on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

Which Search Engines Allow Pay Per Click Advertising?

There are hundreds of pay per click search engines.

Generally, the larger the pay per click search engine, the more you will have to bid to get to the top for your keywords. This is why it is worth investigating different search engines to find what it would cost to bid on your keywords and how much traffic they draw.

The largest companies in the pay per click industry are Yahoo! and Google. Google is not a pay per click search engine, but it does provide pay per click advertising in text ad boxes to the right of search results it delivers. It also delivers pay per click ads to other content sites.

To find more pay per click search engines, take a look at those listed in the box in the right column of this page.

These pay per click search engines are not as large as Overture and Google, but they are worth a look. As mentioned above, one advantage these search engines can provide is they generally have lower costs per click to rank for a keyword than the larger search engines.

In addition to the general pay per click search engines, you may also be able to find thematic search engines that serve your industry or specifically cater to your target audience.

Important Considerations

A very important point to keep in mind with pay per click is you must test, test, and test some more. Don’t start off with a major investment. Start with the minimum and see how the search engine performs in terms of the traffic it delivers and how well that traffic converts into paying customers.

An essential part of your testing is having a method in place that allows you to track your return on money invested.

For example, if your goal is to bring in new subscribers to your newsletter, you could direct visitors arriving from your pay per click link to a subscription form set up just for them. You can then monitor how many clicks actually result in a new subscription. As such, you will know how much you are paying for each new subscriber.

Before spending any money with a pay per click search engine, be sure they can answer the following questions:

• How many searches a month are performed at the search engine?
• What major search partners or affiliates does the search engine have?
• How many searches are generated each month by the search partners or affiliates?
• Is it possible to opt out of having your listing appear in the results of the affiliate sites?
• What fraud prevention mechanisms are in place?
• What is the procedure for filing a “fraudulent clicks” report?
• Will an account be credited for fraudulent clicks discovered?
• Is it possible to opt out of having a listing appear for searches originating from specific countries?
• Is there a posted terms of service for search partners or affiliates.

Look for search engines that have very strict guidelines for dealing with their search affiliates. This is important because you want to be sure the search engine is working hard to prevent fraud among its affiliates.

For more information regarding Pay per click, contact SEO101.

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