Learn About Pay Per Click (PPC) Programs

This article appears in our very first Issue Number 1 - February 2008

Some practical tips and info on PPC PROGRAMS

Get immediate results, set your program for any budget, you only pay when the ad is clicked on, not a bad thing. So if your site isn't showing up in the rankings, you still can get some quality traffic.


Google is far and away the biggest of these types of programs, you can set up an AdWord program easily, set a daily budget from $1/day to the sky is the limit. Usually, they whack your credit card to cover the spending on a monthly or other pre-set basis you select. If you spend a dollar a day, your ad will be spread out over the course of the day ( it may appear every 5th time the keyword is entered) rather than be knocked out by 8 am as the budget is used up.
  You can even track what ads are working best, there are codes you can put in your page html that will allow you to determine what ad resulted in an email, for example. MSN and Yahoo have many of the same features, just not near as much traffic, but don't ignore them, they will bring you sales/leads as well, at comparable or slightly less cost.

What you are "buying" here is an ad that appears in specific search "terms or keywords" you select. You will need to determine what "keywords" you want to advertise on.  As an example, if you own a boat rental, you would most likely choose to have your ad appear whenever anyone searches for or types in a searchbox - "florida keys boat rentals". How high your ad appears in these "sponsored results" is a factor of what you are willing to pay. The number 1 placement on top may go for a click cost of $2.50/click, while the number 5 ad way down on the side is only $0.45 cents/click. I have had great results at an economical price by keeping ads in 4th or 5th place. Doing this extends your budget to cover more keywords. The programs all have keyword tools to help you select what keywords you want to advertise on, what you are willing to pay, etc. All PPC programs also feature great stats so you can check how well each keyword is doing, such as page impressions (how many viewers actually looked at the page your ad is on), how many click-thrus you had, etc.
   There is another big bonus here, you may find that certain keywords attract more interest; you can then go back to your website and beef up the content and copy related to those keywords. It just might be that the keyword '"florida keys boat rentals" is getting an average of 150 page impressions per day (how many viewers actually typed in that particular phrase, however, you may see that the keyword term "florida keys fishing boat rentals" is getting 200 impressions per day - this is valuable information for you to know and adapt your site to capitalize on the new keywords for more "free" traffic.  It may help you rank higher in the "long tail" of search terms and it will surely help you appear better to what your viewers are seeking - and that's always a plus.

In addition, Google has a great analytics program (free) to help you track your site visitors.

Writing ad copy is an art, but don't be daunted, keep it simple and direct, since you are paying for the click-thru to your site, keep the copy simple so viewers will know exactly what they are getting if they go to your site. Easy on the superlatives, simply emphasize who you are & what you offer them to solve their needs.

Google and other programs also have ad insertions you can run on your personal or business web site and make some income if those ads are clicked on by your viewers (you will see a lot of these ads in keysweb), in Google's case, it's called AdSense, and we will cover more on this in future newsletters

Have any questions you want answered? Comments on the newsletter?
Email me at donp@keysweb.info or call (305) 743-2965