Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing - Making It Work For You

PPC (PPC) advertising is simply advertising your website through the use of the search engines' “sponsored listings”. When using PPC you bid on keywords or keyword phrases that your targeted prospects may use to find whatever your website offers. Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) for instance, only considers the bid amount in ranking a site. The most popular PPC Google Adwords uses bid value and your success (click through) rate.

1st Thing 1st: Testing Your Market Place...

If you've never attempted a pay per click campaign, a good idea is to start with a small budget in order to test your market place. The key is to find what your potential customers are searching for. There's no better place to test that out by going to Google. Google allows you to pay for a small ad off to the right within a small green box.

If you've never seen these small ads within Google, go to: www.google.com

If you type in "real estate" in google's search engine, you will no doubt get the regular results on the left, as well as a list of small ads off to the right within small green boxes. Underneath the small green boxes, you will see a link that says; "Place your ad here". Another route is by going here: http://adwords.google.com. Please do yourself a favor and dedicate yourself to a small ad within Google in order to learn the ropes and utilize an inexpensive way to some fabulous research information.

You'll want to determine how much you are willing to pay for 1 month. It could be as low as $20, but I recommend starting out with $50.00 to start your 1st campaign.

Try coming up with an ad that's catchy and to the point!

Ex. Medical Services

Get A FREE Consultation!
Medical Services in Chicago
http://www.medicalservicesmedicalservices.com

After that you need to predetermine the "Key Phrases" you think that your potential clients are typing in Google when it comes to your product or service.

EX. "Medical Services".

When Google asks you to enter your key words or phrases, you might want to try entering something like this....

1. Medical Services
2. Doctors in Chicago
3. Health Services
4. Health Services in Chicago

Try using as many as you can think of... Google will later show you the most popular key phrases compared to the key phrases that don't work at all.

Please Note: I am using Goggles Adwords as an example because of how easy it is to log into your account at any time and check to see how many people have seen your ad and how many people have actually clicked on your ad to visit your site.

Once you've entered your "Key Words & Phrases" now you're going to be asked to enter the maximum amount of money you want to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

Ex. If someone searches "Legal Services", you enter that you will pay a maximum of 0.07cts per click.

This will give you a pre-qualified potential client for 0.07cts.

Let's move on a little now..

Assuming that your ad is all set up and already on the way. Now you can return to Google, log into your account and see how your "Key Words & Key Phrases" are performing with your campaign.

It might read something like this....

1. Medical Services ---------- Ad was viewed 4000 times ------------- Clicked on 200 times.
2. Doctors in Chicago ----- Ad was viewed 9120 times ------------- Clicked on 18 times.

Now you will get a much better understanding at what your potential clients are searching for and what they are actually clicking on.

KEY NOTE: Try to experiment with this as much as possible and as quickly as possible so you can really begin your Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing.

Are you ready???

Now that you have your predetermined key words of phrases you want to use, you can now start looking into pay per click campaigns. Per per click search engines are a little different compared to the Google Adwords because instead of getting a small ad off to the right you are now going to bid on actual search engine placements.

1st thing you want to do is to visit a pay per click search engine. For instance, you might want to visit: www.goto.com or www.lycos.com or any other pay per click search engine online and test your new key words to determine what the top placements are paying for those spots.

Ex. Let's use "Medical Services" again, type in that phrase in any ppc search engine and look at the top placements! It should read something like this...

5) Medical Services Medical Services.com
Our firm is dedicated to helping you attain your desired health status.
Cost: $0.10

The key is to look at the cost. The cost is what "Medical Services.com" was willing to pay for the 5th search engine placement.

And there you go, you now have the basic knowledge to plan out a pay per click campaign. Always remember to lay out how much you are willing to commit to your search engine campaign and keep yourself to it. Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends. Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.