Pay-Per-Click Information

Definition of the Pay-Per-Click Process and PPC Search Engines

Pay-per-click (PPC) search engines are those that offer the marketing option called "pay-per-click" to users. PPC is defined as the guaranteed placement of a small "ad" on the search results page for a specific keyword or keywords in return for a specified payment, but ONLY when a visitor clicks on that ad. The advertiser pays nothing to appear on the results page; they only pay the amount they have agreed to (or bid for) when someone actually clicks on their ad and is taken to their landing page; therefore, the term "pay per click".

A PPC listing on a search engine results page typically consists of a title, which usually is your website's name or perhaps a short heading (around 50 characters maximum) and also a short (usually no more than 200 characters long) description of your service or some promotional wording. Some PPC search engines strictly control the text that can appear in the listing, while others are more open to using the advertiser's own text.

Basic Steps to Constructing a Pay-Per-Click Campaign

The first step in putting together a PPC campaign is to decide your budget and what level of risk you are willing to take, for both will affect which PPC search engine you ultimately choose. As one would expect, the larger properties are less risky endeavors, since they already have excellent market coverage and tend to offer a lot of assistance to their users, but they also are the most expensive in terms of the amount of money you must spend to acquire a top ranking based on a specific keyword or group of keywords.

There are plenty of free, independent tools available to help you in your research of keywords which will tell you the current bid price for certain words or phrases on the different PPC search engines.

Once you have decided upon which PPC search engine you are going to use, have put together your ad, and decided the keywords you wish to have your ad appear under, register with the search engine, fill out the necessary information to open an account, and then begin the bidding process for the keywords you have decided upon. A good web service provider may offer this as part of their service. Be sure to mention that you want your PPC campaign managed by an experienced professional.

When you first register your keywords with the search engine you have chosen (and some large businesses will have upwards of thousands of keywords they use), you will also specify the maximum amount you are willing to bid for those keywords. The price of a keyword can range anywhere from 1 cent to $10 or more, depending upon its popularity as a search term and the search engine itself.

Key Tips to Keep in Mind While Running a Pay-Per-Click Campaign

There is sometimes fierce competition for specific keyword(s) on a given PPC search engine. Most PPC search engines automate the bidding process for you (stopping of course when they reach the maximum bid you have indicated), but personal involvement and the judicious use of third-party tools by the user is advisable to ensure that the tracking mechanisms built into the search engine's control panel are in sync with what is actually happening.

The business that bids the highest amount of money for a specific keyword will be ranked first in the PPC results, the second-highest bidder will be ranked second, etc. Typically, PPC search engines limit the number of PPC ads on a results page to less than 10, and research has shown that unless you are in the first 3 or 4 of the PPC ads, you are much less likely to be investigated by visitors.

Because the competition is so fierce in this market right now, most PPC search engines do not require a minimum amount of money be invested in a campaign - in fact, some will even give you a nominal amount of money to begin your campaign with. Some may require a deposit of a small amount (in the neighborhood of $10 to $25), but this money is then applied to your account.

Be sure to check out the fine print in the agreement to be clear on minimums required, deposits required, what happens if you decide to cancel your campaign. Be prepared to spend a fair amount of time monitoring your campaign in the beginning.

Is a Pay-Per-Click Campaign the Right Investment for my Business?

Because of the fierce competition in the PPCSE market, it can be relatively easy and inexpensive to give PPC a try. PPC search engines offer varying amounts of support and some are easier to use than others, but the opportunity to ensure placement of your ad without necessarily investing a large amount of your marketing dollar, makes PPC an extremely attractive option and one that few business owners should completely ignore as a potential marketing technique.

To help you, a multitude of tools have been developed to automatically monitor and bid, track your Return on Investment (ROI), craft your PPC ads, and help you choose alternate keywords that may be just as effective but cost much less on the particular PPC search engine they wish to use.

Although there are hundreds of PPC search engines on the Internet, there is a core group of 5 to 10 PPC search engines that because of size, brand name, and reputation are the preferred choices for most PPC ad campaigns. These major properties are now experimenting with many variations on the basic premise, including the ability to use PPC on a local basis, extending it from keywords to context and behavior of users, offering their versions of tools that help make the process easier especially for the novice, and decreasing the amount of time it takes to see results from your campaign from hours to minutes.

Once you've mastered the basics of PPC and have learned more about the options, tools, and search engines that offer this form of marketing, you will be in a position to fine tune your campaigns and perhaps try some of the niche-market PPC search engines, which offer lower keyword costs and may be more suited to your product/service.

Keep in mind that even companies that are experienced PPC users struggle with the intricacies of the techniques needed to judge which PPC search engine to use and how best to play the bidding game.

And so we come to the bottom line - PPC sounds like a great option, but what does it really cost and is it worth it for my specific business? Each campaign is different, depending upon the bid amounts, number of actual click throughs and the Return on Investment (ROI) generated.

Our main goal at PPC Universe is to help educate you to make the best choices by offering free, totally unbiased reviews of PPC search engines and the tools designed to be used in conjunction with the PPC process, both to help you with understanding the process and to evaluate its usefulness to you as a marketing tool.

Now that we’ve explained the process a little more in depth, take a look at our reviews and use the information we have provided to help you plan a campaign or fine tune your current campaigns to get the most from the marketing dollars you choose to place in what we consider to be a very competitive, efficient, and effective means of Internet marketing – the pay-per-click search engine marketplace.

Pay-Per-Click Glossary

Helpful terms you should be familiar with:

Auto Bidding - A means by which your bid on a given keyword is automatically changed by 1 cent if your nearest competitor changes their bid. Although you set a maximum bid, you may pay less if auto budding works in your favor.

Backlink - Backlinks are links found on other websites that will take the user to your website.

Bid - See Keyword Bid.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) - Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Cost Per Click (CPC) - The amount you pay for each click on your ad. Some people use this term interchangeably with the pay-per-click cost.

Conversion Rate - The percentage of visitors who actually are converted into purchasers of your product/service. It is calculated as the number of click-throughs divided by the number of actual conversions, and the higher the conversion rate, the more effective your campaign has been.

CPM - The cost for 1,000 impressions or ad views.

Hits - The number of times a particular web page is viewed. The number of hits is independent of whether or not it is the same user visiting the same page more than once. Sometimes also referred to as visits.

Impression - Also known as ad views. "Impression" is the term used to describe the viewing of an ad by the user's browser.

Keyword - Keywords are the terms that users enter into the search box of a search engine. Consequently, these are the word(s) you should choose to use in your pay-per-click campaign. Depending upon the company and the size of the campaign, the number of keywords used can range from a few to thousands.

Keyword Bid - The maximum amount of money you are prepared to pay for every time that a user clicks on your pay-per-click ad on a search engine and thus visits your website.

Link Building Campaign - An process of connecting with businesses conducting a type of business comparable to yours in order to exchange links and thus move up both in natural search engine robot crawls as well as in pay-per-click campaigns.

Link Farming - A practice considered unethical by most. It involves a web site linking to others to which it has no connection in terms of the type of business they do, but rather solely for the purpose of increase page ranking in search engines that consider the number of links in their decision on ranking pages.

Minimum Bid - The minimum amount set up a pay-per-click search engine for either a specific keyword, type of keyword, or the overall minimum bid acceptable for any keyword.

Page Rank (PR) - The position that your website has on a given search engine. Often seen abbreviated, as in "I've got a PR6 in Google", meaning you are ranked as number 6 under Goggle for a certain keyword.

Page Views - The number of times a web page is viewed.

Paid Inclusion - A sales technique currently under review by many search engines, paid inclusion is where an advertiser arranges to pay a search engine a certain amount of money to ensure a ranking in their search results, although most search engines do not guarantee the ranking will be among the highest. Many search engines have either stopped this type of plan or are in the process of considering removing this option for online marketing.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising - A method of marketing where a business pays a certain amount of money each time someone clicks on a small ad on a search engine's results page or homepage and is then taken to the advertiser's website.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine (PPCSE) - A search engine that offers pay-per-click advertising as an option to businesses.

Pay Per Performance™ Web Search - Overture's first PPC product which debuted in 1998.

Reciprocal Linking - A practice by which one site links to other (and vice versa) because they offer complementary products, are an affiliated site, etc. The more links one has to other sites usually results in a higher page ranking in search engines, as long as the links are not perceived as link farming.

Return on Investment (ROI) - The bottom line; that is, the amount of money you make as compared to the amount of money you have spent. Many tools exist to help you calculate your ROI for whatever undertaking, including pay-per-click campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - A variety of techniques whereby you change the content, keywords, meta tags, placement of text versus code, etc., in order to enhance your ranking in a search engine.

Unique Visitor - The number of people who visit a web page. If one person visits the same web page 3 or 4 times, the statistics will list them as 1 unique visitor only. See Hits.

Visits - See Hits.