PPC Overview
Pay Per Click (PPC) accounts allow you to "pay" to have your advertisement listed on the major search engines. These advertisements appear on the search results pages as Paid Listings, Sponsored Links, Sponsored Listings, and Featured Listings.
The rank or relative positioning of the PPC ads is based upon an open bidding system. In this system, advertisers bid to have their advertisement listed. The bid amount is paid by the advertiser when there is a visitor as the result of this link, hence this is also known as a "cost per click" program. These terms are sometimes used interchangable to describe PPC even though PPC refers to a payment method and CPC refers to the cost involved in each payment.
In general, the higher the bid, the closer to the top of the Paid Listings results their advertisement will be placed. In essence, your ranking is based upon your bid relative to other bids that are madi in an auction-like bidding system. Therefore, if your advertisement has the highest corresponding bid, your advertisement will appear at top of the Paid Listings results page. If your bid is the second highest, then your advertisement will appear second, and so forth.
For the major PPC engines, the top one to four bid positions are the ones that receive the highest amount of distribution across their search partner networks, and hence receive the greatest exposure and click traffic. Our advice is to position your bids to be position three with the best targeted title and text possible. The fee is a little lower (usually) and the click rate remains quite high.
When search engine visitors click in your PPC ad, they are sent to a page on your web site. As an advertiser, you are only charged when a visitor clicks on your advertisement to visit your web site.
Typically minimum bids start at $0.05 and up to $50.00, although few bids ever reach that higher level. For most advertisers bidding averages between $0.25 and $2 per click (visitor).
The majority of advertisers who employ both SEO and PPC typically report very positive results, although a well-executed SEO plan over time can deliver more visitors at a lower overall cost than a PPC plan.
Unlike banner ads that often display pictures and graphics, these advertisements are textual and appear in the search results like a search engine does.
Here is an example advertisement if you sold widgets.
Shop for Widgets
Over 2,000 kinds of widgets in stock. Hundreds of widgets for home and work including western and exotic widgets. Shop online. Secure ordering. Same day shipping.
www.widgets-r-us.comPPC offers you the ability to control how much you want to spend and where you want to be ranked. And, perhaps best of all, you only pay for actual traffic which click through to your web site!
It is estimated there are over 300 Pay Per Click Programs, but really the top 10 have about a 90% reach across the Internet.
Similar to search engine optimization, designing, developing, and professionally managing a PPC account takes time and labor.
Discussion of PPC Management Costs.
Learn about our Professional PPC Account Management Services.
To reduce the potential of fraud by people who simply click on your advertisement, we've partnered with Who's Clicking Who, a CPC fraud detection service. This service tracks and reports users that repeatedly visit your site from the major PPC sites. If the service believes there may be fraud, a pop-up screen is presented to that user as a warning. The service then logs this information and creates a report that you can present to the PPC sites and request a refund.
This service may be very valuable if you are paying for PPC traffic and suspect click fraud by competitors. In addition, the service may be able to detect fraud even if you do not suspect that you are a victim.
We have partnered with some colleagues to jointly offer some advanced services -- two heads are better than one. In particular, we have joint-ventured several times with Alchemist Media SEO and CPC Auditing to solve some specific client issues. Do not be too surprised that if you call us for services that you end up with us both performing your project, and visa-versa.
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