Search Engine Marketing: SEO And PPC, Part 2
Another very effective way to increase the amount of traffic to your website that is from your target market is called Pay per Click advertising (PPC). This type of marketing is very cost effective. It involves placing an advertisement on a search engine or another website. As visitors read it and take an interest in the advertisement, they will click the link. You only pay the host a set amount for each time the link is clicked.
The more popular and in demand your keyword or keywords are when it comes to PPC advertising the more you will pay for each click. Many of the main search engines have you bid on the maximum amount you are willing to pay for these keywords. Make sure you carefully analyze you budget before you decide to pay too much for these types of advertisements.
The PPC concept has become a huge tool on many of the large search engines. If you take a look at the right hand side when you enter keywords or keyword phrases into a search engine you will see a list of advertisements. They are ranked by relevance to the search criteria of the user rather than by the amount of money the PPC will earn the search engine. This is because the search engines have to provide the best information to the users to keep them from turning to other search engines for their needs. As a result the search engine will reward those PPC ads that match what the visitor is really after.
To get the most out of PPC advertising it is important you have your advertisements set up on quality sites and search engines. The more of them you have available the more traffic you will get. However, to keep the cost down for the advertising you want to make sure you are getting clicks from potential buyers in your target market. Make sure you have analysis tools in place so you can track the number of clicks from a particular source as well as the conversion rate coming from that source.