Pay per click (PPC) is an online advertising format allowing you to buy your way right to the top. Just look onto the right side of the search engine result pages (SERP) for search phrases relevant to your business, and you will find this list growing by the day. Businesses are buying advertising on specific search phrases, and, which are then charged each time a visitor clicks through these results to their website.

These ad spaces are purchased through PPC advertising suppliers, the main two large ones owned by Google and Yahoo. The program ran by Google is called Adwords, and displays results on Google.com, AOL, Ask Jeeves and many other smaller search programs. Yahoo’s ads are run by an acquired company Overture, and the results appear on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and many other partners syndicating for this very purpose.

Factors Influencing Money Spent on a PPC Campaign

• The number of searches conducted every month using phrases relevant with your business.
• The bidding amount you along with competitors are willing to pay for these terms.

The normal average monthly ad spent on a PPC advertise is a couple of thousand dollars but may immensely vary for less than $50/per month on regional targets to millions a month by large national retailers.

Your Mantra to Success

• Advertise on a large and relevant number of search phrases. How to find good keywords and terms used to describe your products is a challenge that you will have to brainstorm your way out of. Spend some thoughtful and valuable time before you actually finalize.
• Build unique and innovative ads for each of the search phrases. This will mean a lot of extra work than having just one ad for all the search phrases; but in the end it pays so you have nothing to crib about. This will also mean more targeted traffic, where in some cases paying less per click (like on Google Adwords) due to the intricacies of how these ads are priced.
• Make sure to take these visitors to the most appropriate page on your website. Don’t just send them to the home page so that they have to research for the product or services that they were looking for. Instead of frustrating them further, take them to the most relevant page on your website, and make things easier.
• Keep track of visitors and the results you are able to generate. You are spending money for each click, and if you are not going to measure the returns that you are able to generate, would only amount to bad business practice. At least consider installing the free tracking tools available through the Google Adwords and Overture to measure the terms that are able to generate business through your pay-per-click campaign.

People are actually searching for what you are wanting to sell at this very moment, and if your site is unable to show up near the top of the results will only be satisfying your competitors, rather than the visitors that you would want.