What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

By Tyler Downer
4/25/08

Pay-Per-Click, or PPC for short, is one of the most effective ways to generate targeted traffic to your web site for a relatively low cost. In it's most basic form, you build an ad, publish it somewhere, and then pay a small amount every time someone clicks on the ad. PPC has reached unprecedented heights of use, with literally thousands of different businesses using Google's PPC tool, AdWords, alone, not including Yahoo! and many other smaller sites. With the proliferation of Google in thousands of small sites and many search engines now powered by Google, and Google's advertising, it is usually the best carrier for your ads.

Google's ads are placed in 2 categories, Ads for search, and for content. Ads can be used for both or only one. Ads for Search are displayed in Google search results, such as the search engine on the SOS InfoCenter web site They are usually targeted to the context of your search. For example, if you search for "ford auto sales in nebraska" Google would place ads that were targeted for those search words. You may see ads for Ford dealerships in Nebraska, the Ford web site, or Auto Sales organizations. All of those ads could possibly what you are looking for, so feel free to skim them and click on them if you feel that is what you are looking for. Of course, some ads have no relation to the context of your search at all. These are usually only placed there when Google has no other ads to display.

The next ad category, is Ads for Content. These are usually placed on web sites other then Google. SOS InfoCenter uses Ads for Content, part of the Google AdSense program, in our articles. These ads are contextually related to the content of the web page as well.

No matter what ad type it is, they all work off the same principle. A business builds an ad, then chooses keywords or phrases that it will appear with. They then bid on the word. The highest bidder shows nearer the top and so on. When someone clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays their bid amount in exchange for that visitor. It is a seemingly simple processes, but it has helped Google and many other search engines to run many different services for free.

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