Utilizing Pay Per Click Marketing

How PPC Marketing Can Change Your Website

By Mike Adams, YourLocalSite.com Founder
Last Updated: June 16, 2009: 10:38 PM ET

Pay Per Click Marketing, or what is more commonly referred to as PPC is an internet advertising system used on search engines and content sites such as blogs, where an advertiser only pays the hosting site when the ad is clicked. With most search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Ask.com, the website wanting to take advantage of pay per click advertising will usually bid on a keyword or phrase that a person would put into a search field that would be relevant to the products or services offered by the advertiser. When the price is agreed upon or won, the advertiser will pay the agreed amount for the number of times a consumer visits their site via clicking on the link provided from the search engine. Most content sites usually have their own set fee already in place per click rather than having to use a bidding system to determine price.

Pay per click advertising methods have can sometimes have very strong benefits over typical advertising using say a banner ad placed at a set fee for one month. For one thing, with pay per click advertising, you only pay for the customers that see your advertisement and follow up by taking the time to come to your website. This will encourage the host of any advertisements to really showcase your ad, getting as many people to notice it as possible, because they only receive money for those that click the advertisement. Another benefit is the power to see what ads and where are having the most success, but letting you see how many customers clicked on a specific ad. If you were to have an ad placed for one month on a certain type of blog site, and another ad placed on a search engine, you would be able to compare the two ads to see which was generating the most traffic to your website. If the blog site was generating 50% more clicks to your web site then the link from the search engine, you could decide from there that it may be wise to look into more advertising on sites that get the same target audience as the blog site.

As well as number of clicks that you can use to help you determine where your advertisements will reach the target consumer best. If you notice a fairly large amount of traffic being generated by other sites that have a very specific target audience, allowing you to specifically model certain advertisements at the target audience for the other websites. For example if you are a website selling clothing, and you notice a large amount of traffic coming from an ad on a teen advice blog, you could design ads catering to the teens. PPC is a definite for businesses that need solid advertising that can also let you track advertising success.