Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine marketing refers to a specific
type of advertising where you pay a search engine every time a
potential customer clicks on your ad. These ads appear on search
engine results pages and sometimes on sites within a search
engine’s network of partners.

How do Pay Per Click Ads Work?

If you look at a search engine results page (SERP) carefully,
you can generally distinguish between search results that are
regular algorithmic or “organic” search listings and PPC search
results which are actually paid advertisements. The latter are
generally listed under the headings “sponsored results” or
“featured listings” and consist of specially designed text,
image or video ads that are triggered to display when your
target keywords are used in a search query. The PPC ads
generally appear on the right hand side and/or at the top of the
search results pages.

To appear in the PPC results, advertisers sign up for the PPC
program of their choice and create short text ads, image ads or
videos describing the product or service available on their site
in a way that will best entice searchers to visit it. During the
program setup, an advertiser will decide which trigger
keywords/phrases they wish to bid on and how much they are
willing to pay when a visitor clicks on their ad. Generally, the
higher the bid, the more likely their ad will show above their
competitor’s.

The Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising

The growth of the search industry worldwide has created a huge
market for paid search advertising and most search engines and
directories now have some type of Pay For Performance or Pay Per
Click (PPC) element to them.

Pay Per Click advertising:

• Enables webmasters to target geographical and niche
markets more precisely via specific search queries.

• Enables webmasters to have their page URL displayed at
the top of the search engine results pages without having
to figure out complex search engine algorithms or pay an
SEO expert to tweak their site for higher rankings.

• Enables webmasters to receive new traffic instantly.

• Enables a website or offline store to be found by
search engine users even if no site exists or the site
is not search engine compatible.

• Enables small businesses to operate globally and
compete on an equal footing with much larger competitors.

• Enables instant sales and more measurable ROI via
conversion tracking.

• Enables more precise visitor pathways to be plotted
(e.g. by leading visitors to specific landing pages).

• Enables campaigns to be switched on and off on-demand
to meet specific needs, search trends or specific events
(e.g. Christmas sale)