Guide To Pay Per Click Advertising

PPA

Major Search Engines like Google and Yahoo provide free URL submissions. For free submissions, it may turn a few months before a website gets indexed and still it may take longer to achieve good ranking (within page 1 and 2 of search results). What’s the solution if you have a new website and want to have visibility quick?

Search Engines with significant traffic offer paid placement listings, which is also known as Pay Per Click (PPC), Pay Per Ranking (PPR), or Pay Per Position (PPP). This kind of advertising and promotion enables your site to be listed at the top of Search results by paying for keywords that best describes your products or service.

How does Pay Per Click work?

You start by bidding for keywords that best describe your product or website. If you are the highest bidder, for example at USD0.25, then your website will be listed on page 1 occupying the top spot If someone else bids USD0.26 for the same keywords, your listing gets relegated to second place. The way to get back to the top is to bid higher than USD0.26 in this case. Highest bidder gets the top spot.

You only pay what you bid when a searcher clicks on your listing and connects to your site. You only pay for traffic directed to the website. This is a smart way of advertising. An account with a PPC Search Engine is an effective way to drive traffic to your site with no hidden costs, except a one-time setup cost. PPC also allows you to control the maximum amount you want to spend on your internet marketing campaign. This is an effective marketing strategy for owners with new websites who want visibility quick.

Note that for PPC, you are not buying placement within the actual search results. You are purchasing text ads that appear alongside top search results. For Google Adwords the ads appeared in colored boxes at the right hand column. Those colored boxes at the top of the search results are ads that generate the most revenue for Google (bid price multiplied by click through rate).

Summary of advantages of PPC advertising...

Only pay for click-through by visitors.
Targeted traffic through keywords.
Quick startup.
Real time monitoring of ROI.

Caution about this kind of advertising

Be wary of PPC programs that pay clickers money or incentives to click through their listing. You may not get the best traffic for this kind of arrangement.

For PPC you have to research your keywords and plan your marketing campaign very carefully. Take for example if you bid for the keywords ‘internet marketing’. The highest bid is USD0.50. The projected click-through for the keywords is 1000 based search queries. Your marketing campaign based on projection will cost a whopping USD500. This would not pose a problem if you are marketing high-end goods and services, and if your website has good conversion rates (CR). CR is measured in percentage. It is derived by this simple formula…

(Number of visitors who made purchases divided by number of visitors who visited your site) multiplied by 100.

For example if you have 100 visitors per day and 10 made purchases. Your CR is 10 percent.

Measure the cost of your marketing campaign with the conversion rate (CR) of your website. Set the maximum amount of money you are willing to spend daily. Closely monitor the effectiveness of your ads. For good CR rate you need to design a good landing page.

A quick guide to popular and widely used PPC programs.

Overture

An account requires a USD20 minimum deposit. You need to spend a minimum of USD20 per month. The minimum bid amount is USD0.10. When bid hign enough to rank within the top 3 spot your listing will also be displayed on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and Fast.

Google Adwords

The Google network reaches about 36 percent of Internet users world wide. The minimum account varies with the currency you use and country of billing. The minimum bid amount also varies. Listings could appear in Ask Jeeves, AOL and Netscape. You could also select the countries to display your listing.

LookSmart

You can submit one URL to the Looksmart directory for a fee of USD49.00. If approved your site will be placed in the LookSmart directory. Within a day or two your listing will also be displayed across the LookSmart network.

90 percent of the traffic from LookSmart network comes from MSN. The cost per click program to tap into this traffic is USD0.15. With LookSmart you cannot buy placements with keywords. You need to spend a monthly minimum of USD15.00.

About the Author
Gerrick W provides information and tips to effectively market your Internet business.Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

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