The Beginner’s Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines

13 October 2009

Have you thought about starting a pay-per click campaign recently? Truthfully, this is something that can be daunting, even for those with computer knowledge. If you were to go check online, right this second, looking for PPC information, you would be bombarded with pages and pages of complicated rhetoric.

Since you’re a beginner, the professional-style instruction manual is more than a tad ironic. Luckily, a beginner’s guide to PPC can be short and sweet.

First, let’s go over how these search engines work. Say you’re surfing around, looking for a business that sells how-to gardening books. You use an engine like Google, unaware of their ranking and pay system. What you’re most interested in is that top result. To you, that result is reputable - it’s on the first page of Google.

However, you only found X site because of the terms you entered. If you typed in “How-to gardening books,” your result would be different than had you typed in, “Gardening do-it-yourself guide.” It’s all about the terms: keywords and key phrases.

With PPC, what you’re doing is bidding on certain words and terms. You want the most-searched terms in order to give your site - you, as the entrepreneur - the best placement, and therefore the best shot at traffic and conversion. Google is just one of a few search engines you can work with here.

The benefits are vast. For example, if you were to traffic your site through conventional means, it could take months to earn a high placement. With PPC search engines, where you’re paying an engine for the placement, you will be ranked based on your bid.

The most important aspect to understand is how each individual search engine works. They all operate using the same basic principles, but some charge and rank differently.

After you’ve found the search engine you want to use (or multiple engines), you will need to do some keyword research. Find out which words and terms are used the most. However, they need to be representative of the product or service you’re selling. After this, bid on the words for placement.

There’s a science to bidding. For example, if you bid too low, you may never receive enough traffic to create conversion for a profit. If you bid too high, you may run out of funds before profiting. You will have to choose the best cost-per-click scenario for you; one that generates a healthy return on investment (ROI).

Unfortunately, there are really no tricks here. Your business will be unique to you, and you will have to find the happy medium through trial and error. A good suggestion is to start relatively small, see how your traffic is doing, and adjust your bidding as necessary to boost results.

You will have to write a message after bidding on keywords. This is the text displayed to visitors as they search terms. If your ad passes staff approval, it will be immediately listed.

Two important things to remember: One, make sure you research the particular engine(s) you wish to use. Always research the best keywords for that particular engine and bid accordingly. Two, be sure to take all your costs into consideration. With PPC, it’s all about investing money to make money. The ROI is where Net millionaires are made.

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