Paid search marketing
What is it?
Sponsored links is the term used to describe the results of “paid search marketing” or “sponsored search“ or “PPC” (pay per click).
Sponsored links are delivered, by the search engines usually at the top and right hand side of the organic results listings.
You pay every time a user clicks your sponsored link to visit your site. The amount you pay depends on the budget you have set and how much competition there is for those keywords or phrases.
You only pay for visits to your site and you are able to set your own daily maximum budget.
Using PPC you can, very quickly, reach prospective customers who are actively looking for your products and services. That means you receive targeted visitors and customers.
Google’s advertising programs include AdWords and AdSense and are probably the UK’s most popular paid search systems.
Others include
Miva
YahooSM (formerly Overture)
Microsoft Adcentre
How search engine friendly is your website?
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PROS |
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CONS |
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An excellent way of driving good quality traffic to your web site |
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Often requires the insertion of programming code for comprehensive monitoring & measuring. |
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A quick way to get “listed” with the major search engines |
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A good way of driving traffic but not necessarily of achieving conversion. |
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Easy to control budgets |
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Time needs to be allocated to monitor budget and general performance of ads, clickthroughs and conversion. |
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Measurable results |
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Not always easy to fully understand the systems’ intricacies. |
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An excellent way to promote short lived special promotions |
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Works best with specific landing pages or unique URLs |
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May require the services of an expert to manage complex and sizeable budgets for maximum ROI |
The sponsored search results are typically presented across the top of the organic search results section, and in the column to the right hand side of the organic results, depicted by the shaded area, above.
Conversion rates for ecommerce-enabled web sites are often <4% so if you rely on pay per click for a large proportion of your web site traffic, you could end up paying for 96 visitors out of every 100 to visit your site and leave without doing anything at all, unless you have other interactive features to fully engage with them.
