How A PPC Campaign Can Benefit Your Website

Many promote search engine optimisation as being the be-all and end-all of Internet Marketing but this simply isn’t the case. There’s a very good chance you will have read on the Internet about PPC, or pay-per-click, marketing. PPC marketing can offer an excellent way to generate visitors to your website quickly and, if managed correctly, inexpensively.

A PPC Campaign Starts Work Immediately

Whereas an SEO campaign can take weeks or possibly months to generate any visible traffic, a pay-per-click campaign starts work as soon as you want it and is still a highly targeted method of advertising a website or online business. Most search engines offer a pay-per-click campaign of one sort or another and a number of specialist companies have also sprung up offering similar services.

Google Adwords

Google currently operate the largest PPC network of all companies, called Google Adwords, however other companies offer very useful alternatives. Overture (they are currently undergoing a re-branding and will be called Yahoo Search Marketing) from Yahoo is the closest in terms of size and therefore ad exposure.

First, let’s deal with Adwords because this is the most popular and offers the greatest amount of potential visitors for your money. The basic premise of Adwords is that you create a short advert that contains a link to your website and a brief description of exactly what it offers. This advert will be shown on Google search result pages and other websites and each time a surfer clicks your advert they will be directed to your site. You pay a pre-determined amount for each click that you receive.

How PPC Differs From Banner Advertising

Obviously, this is quite different to banner advertising. Displaying a banner on another website costs you a monthly or annual ‘lease’ regardless of whether you receive 1 click a month or you receive 1 million clicks a month. With Adwords, however, you only pay when someone clicks your link.

Setting Your Own Limits

You will determine the amount you pay, allowing an excellent level of control over any campaign. Click costs can range from a minimum of 4 pence to a maximum of 100 pounds. The amount you choose will determine the prominence of your ad in relation to others. If you pay the highest amount for a particular keyword then you will appear top on websites and search result pages pertinent to that keyword. Paying less means you will appear lower down the ranking.

Daily Budget Enables You To Control Your Spending

You also have the option to set a daily budget. This means that once you have received the number of clicks that equal that amount your advert will not be displayed again until the next day.

Some Alternatives To Google Adwords

As mentioned earlier, there are alternatives to an Adwords campaign. One such alternative is Yahoo Search Marketing. This works in the same way. Chitika Mini Malls offers the same pay-per-click method of payment but advertises products using product images and details. Contextual advertising targets keywords within the text of other websites and if your advert is relevant it will be displayed as a hover tip so when surfers to that site hover over the underlined keyword in the text, they will be shown your advertisement.

A Final World On PPC

Pay-per-click advertising isn’t perfect for everyone or for all websites and a major aspect of whether a pay-per-click advertising campaign will prove to be successful for you is performance monitoring. Only by watching the performance of your chosen keywords can you be sure to get the best out of any PPC campaign.