PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Search
Engine Primer
Here's how the Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
search engines work:
-
You "bid" on how much you want to pay
for each person who clicks from the search engine (SE) to your
website.
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For most PPC SEs, the minimum bid is
$.01 (one cent). At one cent per visitor, you would pay $10 for
every 1,000 visitors to your site.
-
The higher you bid per click, the higher
up you will be within the search results. (of course, top listings
result in more traffic)
-
On Goto.com (and perhaps a few other
large PPC SEs) you may find that the bid price is quite high (e.g.
$.35, $.60 and sometimes over $1.00) to be listed within the top ten
search results for competitive keywords. If you find this is the
case, you may want to skip Goto.com and bid in the other PPC SEs.
You may find that you can get top listings for pennies.
To submit your website listing to the Pay-Per-Click SEs, follow these
steps for each engine:
-
Open an account
Most PPC SEs will allow you to open an account with a $25 deposit. (this
deposit goes towards your advertising) or with
withdrawal (Google Adword)
-
Submit your listings
Follow the instructions provided to submit your website listing(s),
including site description, URL and Keywords.
-
Bid on keywords
Use the Keyword Popularity Checker in the Analysis
Tools section of the
Promotion Center section to help you determine which keywords
people search on most.
Type in a keyword, and this tool will
tell you how many times it was searched for on Goto.com last month!
This vital information will give you a competitive edge when
submitting keywords to the PPC SEs. Don't waste your time on
keywords that nobody searches for... maximize your efforts on your
hottest keywords.
-
Check Your Stats
Use your PPC SE account password to log in and check your stats.
You'll be able to see how many people click on your link, and your
position in the search results. Your position will always change
(i.e. your listing will move up and down within the search results)
as other websites bid on their positions.
-
Maintain Your Listings
Adjust your bids regularly.
Note: The "Traffic Index" is
obtained from Alexa.com based on statistics of over a half-million
Alexa users. Each Traffic Index point represents 1,000 visits to that
search engine by Alexa users over a specific time period. For example,
a Traffic Index of "18" indicates that 18,000 Alexa users visited that
search engine. A Traffic Index of "0" indicates less than 1,000 visits.
Keep in mind that the actual traffic to
the search engines is much higher, because the Traffic Index
represents only the traffic to the search engines by Alexa users. The
Traffic Index figure is presented for you here to give you a general
idea of the relative size of the search engines. Contact any given
search engine directly if you would like to know the actual traffic of
that engine.
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