If you have a particular interesting in making search engine company investors extremely happy by paying endless amounts of money to the search engines companies, then Pay Per Click (PPC) can be a great way to go.

Just joking guys, PPC is one of the staples in relation to web traffic on the Internet and is a very quick and easy way to get visitors to your site (though you do need to take care that you watch the amount you spend, and set daily limits, etc).

For those readers who are not familiar with PPC, essentially it’s the process whereby the search engines will present your short ad to people using the search engine (on the results page when the results of the users search are displayed).

Usually the ads are shown to the right hand side of the page, but in any event they are usually shown separate from the “normal” search engine results.

You pay for each click a user makes on your ad (no clicks means you have nothing to pay). Usually your ad when clicked would navigate to your website, but sometimes it may be to an affiliates website if you are selling other peoples products.

So in one sense, only paying per click is a good thing, because in theory people clicking your ad have some interest in your product or service, so they come to your website more qualified that a person who may just have happened to surf by.

You really need to spend time thinking about what phrases people would use to get to your website.

You don’t want to be taking chances with this. You don’t want to assume you know which keyword phrases are used by people wanting your websites (or more correctly, the keyword phrases people are using to find solutions to the particular problem they are trying to solve). We really want to know for sure that the keyword phrases we use are correct for your particular market.

In fact I am constantly surprised by some of the phrases people use when searching. Spelling mistakes are common, abbreviations are often used, punctuation can be used inappropriately, etc. The good news is that there are a number of things you can do here.

Firstly you could do some experimentation with the search engines yourself and use all the keyword phrases you think should be used to find products in your niche. Just go to the search engine and type them in and take a look at the results. Are the sites that are returned relevant to your niche?

In other words if you positioned yourself in that area would people searching in those categories find your websites content relevant (it goes without saying that you have great content, right?).

If the answer is yes and you think you would find it relevant, jot down the keyword phrase.

Also take a note of the number of sponsored links (advertisers) usually listed on the right or top of the search engine results (usually it explicitly mentions they are sponsored links). The actual number is important because too few could mean that perhaps the keyword phrase is not commonly used (but it could also mean you have found a golden nugget, that is a particular keyword phrase that is being used but not being actively targeted by Advertisers).

Too many sponsored results may mean the keyword phrase is heavily used and it may be expensive to get your sponsored links working (but again this could be a golden opportunity for you).

In general the search engines put the sponsored link that has bid the most money at the top of the list, so a quick way to ensure your up front is to pay the most (and bid more than your opposition).

However bear in mind as well, that the search engines also sort-sponsored links by the click through rate (CTR), in other words the number of times a sponsored link is clicked versus the number of times it is shown on screen in search engine results.

A sponsored link with a higher CTR indicates that more people are clicking that link, and you will find a sponsored link with a high CTR will rank higher in many cases that other sponsored links even if they have bid less money. So it is possible to have your cake and eat it to (or in this case to bid a smaller amount and have you sponsored link appear higher than your competitors who are paying more for their ad’s than you are!).

Of course to do this (get a higher CTR than other sponsored links) you need to draw attention to your ad, so your content (ad) must be more compelling than your competitors. Given the lack of space in these ads you need to be really creative to get your link clicked on more often than your competitors (even if your happy paying more than your competitors per click).

The number one sponsored link is not always going to be clicked more often than other ads, especially if it does not give the person moere of a reason to want to click it, than the ads near it.

Whatever you do, don’t just set-up a PPC campaign and leave it unchecked. Even if your having some success, make sure you go into the campaign details by logging into the search engine website for PPC marketers, and then check out the stats regularly to see how you are going because things can change very quickly as new competitors come into the marketplace.

You need to be continually checking your keywords, CTR’s of your ads, and fine tuning and tweaking to run things optimally. I am not suggesting this needs to be on a daily basis, but it just depends on your particular campaign and your market.

This is probably a good place to discuss link tracking on your website.

You can purchase software that gets installed onto your website that makes it really quite easy to see the traffic coming to your website and where it originates. It’s a good idea to do this to work out how much traffic your getting from your various sources (PPC, free Google search, press releases, etc).

The other reason why you want to be checking your ads frequently is that over time you will certainly find some ads performing better than others. You can see at a glance the CTR of your various ads, but also with link tracking it’s possible to work out the ads that are actually making you money (people are actually buying off the ad in higher proportions to other ads).

PPC is a fantastic way to get instant traffic to your website, just make sure you are doing your sums and keeping track of your expenditure and of course checking your ads regularly as well as what your competitors are doing and offering.

Just joking guys, PPC is one of the staples in relation to web traffic on the Internet and is a very quick and easy way to get visitors to your site (though you do need to take care that you watch the amount you spend, and set daily limits, etc).

For those readers who are not familiar with PPC, essentially it’s the process whereby the search engines will present your short ad to people using the search engine (on the results page when the results of the users search are displayed).

Usually the ads are shown to the right hand side of the page, but in any event they are usually shown separate from the “normal” search engine results.

You pay for each click a user makes on your ad (no clicks = nothing to pay). Usually your ad when clicked would navigate to your website, but sometimes it may be to an affiliate’s website if you are selling other peoples products.

So in one sense, only paying per click is a good thing, because in theory people clicking your ad have some interest in your product or service, so they come to your website more qualified that a person who may just have happened to surf by.

Now of course relevancy comes into play here, if you’re selling Apple iMacs you probably don’t want your advertisement coming up when people are search for fruit and vegetable wholesalers. This is where it’s critical that you do sufficient research and establish a set of keyword phrases that people would generally be using to find the solutions offered on your website.

Now actually knowing all the relevant keyword phrases is an art in itself, and really the Holy Grail! However there are some decent shortcuts you can use to help find the keyword phrases.

You really need to spend time thinking about what phrases people would use to get to your website.

You don’t want to be taking chances with this. You don’t want to assume you know which keyword phrases are used by people wanting your websites (or more correctly, the keyword phrases people are using to find solutions to the particular problem they are trying to solve). We really want to know for sure that the keyword phrases we use are correct for your particular market.

In fact I am constantly surprised by some of the phrases people use when searching. Spelling mistakes are common, abbreviations are often used, punctuation can be used inappropriately, etc. The good news is that there are a number of things you can do here.

Firstly you could do some experimentation with the search engines yourself and use all the keyword phrases you think should be used to find products in your niche. Just go to the search engine and type them in and take a look at the results. Are the sites that are returned relevant to your niche?

In other words if you positioned yourself in that area would people searching in those categories find your websites content relevant (it goes without saying that you have great content, right?).

If the answer is yes and you think you would find it relevant, jot down the keyword phrase.

Also take a note of the number of sponsored links (advertisers) usually listed on the right or top of the search engine results (usually it explicitly mentions they are sponsored links).

The actual number is important because too few could mean that perhaps the keyword phrase is not commonly used (but it could also mean you have found a golden nugget, that is a particular keyword phrase that is being used but not being actively targeted by Advertisers).

Too many sponsored results may mean the keyword phrase is heavily used and it may be expensive to get your sponsored links working (but again this could be a golden opportunity for you).

In general the search engines put the sponsored link that has bid the most money at the top of the list, so a quick way to ensure your up front is to pay the most (and bid more than your opposition).

However bear in mind as well, that the search engines also sort-sponsored links by the click through rate (CTR), in other words the number of times a sponsored link is clicked versus the number of times it is shown on screen in search engine results.

A sponsored link with a higher CTR indicates that more people are clicking that link, and you will find a sponsored link with a high CTR will rank higher in many cases that other sponsored links even if they have bid less money.

So it is possible to have your cake and eat it to (or in this case to bid a smaller amount and have you sponsored link appear higher than your competitors who are paying more for their ad’s than you are!).

Of course to do this (get a higher CTR than other sponsored links) you need to draw attention to your ad, so your content (ad) must be more compelling than your competitors. Given the lack of space in these ads you need to be really creative to get your link clicked on more often than your competitors (even if your happy paying more than your competitors per click).

The number one sponsored link is not always going to be clicked more often than other ads, especially if it does not give the person moere of a reason to want to click it, than the ads near it.

Unless you have a brand name that is as famous as Coke or Pepsi (or perhaps overwhelmingtraffic.com!), then you should be focused on selling the solution and not details about you.

Give people a compelling reason to click your ad, In this case if I was looking for real estate in a new town I was planning to move to, seeing a ad with a companies name in it would probably not be that interesting or helpful to me, but an ad outlining ways the company could help in my real estate search could help me.

In this situation, I would likely skip over and ignore the ad that featured the company name and move straight to the ad that provided with the most useful information.

The good news is that most of the search engine tools for PPC marketers are often quite sophisticated so it’s possible to set-up a number of different ads and for the search engine to cycle through them. The search engine will show you the CTR for each ad, so you can quickly spot dud ads and remove them or replace them with better ones. The key is in the testing.

Whatever you do, don’t just set-up a PPC campaign and leave it unchecked. Even if your having some success, make sure you go into the campaign details by logging into the search engine website for PPC marketers, and then check out the stats regularly to see how you are going because things can change very quickly as new competitors come into the marketplace.

You need to be continually checking your keywords, CTR’s of your ads, and fine tuning and tweaking to run things optimally. I am not suggesting this needs to be on a daily basis, but it just depends on your particular campaign and your market.

This is probably a good place to discuss link tracking on your website. You can purchase software that gets installed onto your website that makes it really quite easy to see the traffic coming to your website and where it originates.

It’s a good idea to do this to work out how much traffic your getting from your various sources (PPC, free Google search, press releases, etc). Refer to the tools I use chapter for specifics on tools and products that can be used to achieve this, they really are quite inexpensive and the power they give you with where your traffic is coming from is very empowering.

The other reason why you want to be checking your ads frequently is that over time you will certainly find some ads performing better than others. You can see at a glance the CTR of your various ads, but also with link tracking it’s possible to work out the ads that are actually making you money (people are actually buying off the ad in higher proportions to other ads).

One thing that you want to be careful of is where you decide to place your ads. With Google you have to be particularly careful about not selecting “entire Google network” (ads show up on websites i.e. Adsense ad as well as normal Google searches.

It’s possible to spend huge dollars and get very little response, and in my testing it’s because of Adsense ad’s. In my opinion I suggest you use only Google search ads as they are more targeted, but at the very least do some testing to make sure you are not wasting money.

At the end of the day it’s not the number of clicks purely you are after, it’s the number of sales, and in my experience I’ve found when my PPC ads are farmed out to Adsense and displayed on websites I got massive clicks (high cost) and that’s about it! Plenty of clicks and no sales is not a good result.

PPC is a fantastic way to get instant traffic to your website, just make sure you are doing your sums and keeping track of your expenditure and of course checking your ads regularly as well as what your competitors are doing and offering.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back with another lesson in a few days..