Pay-per-click (which is often referred to simply as PPC) is a method of online advertising whereby the advertiser pays a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on one of their adverts and is taken to their website. A small number of sites will sell advertising space on this basis but the most common way to run a pay-per-click campaign is through a dedicated service which will supply adverts to a huge number of website owners (who in turn receive payment for each click that is generated on their website).
The most prominent PPC advertising services are those run by the major search engine providers, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, who run the PPC programs AdWords, adCenter and Search Marketing respectively. There are two key ways that these three companies run their PPC advertising; through search engines and through websites that have opted to display their adverts for a cut of the profits.
Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all place adverts in a column on the right hand side of their search results pages (and occasionally in a box located above the standard organic listings). In order to have adverts placed in these positions advertisers need to bid on keyphrases. A keyphrase is a term that, when typed into a search engine, you want your advert to appear on the search results pages for. The cost-per-click (CPC) will vary depending on how many people are vying for advertising space on the results for that particular keyphrase, but typically the cost will be lowered the more appropriate the PPC provider deems your website to be. Google AdWords, for example, will give each advert a quality score based on well related the keyphrase, the advert, and the landing page are to one another. By doing this advertisers are encouraged to create the most relevant adverts possible and in turn Google can provide its searchers with adverts that are as appropriate to the keyphrase they entered as possible.
In addition to PPC adverts that are placed on search engine results pages website owners can also choose to add advertising space to their website and have the adverts displayed by a PPC provider. This can bring the website owner an additional source of revenue from their website and gives advertisers the opportunity to display their adverts to a specifically targeted audience.
Nowadays PPC adverts are often found on blogs as it allows bloggers to make a small amount of profit from an area they were previously unable to. This is also of benefit to the advertisers as they are able to hunt out niche blogs that are very closely related to their industry and then choose to display their PPC adverts on these specific websites.
Pay-per-click advertising can be an excellent way to give your website a quick boost; they appear instantly and you can decide exactly when you want them to run and what your daily budget is. The downside however is that a lot of popular terms can generate a high number of clicks in a relatively short space of time. This means that you would either have to run your advert in very short bursts, or you have to commit to a very large budget. Providing you carefully select keyphrases (or websites to display the adverts on) and ensure your landing page is well optimised you will be able to convert these adverts to profit and scale the PPC campaign up accordingly.
Remember to check back regularly to read my upcoming posts where I’ll discuss techniques for investigating keyphrases, as well as how to optimise your PPC adverts and landing pages.
