I am going to quickly go over what is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is for everyone who is new to promoting a website in this fashion. I will also briefly discuss important aspects of this method of advertising and some of the basic do’s and dont’s to try and help you save yourself from blowing too much hard earned cash while you get to grips with PPC.

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?

As the name suggests pay per click advertising is the process of paying each time a person clicks a specific link to visit your website. You can see an example just below this article from people advertising on this website using Google.

Every time that someone click on one of those links the sponsor pays Google a fee which can range from a few pence or cents all the way up to several pounds or dollars depending on how many people are competing for that search term.

Pay Per Click (PPC) costs

The costs of a pay per click campaigns vary a lot depending on the level of competition there is for a specific word that you are sponsoring. For example lets say you have a website that sells jewelry and you want to increase the sales of new line of gold watches. You may want to sponsor the term “watch” on Google which would mean that every time some searched for the word “watch” in Google you will have a small advert to the top or to the right of the Google results. The higher up the search results that you are the more likely you are to get a person to click on your advert and you are probably more likely to get a person who wants your services. This is where the bidding process comes into the equation as everyone wants to be as close to the stop of the results as they can afford. Therefore the more you bid to pay per click the closer to the top of the sponsored results you will be.

Is Pay Per Click (PPC) right for me?

There are many factors that you want to look at when deciding use pay per click for your campaigns but it will really fall down to common sense. You have to look at what you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to get more people sign up to your newsletter then PPC may not be the most direct method of doing this as you would have to get someone to click an advert to your website and then you would have to convince them to sign up. In this instance you may be better off paying an affiliate marketing company who will only charge you per sign up to the newsletter.

Saying that, PPC is not a guaranteed way of making sales but more of a method of driving traffic to your website. As a consequence the website had best be geared to drive the results you are looking for be it sales. This means that your website that you are getting the adverts to point too had better be in good shape to handle the people you are getting sent to it.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Companies

Google (AdWords)

Google have a very strong PPC capabilities which are spread across their search engine results and from banners on other peoples websites (Network Results). Google are one of the strongest players in PPC advertising world as they have a lot of people using their search engine which makes it a very tempting place for people to advertise their products and services.

Yahoo (Overture)

Previously Overture and Yahoo were separate companies but Overture was purchased by Yahoo in order to increase their advertising potential. Just like Google, Yahoo uses both its search engine and network to display adverts to relevant audiences.

Microsoft

When there are computers and large sums of money involved you know that Microsoft is going to be wanting a slice of the action too. Search engine marketing is no different and Microsoft also offer to place PPC adverts along side search results from their search engines.

Miva

Miva work on a slightly different method to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo as they focus on displaying adverts across a network of websites. For example if this website you are on now was a member of the Miva network then you would be seeing adverts from the Miva PPC engine.

In my opinion it is not a case of choosing which service to use but more about which blend of services best fit my campaigns or my clients campaigns. The reason for this is what is known as “Reach” which simply means how far can your message be spread. If you stick with just Google AdWords then you are restricting your self to just advertising to Google and Google Network Users.

Tracking a Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign

I am a strong believer in tracking each and every single possible detail when it comes to monitoring the results of your campaigns. The reason for this is simple, advertising costs money and if you don’t monitor your results you don’t know where best to direct your funds and alternate your campaigns.

A simple way of starting to track your campaign is to either use the PPC advertising companies own tracking software or use Microsoft Excel or if you dont have that you can download open office for free and use their spreadsheet software. Personally I use a combination of both along with my own custom software which allows me to track and manage large campaigns more effectively.

PPC Fraud

Pay Per click fraud is a huge problem which can hurt your campaigns effectiveness and your finances if not spotted early on. There are many reasons why the fraud occurs in the first place but not all are financially motivated.

The most common method that someone would commit fraud against your PPC campaign is by being a member of the PPC companies network. This basically means that they have a website that displays the PPC companies adverts (your adverts) in return for a percentage of the cost of each click. The fraudster would have a method of generating false clicks which serve no other purpose than to generate them money and give you no result for your money. PPC companies are obviously aware of this and have methods of stopping this type of fraud but their protection is not fool proof and you must pay attention to the statistics of your campaigns to help stop these fraudulent leaks.

One of the more sinister aspects of this type of fraud is not used to generate direct cash for the fraud perpetrator but rather to cause damage to your campaign effectiveness. There are people out their who run rival websites to your own resulting in them competing for the same customers as you. Some of the less reputable people will intentionally attempt to get non effective clicks onto your adverts in order to cost you money and reduce the effectiveness of your campaign. In-fact if you are starting on a small budget then this could potentially cripple your advertising budget until the problem has been resolved.

I hope that the above section on PPC fraud has not put you off of using this form of marketing as it should be possible to spot these problems if you monitor your campaigns properly. One important note is that not all of the above PPC companies are great at refunding you for fraudulent clicks. My personal experience is that Yahoo offer an excellent service who very quickly resolve most fraudulent clicks on your advertising campaign and reimburse your account. Other major companies in the above list are not so friendly with this matter which is why tracking your campaigns and protecting your livelihood is very important.

Summary

I hope this has given the newcomers to PPC advertising a better understanding of this form of marketing and the different companies that are available to them. I also hope that I have highlighted the importance of monitoring the PPC campaigns to not only increase the effectiveness of the campaigns but to also reduce or eliminate and fraudulent threats.