The days of getting free visitors (traffic) to your website are over, no matter how well you understand the nuances of search engine optimization.
(And the reign of cheap or low-cost search engine traffic has begun.)
Okay, that may not be quite the case yet, but you really do have to work hard (or pay a search engine optimization company to work hard) to even get close to guaranteeing a top 10 position on search engines like Google these days.
On the other hand, pay-per-click search engines offer the promise of guaranteed visitors, for the keywords of your choice.
Choose to ‘pay per click’ wisely, though
There are literally hundreds of pay-per-click search engines available for you to spend your money on. Only a few can guarantee targeted visitors to your site, though. And only the same few can reduce fraudulent clicks to a minimum. I’ve listed these pay-per-click search engines below.
=> Start With These Pay Per Click Search Engines
* Google AdWords
Google operate perhaps the most popular pay-per-click search engine today, called Google AdWords.
AdWords ads appear on the Google search engine itself, as part of the search engine listings (top and right-hand-side of the ordinary search engine results). Ads also appear as part of a wide range of other search engines (known as Search network), as well as a growing number of general content sites (known as Content network).
Unlike other pay-per-click search engines, Google AdWords doesn’t always list the highest bid term first (see The Basics Of Bidding below for details). In Google’s words: ‘Getting great results in AdWords doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot either. The AdWords system rewards the best-performing ads’.
Verdict: Definitely consider signing-up to Google AdWords, but learn how to make the most of your AdWords campaign first via a suitable tutorial or learning resource.
Google AdWords
– https://adwords.google.com/
* Yahoo! Search Marketing (Formerly Overture)
Yahoo! Search Marketing (previously known as Overture and GoTo before that) is the original pay-per-click search engine. Yahoo! is also one of the most expensive and competitive. A quotation taken from a recent sign-up page:
‘A $50 initial deposit is non-refundable and will be applied to click-throughs or to the minimum monthly spend. Each account has a $20 minimum monthly spend. There is a minimum bid requirement of $0.10 per click-through.’
Like Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing has tough anti-fraud measures in place — always evolving, obviously — so there is far less chance of receiving so-called ‘bogus clicks’ (click fraud) than when using other pay-per-click search engines.
Yahoo! Search Marketing has an impressive search engine reach too, with its results found in ‘Sponsored Listings’ in many search engines.
Verdict: If you’re serious about generating targeted traffic to your site, but less bothered about minimum (or maximum) bid amounts etc., then you should consider signing-up with Yahoo! Search Marketing.
Yahoo! Search Marketing
– http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/
* Other PPC Search Engines
Miva (formerly Espotting and Findwhat) is the self-
proclaimed number one pay-per-click search engine in Europe.
Its results appear on many major search engines as well as
thousands of relevant smaller sites too.
And MSN Adcenter is Microsoft’s own pay per click search engine.
Verdict: MSN Adcenter will be a serious contender to Google AdWords soon.
=> The Basics of Bidding at Pay Per Click Search Engines
Using Yahoo! Search Marketing as an example here, making a bid is simply a matter of choosing the following:
* keyword
* title
* description
And as Yahoo! recommends on its site, always repeat the keyword in both the title and description to improve your chances of a click. Yahoo! (Overture) also comes with a keyword suggestion tool.
Choosing your keywords, and the amount you are willing to bid is also simple, but can take a lot of time to research.
This is because you need to find suitable in-demand keywords, that also cost little.
Keyword research solutions include using the paid-for version of Wordtracker — this excellent keyword suggestion tool allows you to brainstorm good keywords, and determine the current cost of the top 20 bids. The pay per click search engines above also come with their own keyword research tools.
=> Bid Carefully!
Make sure you don’t spend too much money when making your bids.
Clicks can add up quickly and that means your costs can add up quickly, too. So it’s probably worth investing in some kind of bid management software, or perhaps worth hiring a qualified professional (for Google Adwords, these people are called Google Advertising Professionals or AdWords Qualified Companies).
Remember, you ONLY want your prospective customers to click. And you must know the value of your visitor.
Try and make sure that the cost of a click never exceeds this ‘value’ of a visitor.
One successful strategy is to bid low on many, many listings. This requires extensive keyword research, however.
It is also very important to keep up with changes that happen at pay per click search engines like Google AdWords, otherwise you could end up losing a lot of money or have a pay per click campaign that suddenly stops working.
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Search engine optimization is important but knowing how to buy cheap traffic from pay per click search engines is also important too. Bid carefully, and do your keyword research thoroughtly and you are more or less guaranteed to receive targeted visitors at your website.
