Overview of Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay per Click (PPC) is an advertising technique used mainly on search engines, but can also be applied on websites and advertising networks. The most popular pay per click advertising network is Google Adwords.
Pay per Click has reformed the online advertising industry. Back in 2005 £4.70 billion was spent on pay per click marketing, and that figure has grown substantially in the last couple of years.
Advantages of PPC include that you only pay if people visit your website, therefore making it a highly accountable form of advertising. With some pay per click advertising networks, such as Google Adwords, you can also target specific geographical areas, set an overall budget, and a cost-per-click limit. This means that it’s suitable for even the smallest budget.
There are a couple of disadvantages with click-fraud estimated to be 15-20% despite being played down by Google, and it can be expensive to bid for keywords in highly competitive industries.
However, as a general rule all websites should strongly consider pay per click advertising. It can be very effective if done properly, and without a presence in search engines you’ll be missing out on many potential customers.

Steps to follow:

Choose keywords

Don’t target generic one-word keywords. This will be very expensive and the hits you do receive are likely to be relatively untargeted and speculative. Keep costs down and conversions up by choosing specific keyword phrases relevant to your industry or product.

Target effectively

If you have a UK-based site or one targeting only the local area then ensure that you specify this.

Writing the advert

Research suggests that click-throughs are on average 50% higher when terms in the title are repeated in the description below. Ensure that the title is relevant rather than intriguing so that only potential customers click on it.

Set a budget

Often you can set a daily and monthly budget. If PPC advertising is working well and producing sales profitably set as high a budget as possible. Setting a higher budget will also help your ad to appear higher in the sponsored links section.
Once set up your ads will often start showing within 15 minutes. It’s this speed combined with the highly targeted performance-based nature of PPC that has propelled pay per click advertising to be the most popular form of online advertising by far.
At first glance pay per click advertising can seem straightforward and simple. However, inexperienced users can quickly see their budget swallowed with very few results achieved. To get more from your budget check out how to get results with PPC advertising.

originally: http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk/ppc-advertising-overview/