What is pay per click?
In the hyper competitive world of online promotions and marketing, finding new and effective ways to attract visitors to a site can make all the difference to new and growing businesses.
Though there are lots of ways to improve SEO, drive web traffic and increase brand awareness, one of the most effective online marketing tools available to small and medium sized enterprises is pay per click advertising. Easy to initiate and affordable to run, pay per click campaigns have been shown to produce significant results time after time.
What is pay per click?
Pay per click advertising is a form of internet advertising that’s used to drive traffic to a particular website. In general, the website in question will pay a publisher to host their ad, paying a fee every time the ad is clicked.
The idea behind this model is that the fee paid represents a small percentage of the value of the customer, making payment worthwhile for the advertiser.
When this technique is used in relation to Google, it’s known as AdWords and allows advertisers to buy certain search terms instead of earning them organically.
Why is it good for advertisers?
When using AdWords or other pay per click models, an advertiser only has to pay the publisher when an ad is clicked.
This means they only pay when a visitor is actually interested in the products or services that they offer, something that will help to prevent an advertising budget being wasted on ads that no one is interested in.
In fact, research has shown that searchers click on paid search ads more often than any other type of digital advertising, something that no growing business can afford to ignore.
As Google only displays pay per click ads when a user has searched for those specific terms, companies advertising their products can be confident that the leads generated by this method are genuine, relevant and potentially very valuable.
Most pay per click publishers will also provide advertisers with analytics describing the effectiveness of their campaign and showing where improvements or adjustments can be made.
Why is it good for search engines?
Apart from providing search engines with valuable extra income, pay per click advertising allows search engines to cater specifically to the needs of their users.
By providing relevant and targeted advertising, they can help searchers to find exactly what they’re looking for while helping small and growing business to boost their profile and increase their turnover.
The analytics generated by AdWords and Pay Per Click can also provide search engines with valuable insight into the general public’s online behaviour, helping them to target their advertising to specific audiences and keep their services and results relevant.
A good option for small and growing businesses, pay per click advertising is ideal for companies looking for good results on a small or medium sized marketing budgets.
Done well, pay per click can produce significant results for an advertiser, giving them the traffic, the brand awareness and the income they need to succeed.
