Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. How to get success? Pay Per Click	Visited: 877 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Manika batta April 16, 2008

PPC advertising is an internet marketing method which generates instant traffic to your website. However, unlike Search Engine Optimization, pay per click advertising requires investment without being able to guarantee a return. Visitors may click on your site but this does not mean an automatic sale, order or lead. PPC campaigns require focus, attention and need to be regularly monitored to stay effective.

PPC started in the year 1998 by Goto.com, a 25 employee startup company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo).However, Pay Per Click Advertising was only introduced in 2002, until then, advertisements were charged at cost per thousand (CPM) but Yahoo Advertisements have always been PPC, since its introduction in 1998. Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft Ad Center are the largest operators in PPC advertising.

PPC advertising on search engines allows you choose keywords you would like your site to appear when a search is done. You decide how much you are want to pay each time a person clicks on the search results i.e ad copy. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose.

According to a recent US study, web searchers will not click on a search engine's results beyond page number three and 66% of users in the study clicked on sites listed on page number one only. Based on this research it is worth doing PPC besides other popular internet marketing methods like SEO, Article Marketing, Social Bookmaking and Affiliate Marketing.

Why Pay Per Click (PPC)?

• Instant Results - No need to wait for your product or service to reach the user review. Immediately Traffic for your website.
• Economical – It is economical as compared with other traditional advertising techniques.
• Ideal for Testing Market – Pay Per Click is Ideal for short term advertisement campaigns. We can test the user reaction on particular products or services with immediate results.
• Return On Investment – It can provide immediate return on Investment especially if your website is processing business or sales online.
• Extremely Flexible – Its easy to adjust, add, delete or edit your keywords and copy, target geographic locations and set timings of appearing of your ad copy.
• Avoid Unnecessary Keywords – For those keywords which you do not want your adcopy to get appear & hence clicked can be avoided by using negative keywords.
• Total Control – In PPC Campaigns, the steering wheel is totally in your hands i.e you decide the daily budget, keywords, adcopy ( tile, description, URL) .

Some Basic Tips for Pay Per Click Campaigns:

• Make a sensible budget for your PPC advertising campaign. Spend per click must be less than profit per click. Cost Per Acquisition/Lead/Sale must be kept in mind. Once the campaign has been launched, the number of leads or sales generated can be reviewed to ensure the campaign is going on the right track.

• Make separate Ad Groups & ad copies for particular set of keywords.
  
  
• Bid & Position for keywords & ad copies must be monitored on regular basis.
  Choose specific keywords relevant with your website. Broad and non-specific terms must be avoided.

Besides the Benefits…Some Drawbacks of PPC

Junk Traffic sent to your website via some less known Search Engines and Click Fraud

are the major drawbacks in Pay Per Click Advertising. It does not offer you discount if your site gets more traffic i.e Cost Per Click will remain the same. Advertising Budget must be agreed and bid price per keyword must be confirmed so bid wars are avoided and you don't go over budget.