Pay Per Click Search Engines

A search engine isn’t just for searching anymore. Granted, that’s still what drives most people to their sites, but search engines now serve advertisers and affiliate partners every bit as much (if not moreso) than their web surfing targets.

And that’s when pay per click search engines are all about – in a word – targets. Advertisers use pay per click search engines to find relevant, interested leads (or targeted leads) and deliver them to the advertiser’s site (or business). Website owners (or publishers) use pay per click search engines to generate extra revenue from their existing web pages.

A search engine, first of all, is a web-based portal or directory (a site linking to many other sites) that people browsing the web use to find sites of interest to them. Web surfers (or your average Joe and Jane consumer like us browsing the internet for whatever reason) can go to a search engine and enter in a keyword or keyword phrase (or more than one of each); this is called a search query or search inquiry or search request or simply search. The keyword(s) and/or keyword phrase(s) in each search are called, collectively, the search terms.

For example - If you wanted to know where to buy discount curtains in Sussex County, NY your search terms might be “discount curtains Sussex NY”, but you might also substitute “cheap” or “inexpensive” or “sale” for “discount”.

Upon receiving a search query, a search engine will bring up search results, or a list of potentially relevant websites that may fit the inquirers needs. This list is comprised of listings which themselves are built of a title, a description, the URL (or web address) of the site, and a link to take visitors directly to the site with a click of their mouse.

For example – If you Google “discount curtains Sussex NY” the first listing you find may be this:

Barriers – Worldwide
AMC Security Products Ltd, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, UK ... Products include: Sliding, Curtain Wall partitions (The Original Goff's Curtain Wall), ...www.kellysearch.com/qz-product-613.html

The above listing made it to this esteemed position by careful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or, in brief, the tools successful internet marketers use to get their websites top position or placement on relevant search results pages.

On the right hand side of the Google browser window, however, is a vertical column of what are called Sponsored Links, such as (using our same example of “discount curtains Sussex NY”):

Save 50% off
Curtains, Curtain Rods & Sconces at deep discount prices.
www.swagsgalore.com

This sponsored link was placed there by an advertiser who paid to have their ad appear there. How they arranged this, and what gave them a better position than Shopzilla below it, is by using the pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) model. These are two names for the same service and, for simplicity, for this article we’ll stick to calling it pay-per-click.

With pay-per click, advertisers bid on keywords and keyword phrases that, when matching the search terms in a query, will pull up that advertiser’s listing on the search results page.

How far down the list? That usually depends on two things: the bid and the click-through rate.

The bid is the number of cents (or dollars, we suppose) that you will pay the search engine every time a person clicks on your listing (which subsequently brings them to your site, or more specifically to the landing page you designate). Higher bids get you better placement.

The click-through rate tells you how popular your listing is with web surfers. How many times do people viewing your listing click on it?

Higher-paying, more popular listings generally make it to the top of search results, though some pay-per-click search engines base placement solely on bids regardless of click-through rate.

Not all search engines are pay-per-click search engines. Google, in fact, is a standard search engine with a pay-per-click program (the seminal program in the industry, really). Many search engines, particularly the small, less trafficked ones, publish only paid listings in their results. These are true pay-per-click search engines in that their focus on connecting advertisers and their target audiences is their prime objective.

Most search engines with pay-per-click programs offer a variety of tools to assist you in better managing an ad campaign. Some of the most common tools (and categories of tools) are as follows:

Account Management Tools: to facilitate and automate keyword and listing submissions, to add/change/delete campaigns, to fund and autofund your account, set daily or weekly spending limits
Campaign Management Tools: to optimize your ROI (Return on Investment) using in-depth resources for traffic reporting, keyword selection, campaign scheduling (to optimize time of day and days of week that your listing appears), and autobidding (to help you achieve and maintain top placement with minimal effort)

Obviously these tools are not to be undervalued and a search engine with a set of tools like these at your disposal is worth its weight in gold in just the money it’ll save you alone (not to mention the money you can earn).

To open an advertiser account with a search engine’s pay-per-click program, you’ll be expected to deposit funds into an account from which your costs per click will be deducted as traffic happens. You will be expected to replenish these funds manually or automatically in order to have your listing run uninterrupted.

Some sites use a pay-per-view (PPV) which is distinctly different from PPC. With pay-per-view, you pay based on every time your ad or listing appears in a users browser window regardless of whether or not they click on it. The primary advantage here is that –for an equivalent investment - your ad appears far more often on far more users’ desktops than it otherwise would (using PPC). The drawback is that the traffic is not as targeted as it would be with PPC.

Which model is more appropriate for your business depends on your business. An eclectic, multi-interest directory or portal might benefit well from such a service. A niche product would not. Make sure you know which method will be used to calculate your costs before your sign up with a search engine or initiate a campaign.

Similar to this, many search engines give advertisers the option to use a feature called RON (Run Of Network) which gives their ad exposure across the search engine’s entire network. Here, payment is still calculated using a pay-per-click model.

Another popular advertising method offered on many search engines are links embedded directly into the content of content-driven sites.

So, using our example from above, in an article on interior designing, there may be a sentence regarding curtains that has the word “curtains” highlighted as a link. Users clicking on that link will be taken directly to an advertiser’s website (or landing page).

Many search engines also offer advertisers more than just pay-per-click. Many offer toolbar advertising, banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, and more. But it’s more important to find the services most suited to your needs with the tools most helpful to you on the search engine (and this is key) that will give you the broadest and/or most targeted exposure than it is to have every advertising venue under the sun to choose from.

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to use an all-in-one type of service because, just as with all in one technology (like all-in-one printerfaxscannercopiers) none of the individual features works as well as their standalone counterparts.

Also beware of falling into a one-size-fits-all mindset. If you have a small, struggling business just starting out, it might not pay to put all your eggs in Google’s basket, no matter how much traffic they drive, because you may not be able to effectively compete with the bigger companies. There are a ton of pay-per-click search engines serving small business, specific geographic locations, and other demographics that can help you fine-tune your campaign and maximize your advertising investment.

Most search engines employ various fraud detection measures to prevent invalid clicks such as those produced by robots, spiders, and other malicious click-generating software. Check search engines you’re considering to make sure you wouldn’t charged for such types of clicks. Also choose search engines that only charge you for unique clicks, meaning that if one user clicks on your ad multiple times from the same IP address, you’ll only get charged for that first click.

Finally, the reviews you’ll encounter in this website and the sales pages of the search engines you investigate, you’ll find information for web publishers wishing to monetize their existing web pages and, as a side benefit, increase your site’s value to your visitors. This is how these search engines expand the network across which advertisers’ listings are distributed.

If you own a website – even if you’re employing the same search engine or a different search engine’s pay-per-click services – your site can be one of the sources of traffic for other advertisers. Pay-per-click search engines offer numerous products to website owners to encourage tasteful placement of their advertisers ads on your pages and give you a cut of the action in return.

There are two main ways you, as an Affiliate or Partner with a pay-per-click search engine, would get paid for this. Either per-click (one-time per unique visitor) or as a percentage of revenue earned.