SEO 101 – #7 – PPC (Pay Per Click) Marketing
SEO can be a time-consuming process and it often takes a little while to show up in the search engines for a keyword you want to rank well for. That’s why many companies turn to PPC or Pay Per Click marketing in order to start to immediately get traffic to their websites. Unlike SEO which can get you on the first page of a search engine at no cost PPC does cost money. How much money is entirely up to you.
Transcript
Many website owners when first starting out want to have an immediate way to advertise their business and get customers. SEO while effective does take some time to move up to the top positions in a search engine, especially if you’re using some of the more competitive keywords on your web pages. PPC or Pay-Per-Click is one of those ways that can work very well if you’re in a hurry to start getting traffic to your site but, unlike SEO, PPC does cost your business money.
So, let’s talk about what PPC is and why you would want to use it.
The most recognizable PPC program is Google’s AdWords program. These are the listings that you see on a search engine results page at the top and to the right of the page. All of these companies and individuals are paying Google each time someone clicks on one of their ads.
Generally, using SEO, you can get your site listed on the first page of Google with relative ease if the keywords you’re focusing on are not very competitive. Where PPC can be advantageous for your site is because it allows you to show your advertisement to those who would not otherwise see your business listing for more competitive keywords.
If you remember, when you first start optimizing your site, you use less competitive keywords to start getting top positions in the search engines. As you continue to add words to your list and create pages, you’ll eventually work your way up to those more competitive terms, but it takes a long time to take over one of the top positions in a search engine especially if you’re up against millions of competitors.
PPC can help alleviate part of that problem because it allows your site to show as an advertisement for those more competitive keywords.
This is why many businesses turn to PPC marketing. They know that even though they aren’t yet at the top of the free or natural listings in Google, they can still get a piece of the traffic searching on that competitive keyword by simply running an advertisement using Google’s AdWords program.
Getting Started with PPC Advertising
Now Google is not the only PPC advertiser available, there’s also Yahoo!’s sponsored search as well as Microsoft’s AdCenter but for the sake of this presentation we’ll focus on Google since it receives the most traffic and is widely used by a vast majority of companies.
How PPC Works
When you sign up with a PPC program, you write an ad, tell Google what keywords you want that ad to show up for and then tell Google how much you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks on that ad.
Now granted this is a very simplified version of how PPC works but in a nutshell, these are the basic steps you follow.
Once you’ve set up a PPC campaign, each time someone searches within Google on a keyword you’ve bid on, that is, told Google you want your ad to show up for, then your ad will be displayed to this web searcher.
Each time someone clicked on your ad to go to your site to get more information, Google would charge you a fee for that click. Now, just like within the organic or natural listings where there are lots of competitors, this is often the case when it comes to PPC marketing as well. The more competitive the keyword you want to show up for, the more likely you’ll have to bid more per click in order to get your ad seen on the first page of Google within the sponsored links section.
It’s important to note that just because you may be the highest bidder on a keyword to show up in the first position of Google’s PPC listings, doesn’t mean that you’ll always have that spot.
Google takes into account a variety of factors even where the paid listings are concerned. Factors such as how well your ad is doing determined by CTR or click through rate which means how many people click on your ad compared to how many people see your ad, what the quality of your keywords are, and more.
The reason behind this is that Google wants to be certain that they are providing the highest quality of information to their site visitors and this includes the ads that they show.
As you can tell, using SEO to get free listings in the natural area of Google can save you a bundle of money in advertising costs. But it takes time to get there and to get seen in the search engines quickly, PPC is the best way to start getting traffic to your site.
However, I don’t suggest that you jump right in and start using PPC advertising without knowing what you’re doing first. It can get very expensive very quickly. I suggest that if you do decide to get into PPC marketing, you first read through the AdWords learning center at Google located at http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter.
So now that we’ve covered some basic SEO techniques as well as a quick way to start driving traffic to your site, let’s talk a little bit about Black hat SEO which are those techniques that the search engines consider “illegal” to use.
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