For many of you, I’ll be preaching to the choir. For the rest of you, let’s talk pay-per-click.
For several years now, we have been saying in meetings, seminars and on our Web site, that for all practical purposes, there are two ways to get your Web site found when people use a search engine. One you can influence, and one you can control. The former is through results in the organic or so-called free listings in search results of the major search sites. The latter is to use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Pay-per-click, or PPC, is simply what is says. You pay the search engine company when someone clicks on your ad, landing on the page of your choice on your Web site. Notice I said landing on the page of your choice. You control what your ad says, you control your ad placement (more-or-less), you control what your visitor sees when they land on your site, and you control what it costs.
Oh, and you can easily track the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing campaigns. Not many other types of advertising offer all of those elements.
PPC is also a way to jump-start a new or redesigned site. You can be proximately displayed for your most important search terms long before your pages are indexed and start to show in organic listings.
We recommend starting with a Google Ads campaign and then a similar campaign using Yahoo! Search Ads. There are others (including Microsoft Advertising) that offer PPC. Because of audience reach, we believe it is a good idea to get your feet wet with Google Ads first.
There is much that goes into a successful pay-per-click campaign, and we’ll discuss in more detail later. You do need to embrace the following. It is imperative that:
- Your search terms (keywords) need to be researched and chosen carefully.
- Your ads need to be well-written and include your keywords.
- Your landing pages need to be well-written and include your keywords.
Of course, that just scratches the surface, but you get the idea. It is also imperative that you chose a firm with experience and expertise to manage your pay-per-click campaigns.
Pay-per-click, it’s not just advertising. It’s marketing.