What is Pay Per Click?

Pay per Click or to give it it's full title, pay per click advertising, is advertising on the internet.

I'm sure you've all seen the "sponsored" listings that appear alongside your search engine results.

These are the adverts that companies have paid to be listed there. The truth is they don't actually pay for the appearance. They actually only pay if their ad is clicked on. Hence the term pay per click.

Their position on the page (ie: how high up the page they appear) is generally determined by the amount they are prepared to pay for the click.

This is strictly true for all Pay per Click schemes. Google Adwords certainly has a more sophisticated method for placing it's ads and those in the know can save a small fortune. Those lucky enough to have taken my Adwords Course will know what I mean.

One of the advantages of Pay Per Click over traditional Search Engine Optimisation is that it is almost immediate. Your ads start to appear in the search results within minutes of setting them up. It can take weeks even months before optimised pages get indexed to appear in the free search results.

Of course the disadvantage is that you have to pay. Get it wrong and Pay Per Click can prove very expensive.

Pay Per Click Services

I've already mentioned Google Adwords. It is by far the most popular and one advantage is that if you know the tricks you can get top rankings for less money than your competitors.

Second to Adwords is Yahoo's offering which they have called Yahoo Search Marketing. You may hear it referred to as Overture since this was it's name for many years.

There are other services as well but they have less traffic than Google and Yahoo.

So, my Pay Per Click ads will appear next to Search Results

Yes, but that's not all. Both Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing also have networks of sites that will show your ads. I'm sure you've been on websites and seen ads appearing on them. These are also usually Pay per Click ads.