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PPC (Pay per Click) Guide for Beginners - Google AdWords

Explaining the fundamental differences between Organic Placement in Search Engine Results Pages and Paid Placements (Sponsored Links) appearing alongside Natural Search Results

Selected Google Products
Who for?	Everyone - Free	Everyone - Free	Business - Paid
In a nutshell	Firefox browser with Google tool bar	Free photo organisation sofware	Advertise with Google search and content networks
Product	Firefox with Google Toolbar	Picasa	Google Adwords

"I want to appear at the top of Google" is possibly one of the most well voiced phrases from any new first time builder or owner of a website. The truth is that few think through to ask what keywords or phrases they actually want to appear at #1 for and their overall online budget, or similarly don't realise that $1000 per year is never going to get them on the top for searches like electrical products, cheap holidays, best loans or anything similar. For these, SEO (getting quality placements in the natural Search Engine results - SE Optimisation) and SEM (paying for sponsored link placements alongside the natural search engine results - SE Marketing) can cost extensively in terms of both time and money. Owners who are designing or editing their own sites are able to optimise their own pages, according to best practices, which will assist a site, even if attention is merely an re-examination of basic elements such as Title, Description, Keywords and Alt tags. This, on its own though, will not generate quality inbound links which are of great importance in securing good placements within natural search results. Quantity and quality of relevant content are essential too for a website to appear on the first results page for any popular search. Businesses and sites competing for highly cempetitive searches such as cheap mortgages normally need a larger budget to accommodate third party SEO activity in order to bring in appropriate quality links and generate content. If you don't have deep pockets to fund SEO there is much that you can do yourself, but top placements rarely come for free unless they are within a very specific niche.

To put some of these intensely popular and lucrative online searches in context they each had, at the time of writing electrical products - 85,400,000 results, cheap holidays - 26,200,000 results, best loans - 74,900,000 results

Appearing in organic results for keyword rich phrases in results pages where there is competition of between 1 million and 10 million further results can often be difficult, especially for newly registered and constructed sites, where owners may find the effects of the so called 'Google Sandbox' for a period of time. Consequently many website managers, for both established and newly launched domains, may opt for a search engine marketing and promotion method. One of the most accessible to the UK market is, of course, Google Adwords.

If you don't know what a sponsored Google search engine advert or Adword is, in contrast to a natural result, then read on....

Each of the following search result first pages Fig 1-5 has information above a screenshot of the search itself.

Fig 1. Here Athens77.com appears as the #1 result for Greek Internet Traffic . That is from Total 5,330,000 Results. This is an organic placement and the text that the search engine shows is from the site's index page. Organic or natural results are not paid results

Greek Internet Traffic Results

Fig 2. Budget Amsterdam Hotels, One to Five Star Accommodation, Over 150 Hotels to Choose from. ad appears here for the search Amsterdam Beds . Total 3,430,000 Results

Amsterdam Beds Results

Fig 3. An advert for www.greekislandholidays.info appearing for a campaign related to Greek island holidays. £59 Malia 10th Oct 7 days, Major Operator Late Bargains Greece, Greek Island Holiday Savings 2007. Number 4 Sponsored Link (Paid Placement) for the search Malia. Total 3,350,000 Results

Malia Results

Fig 4. Modified Advert showing as Number 1 Sponsored Link (Paid Placement) for the search Zante 2006 . Total 1,040,000 Results. www.greekislandholidays.info link appearing for a different ad on the same campaign. Major Operator Bargains, Gatwick to Malia 10th October 7 day, Late Holiday Savings from just £59.

Zante 2006 Results

What are some of Adwords relevant points for the UK market?

Whilst the technology is in the US it is UK market friendly
Although the ability to control daily budget and maximum cpc (cost per click) is standard on all major search marketing interfaces, Adwords offers an interface closer to real time control with self edited and approved ads. Campaigns can be turned on and off, created and modified at will.
Tried and tested. It was originally tested and rolled out over 2001-2 and has been actively extended to date. Now supporting image and video adverts plus CPM (Cost per Millenia) content advertising in addition to its traditional bid per click based pricing formula for ads.
Google is the most popular search engine by far at the current time. This advertising channel allows site owners, even beginners, to have access to advertising alongside natural search results and also at third party sites through their content network and search partners such as Ask.com. If you are a content publisher looking for revenue then Google also offer the Adsense scheme for monetising your site. The size of Google, its Adsense publishers and Search partners makes the advertising reach of an Adwords account extensive over the internet with the option to see your ads appearing almost anywhere from small hobby site publishers to major search engines and information sites.

Author : Mike Goodyear has been using Adwords campaigns in online marketing strategies since 2003 across dozens of highly targeted campaigns. Director of Digital Freedom Ltd, an 'internet presence enabler'

First Published : 15th October 2006 : Updated 23 Jan 2008