WEB MARKETING SCIENTISTS

Pay-per-click Advertising

News Article Written By: iQuantum

More and more businesses are turning to the internet to generate leads, and pay per click advertising is helping many achieve this goal.

Search engines provide unprecedented advertising opportunities for website owners aiming to harness visitors who belong to a specific target market. As a result of this recent phenomenon, online advertising in the form of pay per click advertising (PPC or Sponsored Links) has emerged as a successful and popular method of gaining exposure to potential customers, and has converted 'potential' into real interaction for many businesses.

Pay per click advertising gets its name from the fact that whenever someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your website, you pay an agreed price for their visit.

Pay per click advertising is founded on the notion that website owners can determine the context in which their advertisement is displayed in search engine results by bidding for specific phrases or keywords that relate to their product and website. Depending on how much has been paid for the elected keywords, an advertisement will achieve a higher search return placement within the 'sponsored links' when specialised searches containing those keywords are conducted.

Sponsored links are usually listed to one side of the 'natural' search engine results. Natural listings (or often referred to as Organic Search Results) are displayed as the main body of search results and are not determined by price bidding. They are ranked according to algorithms set by the search engine to assess website content and relevance to keywords. Many website owners aim to optimise the content of their web pages through careful consideration of the words and phrases people use when conducting searches, as well as the procedures that search engines use to determine the ranking of natural results. This process is referred to as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and it is a slower, more organic marketing process. Therefore, it is often applied in conjunction with a pay per click advertising campaign.

There are a range of PPC suppliers, but the two with the widest coverage are Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Marketing your website through sponsored links allow new websites to achieve immediate results in terms of greater targeted site visitation. It is relatively easy and fast to set up an account with a pay per click advertising search engine, so an advertisement will start appearing and generating interest as soon as the application is approved. It is also easy to monitor the progress of a PPC campaign and determine whether or not it is viable. An unsuccessful campaign can be quickly turned around with minimal cost by adjusting the elected keywords. The flexibility allowed through PPC advertising means that it is a low risk investment for businesses spanning all budgets. PPC also presents an excellent way to test keywords for businesses that are pursuing an SEO marketing strategy at the same time.

It is clear that pay per click advertising has distinct virtues, particularly in regard to short-term promotions. However, it does have a few drawbacks when compared with SEO strategies. Studies have indicated that search engine users are more likely to trust natural search engine results above sponsored results. Therefore, high-ranking natural results for businesses that have invested in website optimisation are likely to receive more clicks than pay per click advertising without the per-click price tag. Furthermore, when applied as a long-term marketing strategy PPC will remain as an ongoing cost. SEO campaigns require greater investment in terms of time and money, and they also require ongoing assessment, but the capacity of SEO to return on investment is greater. Ultimately, a thorough web marketing strategy should combine pay per click advertising and SEO as complimentary methods.

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