GAP PR & Marketing

What is pay per click?

This is an internet marketing technique which helps you promote a product or service online.

Pay per click is a great way to advertise without spending too much, because you only pay when a person clicks your ad. It is also something which can be monitored on a daily or even hourly basis and can be adjusted continuously to optimise your results.

How does is work?

When you “Google” something, the top results (with a different coloured background) and the results down the right-hand-side, are pay per click adverts, known as sponsored links. Adverts are triggered by the words used in your search phrase. This makes the adverts extremely targeted and means if designed correctly, they will only show when someone types a phrase into Google or another search engine, which relates to your product or service.

When these links are clicked, the viewer is led to the advertiser’s website. The advertiser is charged by an amount that they have bid, each time a potential customer clicks, hence the term “pay per click”.

There are many cost effective Pay Per Click providers, and the largest and most well known network is Google AdWords.

As well as displaying on search engines, sponsored ads can show on other website pages too.  On www.telegraph.co.uk when you scroll to the bottom of a page (except the home page) there are pay per click adverts (Ads by Google) which relate to the news story.

What does it cost?

Google Adwords is based on a bid-based model. Advertisers competing in a particular niche will bid against each other to get the best exposure for their ads. You set the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click on your ad and this determines in which position your ad will be shown. Keywords that are used frequently cost much more on a per click basis than ones that are less popular. For example the phrase “cheap flights” would be expensive, however something like “conveyancing solicitor in Rochdale” would be much cheaper.

PPC allows you to choose as many keyphrases as you like, so you could have; conveyancing solicitor in Rochdale, conveyancing solicitor in Bolton, conveyancing solicitor in Swinton and so on. There is no limit to the variations, you will only pay when someone clicks on the advert.

Pay per action

A few companies offer variations on the cost effective pay per click advertising format. For instance a private website can set up links to things like Amazon books or products. If someone clicks on these links and actually purchases the book or product advertised, the website owner may receive a percentage of the sale. This is called pay per action. Google briefly tried a pay per action model in the late 2000s but abandoned the program in 2008.

• A managed pay per click campaign will work best when carried out with search engine optimisation. Together SEO and PPC can target customers interested in your products or services. However getting people to your website is only half the battle, you must make sure when they arrive at your site’s landing page they stay there, so it must be well written and work well.
• PPC and SEO allow you to track your results so you can monitor your return on investment and see if your advert is generating the results you require.

Tags: key phrases, keyoword research, Keywords, pay per click, ppc, search engine optimisation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.