No time to wait to get good rankings?
Pay per click!

Pay Per Click

Now, let's face it, not all sites can be in even the top 100, never mind the top 10, of their preferred keywords. Fortunately, there is a solution if you are willing to spend money for results.

Pay per click means just what it sounds like. You pay to have people click on your site. The two most popular programs are Google's AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search. There are advantages to each program.

Google's advantage is that they are the #1 search engine. That alone makes their program well worth your while. They allow you to select what you will pay for each click and set a daily budget, so you don't get any nasty surprises or have your entire budget for the month used up in a day. Your ads will not only show up on Google , they will show up on relevant sites that have joined the AdSense program , which matches ads to the context of the page they are displayed on. They have a number of tools, such as keyword suggestions, cost estimations and so forth. They also have a program that maximizes your budget, by considering both your click through rate and your maximum. If you don't have to pay your maximum to get the exposure you want, they won't make you pay it. Best of all, it currently only costs $5 to set up your account.

As state above, the other major pay per click search engine is Overture. They provide results to engines such as Yahoo, MSN and more. They also have a Content Match program that provides PPC results on major sites that have content relevant to your business. The cost to get started is a bit higher than Google's , but this is a deposit, and well worth the money. If you just have to get going quickly, they have a Fast Track program that costs $199, but you will get listed more quickly, get advice on keywords, and more, to ensure that your campaign is successful.

Finding keywords to bid on can be quite a bit of work. The more you bid on, and the more specific they are, the better. If you're selling shoes, bid by brand name, men's or women's shoes, and so forth. The more specific you are, the more relevant your clicks will be, and the more likely you are to have a good click through rate.

Now, you will need to write good ads to pull in a decent click through rate. There are some simple steps to follow to write a good, short ad:

1. Make a list of your product's features.
2. Now, how can you express these features as benefits? Customers care more about benefits than features.
3. What do you think your best benefit is from the customer's perspective? It doesn't matter what you like best, what gets the customer's attention?
4. Figure out your best keywords. Try to include them in your list, as surfers prefer ads with the keywords they searched on.
5. Write out what you wish you could say. Don't worry about length just yet.
6. Take out everything that doesn't matter in what you just wrote.
7. Compress still further to meet advertising guidelines (25 characters for AdWords headline, two 35 character lines).
8. Test! If you're using AdWords, Google is quick to pull ads that get too low a click through rate. Sometimes changing only one word will improve your click through rate, so don't change the whole ad at once.

Now, if you need more detail than I can go into here, you will want to check out Google Profit . This is offered by the Search Engine Institute, and it has a range of amazing tools for you. You'll get step by step plans, strategies for earning money, and very useful tools for choosing keywords. If you're going to be serious about PPC marketing, this is a great place to get started, and well worth the cost. Of course, their tactics will work on other search engines too, but Google is the best-known and has the most traffic, so why not start at the top?

Pay Per Click Search Engines to Consider

Google AdWords - the #1 Search Engine, and a top choice for pay per click marketers.
Overture - Delivers Results You Can't Ignore. Only Overture search listings reach over 80% of active U.S. Internet users with just one buy.
Kanoodle - Sign up for a Kanoodle.com Free $5 Trial Account. Try us today!
Enhance Interactive (formerly ah-ha.com) - Get access to 1.5 billion searches per month. $10 account credit!
FindWhat - Drive targeted, high-quality traffic to your website.