Rainmaker: Pay Per Click Advertising
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios


Defined Tag: Pay Per Click Advertising.

Introduction

Top ranking on search engines can do wonders for any online business. However, the ever-changing algorithms mean that businesses require constant maintenance and ongoing services on a professional level. More and more companies are becoming tired of the "top again, out again" success ratio with traditional search engine optimization.

To overcome this dilemma, businesses have the option of buying a top slot in the section named "sponsored links" with the larger engines by participating in the various pay per click advertising campaigns. Though there are still values to be found in the pay per click advertising marketplace, competitive pressures are continuing to drive up costs per click.

The concept of pay per click advertising has been around ever since evolution of the Internet and the rise of search engines. However, this type of online advertising in its current form began in 1997, when an entrepreneur named Bill Gross developed an idea for the first-ever pay per click ad search engine, named GoTo.com.

Ironically, people were quite skeptical of the idea of pay per click advertising in its early days, feeling that nobody would use a search engine filled with ads. It wasn't until the Google, King of the Web, introduced their Google AdWords program that the pay per click (PPC) industry skyrocketed. However, even though you are guaranteed a top placement with this type of advertising, there is an associated top-dollar cost.

Pay per click advertising uses an auction-style model for determining placement for specific search terms. The top positions go to the highest bidders. With pay per click search engines, bidding on a search term or keyword is the only method to guarantee placement in the top results of major search engines.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, the PPC search engines offer some well-targeted advertising programs. Many advertisers do get a good return on their investment by using pay per click campaigns, and the return on investment is much higher than for other forms of online advertising, such as banner advertising or pay per impression. PPC programs can greatly benefit your optimization campaign, with many of the pay-per-click engines supplying results to other influential search engines and directories.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.