What is pay-per-click advertising?

Pay-per-click (PPC) is also known as cost-per-click (CPC) and is a method used by the Internet marketing industry to carefully target customers and guarantee traffic to your website. It serves two purposes:

to gain more exposure to a website ranking well for it’s ‘key word’ phrases
to drive traffic to a website which is not yet ranking at the top for it’s ‘key word’ phrases

How does pay-per-click advertising work?

The concept works by purchasing ‘ads’ on search engine result pages and you pay a certain amount of money for every ‘click’ your advert attracts, which sends the visitor to a page on your website. The more your prepared to pay for each click, the higher the number of ‘hits’ your website attracts.

You create a series of adverts and when people search for the ‘key words’ associated with your advert, your ‘ad’ appears on search results pages.

PPC adverts often appear at the top in coloured boxes, or listed down the right hand side on search results pages to separate them from organic search listings. There are around ten adverts on any one page at a time.

You can monitor the results of your adverts to see which ‘ads’ are driving visitors to your website and which ‘ads’ are simply eating up your budget.

How much does pay-per-click advertising cost?

You can spend as much or as little as you wish. To keep control of your budget, you can set limits on the cost of each ‘click’ and assign a daily budget to your advertising campaign so you can keep control of your Pay-per-click advertising.

Does pay-per-click advertising work?

PPC is regarded as a successful form of online advertising, as between 15% and 30% of online purchases of services and products originate from Pay-per-click adverts.