Pay Per Click Guide | Pay Per Click Tips and Advice

Free Pay Per Click (PPC) Guide | Pay Per Click Tips

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a very popular form of online advertising used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines. We provide Pay Per Click Services for our clients in Swansea, Carmarthen, Cardiff and throughout South Wales. To find out how we can help you with your PPC campaign please visit our pay per click solutions page for more information. Below is a guide to help you understand Pay Per Click, it provides tips and help on how to start your campaign.

Pay per click is often used in conjunction with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques. Check out our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Solutions and our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Guide on our free website resources page for further information.

Pay Per Click Quick links
>	What is pay per click?
>	How does pay per click work?
>	Choosing your pay per click keywords
>	Writing your pay per click ad's
>	How much does pay per click cost?
>	Pay per click tips

What is pay per click?

Search engines have advertising space at the side and top of their results pages which they sell to businesses. Pay per click allows businesses to create their own keywords which they believe potential customers will search for when looking for a product or service. When a user searches using a keyword that matches the advertiser's keyword, the advertiser's ad may appear on the search results page. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to, and sometimes, above the natural or organic results on the page.

Despite all the hype out there about pay per click management anyone can in fact sign up and start running a pay per click campaign on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Qualigo or Miva. Whether they run it well is another matter! Check out our pay per click solutions page and free pay per click tips below.

How does pay per click work?

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Pay per click effectively allows you to buy your way to the top of the search results page for specific keywords or phrases related to your companies product or service. You are only charged for this advertising when someone actually clicks on your advert, hence the name pay per click. But don't be fooled, you'll be in competition with your product's direct competitors to get to the top of the search page. However, The more you are willing to pay per click and the better your keywords and ad the higher up on the search page your advert will appear.

Choosing your pay per click keywords

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Keywords are the words typed into the search box by users who are looking for specific items. For example, if I was looking for a chinese cookery book I might type in, Chinese Cookery or Chinese Recipes or Chinese Dishes each time I would probably get some of the same websites appearing in the search because their keywords all centre around chinese cooking. Choosing your own keywords can be difficult, make sure you choose them very carefully. If you make them to broad your advert will be clicked on by people who aren't really interested in what you are selling but have been drawn to your ad by misleading keywords. This will inevitably cost you more money as you will not be converting vistors into sales. You need the keywords to draw people who are more likely to buy your product. You should do some research into the main keywords for your industry, take a good look at your product descriptions and a hard look at your competitors see how they do it.

Writing your pay per click ad's

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The most important factor to remember is to try and get some of your actually keywords written into your ad, google gives you extra points if you do. Again take a look at your competitors ad's, but remember you don't just want to emulate them you want to surpass them and get higher up on the rankings than them. So your going to need to think out of the box and be creative with your ads. Remember the aim is not just to get to the top of the search listing because everyone clicks on you, you'll loose money this way. The main aim is to drive the right people to your website who will inevitably buy your product giving you a good return on investment (ROI). Try thinking like a potential customer and what would you search for and click on! Finally, make sure if you advertise special offers or specific items you send the user to the correct pages when they actually click on your ad, failing to do this will use up your clicks and produce no ROI.

With most sponsored links you have a lot of control over your campaign and the major search engines are adding more and more features all the time. For example, using google you can set up your own pay per click amount, total daily click budget, keywords or phrases, marketing ads, track conversions and soon Google is introducing pay per view video and pay per call.

How much does pay per click cost?

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The amount spent on pay per click campaigns varies widely, some companies spend thousands and some hundreds. It all depends on your marketing budget. You should start off with a small budget as you'll probably take time to get your adverts and keywords right. As these change and you get more experienced you can increase your budget.

Pay per click tips

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1)	Get the right keywords - Use words from your website, your product literature, do a search and find out what your competitors are using, brainstorm with colleagues. Make sure you use as many keywords as you can that are relevant to your business, check out Wordtracker, Overture and Google for help with keywords.
2)	Build different ads for different keywords - Make sure you use separate and specific ads for different products, services, keywords or phrases. This will ensure that your advertising is more targeted and lead to more visits being converted into sales.
3)	Send visitors to the correct pages - An obvious one, but make sure your adverts relate to specific items, services or products in specific locations on your website and that you send visitors to the right place.
4)	Track results - You must track your results, most pay per click providers allow you to track your results in order to see how effective your campaigns are. There are also various packages you can buy to monitor campaigns and traffic to your website. Tracking your results could also help you to highlight any kind of click fraud that might be going on. Click fraud is when unscrupulous third parties click on your advert in order to make you pay for the click and to use up your clicks.
5)	Lastly, start small you can always expand later - If you're inexperienced and you throw lots of money at your campaign you'll probably loose most of it, it takes time to get your ad's and keywords right and you'll need to keep changing them all the time to take advantage of market changes. Once you're satisfied you've got the right formula then spend a little more but remember to use other forms of marketing that compliment your PPC campaign.

Well I hope these Pay Per Click tips help. It's not a definitive guide but it should point you in the right direction.

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