Pay per Click (PPC) advertising is a popular way to drive traffic to your site. However before starting out with PPC advertising, you might have some questions.

What is PPC advertising?

PPC or pay per click advertising allows a user to advertise on the search results pages of the major search engines. You, as the advertiser, only pay when a user actually click on one of your ads. In other words, you only pay for traffic that actually comes to your site.

Where do ads appear and what do they look like?

Ads usually appear in the sidebar next to search results.As you can see from the screenshot below, ads are marked with a yellow label. This way it's easy to see which links are paid for advertising.

What are the benefits of PPC ads?

With over a billion websites out there, getting on the first page of a search engine for a particular keyword searched can be VERY difficult. With PPC advertising you can bid on these keywords and get your site on the frontpage of the search engines. You control the cost by setting bid limits. (Remember you only pay when a user actually clicks on one of your ads) You are also able to target the ads to a region, country, language etc.

What sites offer PPC advertising?

The main search engines currently offering pay per click advertising are:

• Google
• Bing
• Yahoo

Google is by far the biggest provider of PPC advertising with Bing second, but Yahoo has been catching up with the development of their Gemini platform that enables the management of both search and native ads from a single platform.

What are the components of a PPC ad?

Once you've decided to invest in PPC advertising, there are some guidelines to follow. Ads have to follow a strict format to be accepted. Below is an example of what a Google Adwords ad should look like.

Example Ad:

How can I target my PPC ad?

There are many targeting options in PPC, but they might vary slightly depending on which platform you use. Two examples of targeting parameters are location and time of day.

Location targeting enables you to serve your ads to an audience in locations you choose. This is especially important if your business only serves clients in a specific area. A local restaurant will probably only target the area they are in and exclude other cities, countries and regions.

Time of day targeting allows you to specify when your ads are shown. Similar to the example above, a restaurant would want to show their ads during the time their customers are online and not at 4am. On the other hand your customers might be in a different country, on the other side of the globe. In this case you would target both their location and their timezone to ensure you reach your intended audience.

There are several other types of targeting that can be set up. It can be as complex or as simple as you wish to make it. Location, language and time of day are the minimum you should be doing though.

Where can I find more resources on PPC advertising?

If you are seroius about doing PPC advertising right, check out one of the online courses on the topic. I particularly like the courses offered by Lynda.com. You can even sign up for a free trial. Alternatively, watch the free video below for an introduction the Google Adwords platform.

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Google, Bing and Yahoo also have comprehensive documentation on their platforms:

Google - How to be successful with AdWords - AdWords Help

Bing Ads - Bing Ads Help

Yahoo Advertising - Yahoo offers an innovative suite of advertising solutions