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How does pay per click work?
A pay per click
program such as Google
Adwords allows you to create your own ads
and choose a list of keywords that relate to
your product or service. When a visitor enters
the chosen keywords on Google as a part of his
search process, your ad shows up (along with a
link to your page) on the right of the search results
under "sponsored links". You pay Google only if
and only if the
visitor clicks on your ad. You are free to
decide the amount you would like to pay per
click and your total budget for the ad campaign
for the day. Chances are there are several other
advertisers for the same set of keywords that
you have chosen. Where your ad appears amongst
these group of ads depends on your specified
budget per click. The higher your bid, the
higher your ad appears.
Why is pay per click important?
Pay per click is probably the best and the most
controllable way of driving highly targeted
prospective customers to your site. Pay per
click is highly efficient, reliable and
effective as compared to other means of
advertising. It allows you to test your web ad
campaign along with the response to your website
without spending a huge amount of money. Your
brand message shows up thousands of times
helping you build brand awareness but you pay
for only a small fraction of the time your ad
gets clicked upon.
Getting
started with Pay Per Click (PPC).
The two most popular PPC programs currently are Google
Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.
Google Adwords currently displays PPC ads on
Google.com, AOL, About, Amazon, CBS Sportsline,
Disney, Ask Jeeves, Ask Jeeves Kids, Teoma,
Dealtime , AT&T WorldNet, EarthLink
and a host of other affiliate sites. Overture
display PPC ads on Yahoo.com, MSN,
Infospace, CNN amongst other sites.
Before starting your PPC campaign, give a
careful thought to all possible keywords that
visitors looking for your site might use. List
all relevant keywords. Using the keywords
suggestion tool offered by Google, get a list of
other possible keywords that are similar to the keywords
you have selected. Another useful tool for keyword research is
KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword
Research Tool. Pick and choose keywords that
are as relevant to your website as
possible
Carrying out a search using the keywords
you have selected reveals what your competition
is doing. See what descriptions they are using
and create a good one line description for your
site. Now you are ready to proceed to the next stage.
As you create the campaign, you can
choose the geographical areas you want your ads to be
displayed in, your daily budget and the maximum
amount you are willing to pay per click (your
bid). Once you enter your selection of keywords,
you will be provided an estimated ranking of
your advertisement for the amount you have bid for the
keywords. Only 8 ads show up on the first
page of Google search results. If the estimated
position of your ad is not amongst the top 16,
either you need to select better targeted
key words or increase your bid amount. It serves
little purpose if your ad shows up on page 3, 4
or beyond of the search results.
Once
your campaign is running, monitor it for a few
days to see how your ads are performing. Observe
the number of times your ad is showing up and
the click through ratio. If your click through
ratio is abnormally low, consider changing your
description or keywords. A abnormally high click
through ratio without commensurate results on
your website increases the risk of exhausting
your daily budget quickly. After studying your
campaign statistics for a few days, tweak your
campaign in an effort to achieve better results.
When you do make changes, change only one thing
at a time. That way you can find which part of
your campaign is not working. |
