What Is PPC

PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It is a method of paying for advertising on the Internet search engines.

Users who are searching for the products/services you are selling are in a receptive mode and most likely to convert to paying customers.

How does PPC work?

Taking Google search engine as an example, when a user is searching for "widgets", your PPC ads will be displayed as part of the search engine results. Depending on how compelling your ad copy is, a user can decide to click on the ad for more information.

Upon clicking on your ad, the user is redirected to your website and your account is charged a fee per the click on the ad. The most compelling aspect of PPC advertising is - you only pay per clicks. Or in other words, you only pay for qualified traffic delivered to your website. Rates range anywhere between $0.10 per click to $5 per click, depending on how competitive the market is.

I see several ads listed. Who decides which ads show up first?

Advertisers bid on keywords that their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service.

For example, if you sell red widgets, you would bid on the keyword red widgets, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see the ad, click on it and buy.

Who are the top players in the PPC market?

Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter are considered the tier-1 search engines in the PPC market place. Tier 2 players include Ask, Kanoodle and several other smaller players.

Google, the most popular search engine, controls the largest portion of the market. If you're just starting out, we recommend you focus all efforts on Google AdWords and ignore the other search engines, at least initially.

How do I maximize my earnings from PPC?

1) Relevance is key:

The more time you spend on crafting your keywords to be as relevant to your web site as possible and creating a relevant focused landing page, the higher your conversion rates are going to be.

If you attempt to use a lot of broad keywords, you’re probably going to be disappointed at the performance of your campaign. Google rewards publishers for a high CTR (Click Through Rate). This means having keywords that are extremely relevant to your web site will ultimately lower the price per click you have to pay.

2) Long-tail vs. Short-tail:

If you're selling sofas online, trying to compete on the keyword "sofa" is going to be rather expensive. With thousands of other advertisers competing for the keyword "sofa", you will have to pay top dollars to get listed on the first sponsored results whenever users are searching for sofa.

This approach of going for the most popular keyword is considered "short tail". Most advertisers cannot afford to compete in this market and if you try going for the most popular keywords in your industry you will soon find you're paying more money than the sales you're bringing in. Since branding (losing money to build a brand) is typically not an objective during early stages, use a company that understands the power of "long tail".

Long tail is the art of identifying keyword misspellings, semantically related keywords and niche keyword with a high search volume and low competition.

For example: 687 users are searching for "sofa" every day. 79 advertisers are competing for this keyword. Yet, the keyword "sleeper sofa" is also very popular with 148 searches per day, with only 8 advertisers competing for it. Go after "sleeper sofa" (assuming you're in the business of selling sleeper sofas) and you'll experience lower costs per acquisition (CPA) of new customers.

3) Mask all affiliate and tracking links:

If you are driving traffic to a landing page with affiliate links or use special dynamic codes in your URL (mydomain.com/here.php?id=123), make sure you mask affiliate links.

Users don't like clicking on links that appear to be tracking the sale and Google may penalize you with a higher bid price.

4) Write strong ads:

Each one of your ads should have strong copy. You should write in manner that gives users a call to action. The quality of your ad copy can make or break a campaign.

After the selection of keywords, ad copy is the most important skill to master. SoftwareProjects typically spends a few hours for the creation of a single ad creative (headline + two lines of text). Google helps by automatically serving the ad creatives with the highest CTR (Click Through Ratio), however as is the case with all other advertising channels - it is important to test, test and retest.

5) Opt for Search Engine Results Only:

If the PPC engine you are using has a content network, turn it off! Google allows it and Yahoo allows it.

For most industries, the content network delivers lower conversion rates compared to the search network. The best way to ensure that you get the most targeted traffic for your investment is by only displaying your ads on search engine result pages.