Introduction to PPC Advertising

More and more search engines, especially industry targeted ones, are moving towards paid listings. Most paid listings these days are Pay Per Click (PPC). Like the name suggests, you pay each time a visitor clicks on your listing. This can be a very cost-effective way of getting traffic or it can be an expensive nightmare. I'm going to offer what advice I can to try and ensure PPC works for you.

Most PPC engines get websites that make money (that's us) to bid on keywords. The highest bids appear at the top, but you only pay when someone clicks on your link. Obviously, the people in the top two or three spots will get more clicks, but they'll be paying for that privilege. Being number one can get very expensive, very quickly. My advice - aim for a top five slot, or even just somewhere on the first page of results. You'll still get good visitors, but won't be paying through the nose for them.

On that note, don't get involved in bidding wars. The engines will send you emails every time one of your keywords (when you're lucky enough to find a cheap top spot) is outbid. Their cunning plan is for you to top the other guy's bid - so they can send him the same email and he'll want to top yours, and before you know it, you're paying 50 cents a click where you used to be paying 5 cents. I've seen it happen inside one day. The only winner in a bidding war is the search engine.

Another good way of keeping costs down (and increasing the effectiveness of your listings) is to focus your attention on targeted keywords. For example, rather than trying to be top of "casino" results (cost $2.87 per click at 7 Search when I wrote this) go for "casino reviews" (a much more affordable $0.82 per click, and it's more focused traffic anyway). Better yet, if you went for the third spot in "casino reviews" you'd pay just $0.52 per click and still be getting almost the same exposure.

Remember, being listed top doesn't mean you're going to automatically get all the visitors. It's also very important to write a good headline and description. Writing good adverts takes a certain kind of skill. It's well worth taking some time to think about though, since if you have an eye-catching headline, and strong text, then you can get as many, if not more, visitors than the boring big-spenders. It's tough to say definitively how to do this (if I could, I'd be making mega-bucks in an ad-agency, but most people seem to agree you need to be interesting, descriptive, and honest. There's even less point tricking people into clicking a PPC link than into clicking a free link, since not only are you not benefiting from it, you're paying for the privilege.

There are a lot of PPC companies out there, and buying credits with all of them is a bit of an investment. It is probably worthwhile long term, since it gets you wider coverage, and that means you can afford to bid lower (since your results are appearing in more searches, you don't need to get as many visitors from each search). At the moment, we particularly like 7 Search.

When considering PPC companies, you should consider the tools they offer. Keyword suggestion, bid management, and detailed reporting are my big three. You should also look at their coverage. The more places their results are shown, the quicker you get results (although the more it tends to cost). It's also important to be aware of minimum spend requirements and any "hidden" fees they have. We have another article on fraud you might encounter and how to combat it, but see what the PPC engine does at their end as well. PPC is a huge area, and this article is a very brief introduction.