Custom Website Design News

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has become a very popular and effective way to drive traffic to a website. With search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing promoting certifications in their pay-per-click programs, it is clear that this new form of advertising isn’t going anywhere. Google Adwords, the leader in pay-per-click advertising, along with its competitors have created ways to make pay-per-click advertising easy and cost effective. The concept is the same across the board; pick your targeting keywords, create a sponsored ad or link and only pay for each click.

Before diving into pay-per-click advertising it is best to analyze which methods are best for your company and if it will truly benefit you. Some of advantages of pay-per-click advertising are:

• PPC is very targeted. You can decide the time of day and location (country, state, city, etc.) you want your ad to be seen.
• Your campaign can be turned on and off when you want it to be. This is ideal for testing the conversion rates for your website. You can learn when is the best time to achieve the highest conversion rates and set your campaign to turn on then or turn off when it’s not the most lucrative time.
• You pay for CPC (cost per click) in pay-per-click advertising versus cost per impression from traditional banner advertising. This means you only pay for the ad when someone clicks on it, thus you really are paying only for the true traffic you are sent.

While the advantages are significant there are some aspects of pay-per-click advertising you need to be aware of before diving in that may be more disadvantageous to your company.

• As pay-per-click advertising gets more popular, there will be more competition for the top spots thus creating a higher cost to get to the top. This however, is not a major disadvantage as with all business comes the concept of supply and demand.
• Unlike SEO, it is easier for your competitors to outbid you in pay-per-click advertising, especially if they have a larger budget. With that said, spend your advertising dollars and pay-per-click budget wisely to ensure your not digging yourself an early grave.
• Keep track of your quality score. Google uses a quality score to determine how much they will charge you per click for each keyword chosen. The lower the score, the more they will charge.
• Don’t make a novice mistake by not tracking your ROI. Pay-per-click advertising may be easy at first but the whole point is to track your success. If you let it go, you will no doubt be throwing money down the drain.

So now looking at the advantages and disadvantages you may be a little disconcerted about the idea of using pay-per-click advertising, don’t be. Just be smart and hire someone to handle it for you. We, at Icon Website Design are experts in pay-per-click advertising, managing over $2 million dollars a year for our clients. To find out more, visit us at www.iconwebsitedesign.com