Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising means that you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement. You do not pay each time your ad is displayed. PPC advertising can be an effective form of advertising because you are paying based on the performance of the ad. If no one clicks on your ad, then you do not pay.

The idea was formed in 1998 by GoTo, a search engine portal. PPC has now become one of the main forms of advertising online. This has created some very competitive marketplaces and can be expensive. Some marketplaces are very inexpensive and can be very profitable.

The Benefits of Pay-Per-Click
There are many reasons and benefits for using PPC advertising. Here are some of the benefits -

• Get instant traffic to your website
• Create test campaigns
• No waiting to be listed in the organic search listing
• Allows (smart) small players to compete against the big guys
• Spending controlled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis
• Anyone can setup a PPC advertising campaign in Google, Yahoo or Bing.
• Continually test landing pages, ads, keywords before putting more resources into the campaign

The great thing about PPC is you control what you spend. For popular keywords, the budget can be limitless. Industries such as insurance and car rentals can be very expensive and push the smaller players out.Some keywords can be very profitable resulting in high conversion rates. Having a great ad, the right keywords and sending the visitor to the correct page can make all the difference for a successful campaign.

I have personally seen websites that were previously getting very little traffic and poor sales results – to becoming an overnight success because the world did not know they existed. Once the right traffic was sent to the site, the website started producing great profits and operations expanded.

Always Testing
Pay-Per-Click campaigns allow you to continually do testing. You can run a PPC campaign for one day or even an hour and see how people respond to the ad that you have created, the landing page that you are sending the traffic to and track the keywords that you are targeting.

You can do split testing where you run two ads in rotation and see which one runs best. You cannot do that with normal print media.

Tracking Results = Return on Investment
Through the use of Google Analytics and similar programs, you can track all online transactions. You can see the following information -

• The exact keywords that the visitors enter to find your ad
• The pages they view when they visit your site
• The cost of the ad
• The conversion rates resulting in working out the ROI

Why Pay-Per-Click is Important
If you are not advertising your services to your potential customers, your competition will and they will get your new customers. Can you afford to lose customers?Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts will be wasted if you target the wrong keywords. PPC allows you to fast track your SEO by testing the keywords before you even attempt to optimize your site for those keywords.

Warning – You Can Lose Money
Google and Yahoo are targeting small businesses to start advertising online by offering free credit. Please be educated before you setup your own campaigns. If you do not know what you are doing, you will lose money. I have seen business with one keyword in their keyword list, poorly written ads and sending visitors to the wrong page. I have even seen ads sending visitors to broken pages!

Professional Pay-Per-Click Consultants
If you do not know what you are doing, I recommend using a professional service. They will charge for their service but in the long run, it can save you thousands of dollars and a lot of time.

A professional Pay-Per-Click consultant will -

• Research for the best keywords
• Enter negative keywords
• Create professional copy for your ad
• Pre-qualify visitors so you are only getting buyers to your website
• Point visitors to the correct pages on your website
• Setup multiple campaigns
• Optimize your ads to have a strong rating
• Continually test keywords, ads and the land pages
• Control the spending of your campaign
• Analysis the existing competition
• Generate reports based on the performance of your campaigns
• Answer any questions you may have

Conclusion
Pay-Per-Click advertising can be used in many ways to help your website get more sales and become more profitable.

Please visit my blog – Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert is to help businesses succeed on the Internet. You could be setting up your first website or looking at increasing sales on your current website. Check out my website – http://nigelburke.com.