Pay Per Click

When you do a search on Google MSN or Yahoo, you’ll notice “sponsored links” appearing on the right side of the page, and frequently at the top of the page as well. Those are called, pay per click ads, and you are only charged When someone clicks on the actual advertisement and not when it is displayed.

Whether you appear at the top or at the bottom used to be based simply on how much you were willing to pay. If you need more than the next advertiser than your ad appeared above theirs. It was simple.

Today, the search engines use a number of factors to determine where your ad will be placed, including the relevancy of your landing page to the phrase for which your bidding on, as well as how many people actually click on your ad, called the “click throuhgh rate”

If you have a poorly written ad, then it’s not going to entice a user to click on it, and therefore the search engines don’t want to show it because you are costing them revenue.

By the same token, if you are bidding on a phrase for which your landing page has no content, then that provides a poor visitor experience, and a user is likely to be dissatisfied with the ad that they clicked on from the search engine.

Managing an effective pay per click campaign can be very time consuming if done correctly. Since it’s a learned skill, many business owners have set up campaigns incorrectly, and end up believing that this form of advertising is a waste of money.

Since one out of three searches still end up clicking a paid advertisement, I believe that any good search campaign should involve a combination of both paid and organic efforts, assuming the budget allows.

Fees for PPC management

Depending on your monthly budget,  the fees for bid management, keyword research, landing page creation, and A/B split testing can range  from 5% to 15% of what you’re spending.

If you are on a geographically local pay per click campaign, there are additional options that even include tracking of your inbound phone calls from your paid advertisements.