Pay per Click gets customers!

Imagine if you could advertise only to people who have actually expressed an interest in doing business with you.

That's basically what happens whenever a prospective customer or client types a phrase into a search engine that's relevant to your business.

But how do search engines decide which sites are worthy of top placement in their search results?

Some of the results are ranked by the search engine's computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising.

PPC is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business.

Basically, businesses buy advertising on search phrases, and are charged a small amount each time a person clicks through to their website.

Businesses are charged each time a person clicks to their website.

How does it work? Try running a search on a major search engine like Yahoo or Google for a common consumer product like ‘DVD players’. When reviewing the results, you'll likely see a set of results labeled as ‘Sponsored Links’ or ‘Sponsor Results’. Some results may appear in the same format as the main search results on the page, while others are listed within colored text boxes along the site of the page. All of those results are paid advertisements from the sites listed within the ads.

The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. (The ranking order in Google is a combination of the bid amount and the popularity of the ad.) In the example search for ‘DVD players’ the current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click, one cent more than the #2 advertiser.

Why should I pay for traffic?

For businesses that have had success with search engine optimisation, the idea of paying for visitors is not particularly enticing. However, if you can make more money off a visitor to your website than it costs to get them there, why wouldn't you pay for those visitors?

Keep in mind that you can choose exactly what search terms you want to advertise on, and you only pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad, so it generally comes down to deciding how much you can afford to spend for those visitors rather than whether it's worth doing at all.

A growing market

And following the success of the major search engines, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have opened the door to pay-per-click advertising, with rates starting as low as 30c per click.

NetReach has a range of options for website advertising.  Call 1300 887 952 to speak with a consultant.