For instance, if your business sells beauty products, you might bid on keywords such as “beauty products”, “skin care products”, “beauty and make-up”, or “health and beauty products”. When someone is looking for possible skin care products, he might type in any of these four keywords on his search bar. Thus, when the search engine returns the results, the ad for your business will appear as one of the sponsored links or sponsored ads on the results page.

You’ll only be paying for your advertisement when the user clicks on your ad, thus the term pay-per-click or PPC. If you are charged with $0.10 per click on your ad, and 100 people clicked on your ad in a day, then you’ll be paying the search engine $10.00.

Today, the major pay-per-click search engines are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter. Other search engines are LookSmart, Miva, Kanoodle, Ynadex, Baidu, and Ask. All these search engines provide advertisement services for any type of business.

Product and Services PPCs
Aside from keywords, search engines may also categorize ads or links by the product or service that the business provides. Thus, when a user types in a particular product, the search engine will come up with specific brands, shops or establishments. A user may also narrow his search according to the price of the products. This is called Product or Price comparison search engines. This type of search gives a business more opportunity to get clicks from users since it brings up more specific results.

Popular pay-per-click product search engines are Shopzilla.com, BizRate.com, PriceGrabber.com, Shopping.com and NexTag. When it comes to services, the most widely used pay-per-click search engines are NexTag, SideStep TripAdvisor.

Should You Choose Pay-per-click Advertising?
The bidding plays a very important role in pay-per-click advertising. The highest bidder will receive the highest rank on the search engine’s listing. Obviously, if your link is on the top rank of the page, you’ll more likely get the most links out of all the ads on the page.

One disadvantage of PPC advertising is that it can get very expensive on a large scale. Also, you cannot guarantee that each time a user clicks on your link, you’ll get a sale right away. However, PPC advertising is definitely a sure way to get web traffic instantly. You don’t have to wait for days just to generate traffic.

Should you invest on Pay-per-click advertising? If your business can afford it, why not? But always think about the long-term goal for your business. Don’t put all your money in PPC advertising just to get on top ranks. Furthermore, make sure that you gain positive results from the clicks you’re paying.

Focus on the conversion. A conversion, you ask? Yes, it’s when the user makes an online inquiry about the products you’re selling, when a user registers or when the user actually makes a purchase. If you’re not accomplishing any of these results, clearly PPC advertising isn’t working for you and you should move on to other internet marketing strategies.

About the Author

Maureen Stesson is a writer and a sharp internet marketer in her own right. For years, she has mastered the art of online marketing to snowball online success. She currently shares her knowledge in order for others to learn internet marketing.

Copyright 2009

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