Running a Profitable PPC Campaign

Written by Mondo Humboldt Saturday, 23 April 2011 05:38

Pay per click marketing is an advertising model used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines where advertisers only pay when an internet surfer clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Businesses use pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising to generate sales to their target market from their web site.

Pay per click marketing is an advertising model used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines where advertisers only pay when an internet surfer clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Businesses use pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising to generate sales to their target market from their web site.

Here's one of the ways PPC works, business design a short ad that links to their website when it's clicked on. The publisher makes sure the ad pops up when a certain keyword, from a predetermined list made by the advertiser, is input into a search engine. Then the advertiser pays a fee every time someone clicks on the ad after searching for a particular word or phrase. This allows for advertisers to pay for better visibility on a search engine results page regardless of where they naturally rank in search engines when certain keywords are entered. The paid search results are usually shown as the top few ads on the search results page as well as the ads shown down the left side of the page. The goal of PPC is to get the most conversions for the lowest price. There are 2 ways to do this: bid based PPC and flat rate PPC.

Bid-based PPC management is where businesses who are competing for the higher positioning of their ad amongst the ads of their competitors who are targeting the same keywords bid on how much they will pay per click on their ad. The higher the bid, the higher the position. However, the exact position is also determined by the quality of the ad and the web page it links to. The advertisers tell the publisher the maximum amount they will pay for their ad every time it's clicked on after a certain keyword is entered. Then the publisher determines which position to publish the ad after factoring in the other bids and the quality score of their websites. This is constantly being adjusted as more advertiser bid or change their bids. The advertisers only pay the rate based on the rate which the keyword went for. These rates are the minimal rates and the advertiser can certainly pay more to get more exposure.

Flat rate PPC marketing consists of the publisher and the advertiser agreeing on a fixed amount in advance. The advertisers pay the same fixed fee every time their ad is clicked on. Flat rate PPC is usually found on content sites. Some publishers like to use flat rate PPC over bid based PPC to avoid the constant adjusting of pricing in very little amounts by advertisers who are trying to win a bid and pay slightly less per click.

PPC management is a more results-oriented and interactive way of advertising instead of just placing a banner advertisement on a website. One of the benefits of PPC is being able to track the visitor's behavior. Being able to obtain this type of information about your visitors means you will know what tools you need to make your site perform better. Also, is very important to consider the structure of your site when you are planning a PPC campaign. Since you are paying for your visitors to arrive you should make sure the landing pages are search engine friendly and easy to navigate. To reduce your cost per click make sure you use targeted advertising. These are all things to help you direct qualified traffic to your website in order to make sure your PPC campaign is operating at it's peak performance.

Using pay-per-click management in search engines is a highly cost-effective way to attract cheap, targeted website traffic. However, there are hundreds of pay-per-click search engines you can buy traffic from. To learn more about sponsored ads, pay-per-click, the costs, and whether it is a viable option for your website, contact the folks at Big Squid Interactive for a free consultation.