Pay Per Click (PPC) - Part I

Pay Per Click (usually just called PPC) is a
traffic-generating method that involves paying
for each visitor to your site.

Depending on your niche and keywords you can
expect to pay anywhere from a few pennies to
ten dollars or more per visitor. PPC is an easy
way for any website to generate lots and lots
of traffic, but you have to be very careful or
you'll spend too much and run yourself right
out of business.

How exactly does PPC work?

Go to google.com and search for the first thing
that comes to your mind. Take a look at the
search results. See the column on the right
labeled "Sponsored Links"?

Those are advertisements. Website owners and
internet marketers paid to have a link to their
website listed on that page through a sophisticated
system called Pay Per Click.

Let's look at a real life example.

Pretend you're in the market for a new charcoal
grill for barbecue season. You want to do some
research and maybe compare a few different models.
So you search for the term "charcoal grills" and,
in addition to the regular search results, Google
also displays some Sponsored Links.

These links are likely merchants who sell charcoal
grills or grill accessories. They each paid to be
there by bidding on the term "charcoal grills" with
the highest bids receiving the most prominent
positions on the page.

They paid to be on that particular page because they
know you are looking for exactly what they have to
offer. Pretty convenient, huh?

Think about your own niche and what kind of keywords
someone would use to find what you're offering. Then
you can use PPC advertising to buy ads to bring in
traffic by using those same keywords.

There are countless PPC networks on the internet and
more are popping up all the time. Here is a short list
of the most popular networks:

-Google Adwords
-Yahoo Search Marketing
-MSN Ad Center
-Chitika
-Miva

Search Results vs Website Content

If you're going to advertise your site through a
Pay Per Click network, you'll need to decide where
to advertise. You can bid for a spot on a search
engine's results page for a specific keyword or you
can bid to appear on another website whose content
is about your keyword.

The general consensus is that you'll get better
results by appearing on search engine results pages.
But it really depends on your niche and your ad.
The best choice is to test both options and see
which works best for you.

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