Pay Per Click marketing is an internet based advertising model where the advertiser places an advert on the website of the host and only pays for the advert whenever a visitor clicks on the advert. The advertiser is charged a fixed fee payable to the search engine when someone clicks on the advert and goes to the advertiser’s website. The advertiser usually bids on a keyword and then fixes a rate that will be paid to the search engine. When a search is conducted for that keyword or phrase (or a related term) on the search engine, two kinds of results appear; organic results which are not paid for but appear by virtue of the amount of optimization that has been put in for them. Sponsored ads also appear on the right hand side of result page and these are actually the ads paid for by the advertiser. This internet-based advertising model has Google, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter as the three largest providers.
Although Google is the provider most associated with PPC, the initial concept was provided by Jeffrey Brewer in February 1998 while the actual credit for the PPC model is generally given to Bill Gross, founder of Idealab and Goto.com. Google’s model of Search Engine advertising, AdWords was introduced in October 2000 while PPC went into operation fully in 2002.
As mentioned above, there is a rate that is determined to be paid by the advertiser to the search engine. This amount is known as Cost Per Click. The CPC could either be flat rate or bid based. The former involves the determination of a fixed amount that will be paid out by the advertiser while latter is determined via a bid for the keyword depending on its value.
Pay Per Click advertising is quite technical though it is easy to understand the basics and work with it. There are however, what can be regarded as best practices in PPC. These will help you get the best out of your PPC efforts.
i. Identification: The crux of any PPC campaign are the keywords that are meant to drive the traffic. You need to identify those traffic pulling keywords as well as determine the potential sources of traffic.
ii. Creation: After identifying the targeted keywords and sources, you need to create keywords groups that are closely related to those that you have selected.
iii. Designation: There are some keywords that should not be associated with the product or service that you are promoting. You need to designate those keywords so that your products/service do not feature when search based on those words are conducted.
iv. Creation: You need to create the Ad Text and then landing pages that relate and are relevant to your Ad Group’s keywords.
v. Constant Evaluation: Daily monitoring and repetition of some of these steps is necessary for the success of your PPC campaign.
The result of following these steps is the rise in the Click Through Rate (CTR) of your ad, lower costs pertaining to your bids or fixed rates as well as improved quality of traffic to your site.
