Step 1: Determine your advertising budget and the level of risk you are willing to take.

• Larger search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo) are less risky as they already have excellent market coverage and typically offer excellent customer service.
• On the other hand, the larger search engines cost more to achieve a top ranking.

Step 2: Decide which search engines you wish to advertise on.

• Find out which search engines your competition is advertising on.
• Do your homework – research each option carefully.

Step 3: Decide which keywords you want to bid on.

• There are plenty of free tools available on the internet to help you research keywords and tell you what the current bid price for certain words and phrases are currently running on different search engines.
• Pick your keywords wisely as they can range in bid prices from $.10 to over $10.
• Don’t limit yourself to one keyword or phrase. Large corporations often have thousands of keywords.

Step 4: Design your landing page.

• Your landing page must be clear on what products you are selling, the products’ benefits, how to make a purchase and why your product is better than your competition.
• Your website’s homepage is usually not a good choice for a landing page. If visitors want to learn more about your company, they will do so on their own initiative.
• The fewer clicks that a visitor has to make to purchase your product, the higher the sales.

Step 5: Begin the bidding process.

• Most search engines have automated the bidding process so that you do not have to actively participate in the process. They will stop when they reach your maximum bid.
• Personal involvement is always a good idea, at least at first.
• Read the search engine’s terms of use carefully. Look for minimum bids required, deposits required and what happens if you have to cancel your campaign.
• Usually, PPC search engines will only allow less than 10 ads to show up on a search results page. Research has shown that unless your ad is among the first 3 or 4, you are much less likely to have visitors to your landing page.

What You Need To Know About Pay Per Click Fraud

According to various reports, up to 20% of all pay per click traffic delivered to advertisers originates from false sources, not from actual potential customers. The majority of click fraud originates from two sources – competitors and website owners. Competitors want to drain your advertising budget by producing false clicks that you have to pay for, even though they were not viable leads.

Website owners sometimes work in tandem with search engines by agreeing to feature their ads and provide their customers with more exposure in return for receiving part of the revenue generated by each click. Thus, some of these website owners will try to generate as many clicks as possible to increase the profitability of their agreement.

Click fraud has become enough of an issue to attract the attention of major publications, such as the Washington Post and BusinessWeekonline. According to Endofclickfraud.com, if an organization spends $15,000 on PPC advertising distributed among the top tier search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, and is paying between .50 and $1 per click, they could be losing $2220.00 to fraud.

What Role Should PPC Advertising Play in Your Marketing Strategy?

Your business cannot afford to rely on PPC advertising alone. It is too expensive to keep up with the ever rising bid amounts for profitable keywords. However, there are certain instances in which PPC advertising can be invaluable.

1. If you are starting a new campaign to draw attention to a new product or service, PPC advertising is a great way to create a buzz.
2. If you sell a product or offer a service that consumers can purchase immediately upon arriving at your website, PPC advertising is very effective.
3. If you are able to find keywords that create a market niche for your organization, PPC advertising can be cost effective. For instance, if you can generate traffic with a highly specific keyword, such as “PerfectPoint Pencils” instead of just “Pencils”, PPC advertising may be a good option.

That’s right. If your prospects see your ad but do NOT click on it, you don’t pay.

These ads can usually be seen on search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo. The ads are called “Sponsored links” or “Sponsored ads” depending on which search engine you are using. They will appear next to or above the results of the original search.

Obviously, the higher the ad’s placement on the results page, the higher the chances of it being seen and clicked on.

So, to determine the ranking of the ads, advertisers have to bid on the “keywords” that they think their prospects would type in search engines when they are looking for a specific product or service.

There are currently more than 500 pay per click search engines. However, the top ten search engines produce over 85% of pay per click searches. Bidding for ad space on these search engines is extremely competitive resulting in higher advertising costs. The top three pay per click search engines that you should focus on are:

1. Google AdWords
2. Yahoo! Search Marketing
3. Microsoft adCenter

Types Of Pay Per Click Advertising

There are several types of pay per click advertising.

1. The most popular form of PPC advertising is keyword advertising. The keywords that are bid on can be words, phrases, or even model numbers. The advertisements will appear in the order of the bid amount, from highest to lowest.

2. Product pay per click advertising lets advertisers provide “feeds” of their product databases to search engines. When users search for a product, advertisers’ links will appear with the highest bidder appearing most prominently. The user is able to sort by price and then click on a feed to make a purchase. BizRate.com, Shopzilla.com, Nextag, Pricegrabber.com and Shopping.com are popular product comparison engines, also known as price comparison engines.

3. Service pay per click advertising is very similar to product PPC ads. “Service engines”, such as Nextag, SideStep and TripAdvisor, offer advertisers the opportunity to provide feeds of their service databases which will appear when users search for that particular service. As usual, advertisers who pay more are given better ad placement. However, users can sort their results by price or other methods.

4. Pay per call advertising is similar to pay per click advertising. Ads are listed in search engines and directories. Publishers charge local advertisers for each call they receive as a result of their listing. This form of advertising is not just limited to local advertisers as many of the pay per call search engines allow nationwide companies to create advertisements with local telephone numbers.

Advantages Of PPC Advertising

1. Pay per click can generate traffic immediately.
2. Pay per click ads can be adjusted within hours or days in response to market behavior.
3. Pay per click advertising can be a bargain if you choose your keywords wisely.
4. Pay per click can guarantee ad placement for a relatively small portion of your marketing budget.

Disadvantages Of PPC Advertising

1. It is very easy to get caught up in a bidding war over keywords and spend way more than you could ever recoup.
2. The return on your investment can be very hard to measure. Some PPC search engines provide customers with measurement tools but they aren’t always accurate. Most of the smaller PPC companies don’t even provide tracking methods.
3. You can spend advertising dollars just to generate junk traffic. PPC services distribute some of their results to other search engines allowing your listing to show up in the nether regions of the Internet.
4. PPC advertising requires you to pay more money when more traffic is generated. On the other hand, natural search engine optimization allows you to invest a set amount of time and money to achieve a better rank and your cost will go down as you attract more traffic.