Pay Per Click Advertising Demystified

Ernest L. Polk Jr.

You can start making money quickly by getting traffic to your website, and one of the best ways I have found to get traffic is by advertising your website through Google Adwords.  This is the biggest pay per click program on the web, and you do not want to miss the opportunity to drive traffic to your website quickly.

There are a few things you must know about Google Adwords before using this program, because it is nothing like placing a banner on your website.  There are no images, only text.  You only get a small amount of space to write your ad, so you need carefully select the words you use so that they grab the readers attention.  You get a headline followed by two more lines and below this you can place your URL to your website for readers to follow.  This is a very affective way to get traffic to your website.

Pay per click (PPC) is an internet advertising campaign used to target leads while offering a great opportunity to monetize internet traffic on websites; advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked.  With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keywords or keyword phrases relevant to their target market.  Therefore, if you are selling women’s apparel then “women’s apparel” would be the keywords of choice.  Although this could constitute a very broad approach, you would want to be more descriptive in the keyword selection for the market which you are targeting.  Google Adwords has a keyword search tool that you can use when you signup for a free account.  Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use of a bidding system.

“Women’s apparel” is a very competitive keyword, which not only makes it cost more per click, but also makes it hard to get visitors.  A lot of sponsored ads get pushed off to the second or third page.

I would suggest using a less competitive keyword which will cost less money and get your ad to the top of the search engine when a visitor does a search for that term.  As these terms cost much less, you can bid on a ton of them.

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

Set the max price you are willing to pay per click
Your internet search engine will automatically adjust your cost-per-click to just $0.01 above the next closest competitor, so you get the best price available for your traffic.

Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser’s keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site.

Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators; all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword.

The PPC advertising model is open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and others have implemented automated systems to guard against abusive clicks by competitors or corrupt web developers.

Targeted pay per click advertising
You decide where your ad will be displayed.  Simply browse through a categorized directory of sites and choose the appropriate ones for your ad.

Geographical targeting
Display your ads within a geographic range that you predetermine.  Simply choose your geographic target and it will show your ads only to users located anywhere in the country or countries you select.

Monitor the performance of your ads
Use Google Analytics to monitor the performance of your ads by customizing dozens of online reports such as the number of page impressions, clicks, click-through rate and the total amount you’ve spent.

So if you haven’t figured it out yet; you’re going to need advertisement to drive traffic to your website in order to be seen by visitors.  The more visitors you can attract to your website, the higher your chances are to convert them to buyers and repeat visitors.

Tags: Cost Per Action, cost per click, Google Adwords, pay per click advertising, ppc

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.