Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click marketing allows any business to get listed on the first page of all the major search engines almost immediately and for any key phrase, as long as you have the money.

The search engines do this by auctioning off certain areas of the search results page. The pay per click system allows website owners to bid for the top positions based on how much they are prepared to pay for each visitor the advertisement generates. To gain the top position you need a combination of a high bid and a excellent quality advertisement that takes visitors to a page that is relevant to the key phrase you are bidding for.

In order to ensure that you do not lose your shirt in the first few weeks the search engines add in some fail safes. These include allowing you to set a maximum to what you a willing to spend for each click, a total budget per day and even allow you to limit your advertising to specific times of the day and areas of the world, right down to your local town.

Pay per click marketing allows you to test the effectiveness of specific key phrases. By setting a budget, ensuring that those who click your ad go to a relevant page and making sure that an analytics package monitors the visitors behaviour when they arrive you can quickly build up a long list of effective key phrases to target as part of a longer term SEO strategy.