How does Pay Per Click marketing work?
 by: Brad Bagherian

So how do people find my website? This is by far the most frequent question asked by businesses wanting to increase the number of visitors to their site.

The answer to this question is that there are a number of different ways to attract visitors, these include; search engine optimisation of your website, banner advertising and link campaigns, as well as Pay Per Click. This article focuses on Pay Per Click which evidently the most effective and efficient method.

What is Pay Per Click?

The majority of search engines provide a service whereby they sell the top positions on search engine results pages.

For example, if an internet user wants to find an exclusive gift shop for Christmas presents, they would go to their prefered search engine, and type "Christmas gifts". If this search term is a keyword we have set up for you, then your website listing will appear at the top of the results page.

How and why does it work?

It works because it allows users to find what they are searching for and your company details will be one of the first items they are likely to read. They can read your summary about what products or services you provide. Because of this, the user does decide to click through to your site, they are more likely to make an enquiry or generate a sale.

Where will my listing appear?

Your website will appear in search results in the following search engines ..

Google
Yahoo
MSN
Altavista
Lycos
Ask Jeeves
AOL
and many, many more

How much will it cost?

This is one of those “how long is a piece of string?” questions. However, we won’t end it there and leave you in the dark.

Most companies have a budget for a day, week or month. We then select the most appropriate keywords which we think your target audience will enter into a search engine. For each keyword enter a price you want to pay per click (depending on where you want to be positioned). The higher your budget, the more click throughs, the more leads, the more sales.

It's important to remember that you only pay if a user actually clicks on the link to your website and is taken there. So only if they are interested enough in your summary and want to find out more about your products and services are they likely to click on your website link.

About The Author

Brad Bagherian is the founder and MD of elaborations Ltd (www.elaborations.co.uk). elaborations is a London based Design Company specialising in website design and development, graphic design and Internet marketing.

[email protected]