Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine advertising is a performance-based form of search engine marketing. Your ranking on a search engine results page is determined by your bid amount, or the price you are willing to pay for a visitor to your website. You are charged when a searcher clicks on the search listing or text ad that is displayed on the search listings results page.

 

Locations of Ads

The example to the right displays where the various search engine ads are placed on a search engine results page. Search engine listings that are displayed as a result of search engine optimisation are listed on the left side of the page and are identified by “Search Results”.

Google AdWords Pay Per Click text ads are displayed in the far right column under the heading of “Sponsored Listings” as identified by “AdWords Ads”.


Yahoo Search Marketing Text Ads are displayed at the top of the page in Yahoo! Search results under the heading “Sponsor Results” or “Sponsor Matches” and down the right side of the page.

Cost Per Lead Comparison

Search engine advertising or PPC can be highly cost effective. A report from US Bancorp Piper Jaffray reveals that the cost per lead from search engines is approximately £0.16, compared to £0.65 for yellow page advertising and £5.43 for direct mail inserts. You only pay for those visitors who click on your text ad and come to your website.

What We Do

We set up and manage PPC programs for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture). The Google AdWords PPC system will display your text ads on Google, AOL, Earthlink, Ask Jeeves and others. The Yahoo PPC system promotes your text ads on Yahoo!, AltaVista, CNN and others.

Performance of PPC programs is measured so you can determine your return on investment. Some examples of the types of performance data that we track, analyse and report are tracking:
• the number of impressions (number of times your text ad was displayed)
• the number of click throughs (the number of people who clicked on your ad and came to your website, the percentage known as click-through-rate)
• the number of conversions (the number of people who met your goal such as ordering a product or coming to your contact us page) and the conversion rate
• the average rank of your text ad, the average cost per click and the total costs per text ad

Our Process

Through our services agreement, our normal process is as follows:

• Keyphrase Analysis - We conduct a keyphrase analysis to determine the most related and cost effective keyphrases for your business. You select the keyphrases for us to market your business.
• Text Ad Copy Creation – We write the text ad used to promote your business for a given keyphrase. This is the ad that your visitors will see before they come to your website.
• Account Set up – We set up your account with the text ads we have created and implement the budget and bidding guidelines that you have set for your campaign.
• Performance Management – We will manage your campaign, which includes meeting your budget guidelines and managing the bidding process. We will also track, analyse and report the results to ensure that the campaign meets your objectives. We implement any of your approved modifications to the campaign to ensure optimal performance of the overall marketing campaign. You have a choice of monthly summary reporting or monthly detailed reporting.

Advantages of PPC

Compared to search engine optimisation, some of the advantages of PPC are:

• Placement Guarantee - Rankings are controlled by the bid amount (and click through rate for Google AdWords)
• Quick Implementation Time - you can have your text ads promoting your business in as little as 24 hours
• Cost – you pay only for the number of clicks or visitors that click on your text ad and come to your website
• Ease of Implementation – no need to worry about the complexities of website coding, content and link building required for organic listings in the search engines