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An Introduction to Web Marketing, Part III – Pay Per Click Advertising
Let us begin by answering exactly what contextual pay per click advertising is and where you have seen it. When you perform a search on Google or Yahoo, do you notice the results that are shown at the very top? As well as on the right part of your screen? Usually they have a different background color than the rest of the results. If you look closely, you can also see that, above these listings, it says something along the lines of “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsor Results”. Look a little closer and you will see that the results below those first few have no such label.
These ‘Sponsored Links' or ‘Results’ are actually paid advertising by the websites that you see displayed. These placements are the result of bids placed by many different websites for the specific or broad keyword that you just searched for. As with most bidding systems, the sites are ranked by who bids the highest. Specifically, these sites are bidding on how much they will pay to Google AdSense, Overture, Kanoodle, or many other pay per click providers for each click that they receive from a user—hence “Pay Per Click”.
A recent study printed by USA Today showed that only 18% of web users knew the difference between these paid “Sponsor Results” and the organic, content relevant, results that appear on the rest of the page. You can read the article by clicking here. The importance of this statistic is that many users will not know that the paid listings, or sponsor results, are not necessarily the most ‘relevant’ search results for their query. These results are simply drawn from whoever has allocated the largest bidding budget for that particular search phrase.
The benefit of pay per click advertising is that any website, new or old, can immediately get right to the top of the search results page—as long as they have the budget. Granted, to the savvy web user who knows that these results may not hold the relevance that they are looking for will most likely turn directly to the ‘organic’ search results that are listed. However, with recent research to prove it, a website focusing solely on pay per click advertising still has an enormous market to take a hold of.
A properly managed pay per click campaign requires constant attention. Other websites are bidding as well, and you must take a proactive, yet reactionary, stance when it comes to maintaining your placement. Jump Start Marketing offers pay per click campaign research, establishment, and management and if you would like more information, please contact us through the website.
When it comes to attaining top rankings for the organic search results, search engine optimization is where success lies. Through proper search engine optimization and link development, you can also get to the top of the organic search listings. Part IV in this series will focus on search engine optimization, and what to look for in an SEO company.
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