Pay Per Click Advertising - A Beginner's Guide

What is PPC advertising?

PPC is paid for online advertising. You choose the keywords or phrases you want to be found for and then pay a pre-determined amount every time someone clicks on your advert and goes through to your website.

On the Google search results, PPC adverts usually appear on the right hand side of the screen as 'sponsored links' but also sometimes feature directly above the organic listings.

A quick guide to getting started

• Choosing keywords and phrases

The first step to setting up your PPC campaign is to decide which keywords and phrases you want to bid on. There may be some obvious ones but a lot will depend on the average cost per click (CPC). For example if you're a mortgage advisor in London it may be obvious to bid on 'mortgage advisor London' but this particular phrase will cost around £4.41 per click for positions 1-3 on Google AdWords which may be more than you want to pay. You can find the cost per click information for each keyword or phrase using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

• Setting your budget

One of the most appealing aspects of PPC advertising is the fact you can set your own budget. So if you don't want to spend any more than £10 per day you simply set that as your daily limit when setting up your campaigns.

• Writing your adverts

As a general rule of thumb you should write at least two advert variations for each group of keywords and phrases so you can measure which works best. You'll also need to write an appealing subject line, get your USP across and have a strong call to action in your advert text.

• Monitoring your results

It's important to keep checking your PPC campaign regularly in order to get the best results. For example you may want to change your advert text to try and get more clicks through to your site or increase your bid for a certain keyword or phrase.
Remember that your competitors will more than likely be tweaking their campaigns as they go too so you need to be on the ball.

The role of PPC in your marketing strategy

PPC advertising doesn't suit every type of business and as it's gotten more competitive, some of the cost per click prices have made it too expensive.

However, if you're a local business that's just launched a website and need to get exposure and sales then it can be a cost-effective way of getting noticed online.

As will all forms of advertising you should try it out and evaluate your results to see if it's delivering a positive ROI.

Jamie Fairbairn is experienced in local search & online marketing and has worked with many small business owners to improve their search engine rankings over the past 10 years.

Jamie's blog can be found at [http://www.searchblogger.co.uk]

For more pay per click advertising tips see [http://www.searchblogger.co.uk/category/pay-per-click/]

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