You’ve probably heard about how Google AdWords works and how it can be a great alternative to traditional forms of advertising. But how does pay-per-click work? How does a website get the right amount of exposure for a specific keyword or key phrase? These are all very valid questions that you as a website owner or entrepreneur can answer depending on how you use pay-per-click, and the smart choices you make with your campaign. Let’s take a look at how does pay-per-click work.
A website gets the right to place its ads on any page of a search engine based on a bidding process. Each time someone clicks on your ad (which is what gets charged to your account), you get paid. This means that when someone searches for your selected keyword or key phrase, you have a high probability of getting your ad displayed at the top of the list – and that’s where your sales come from. In most cases, sites that get more traffic are seen as being higher in value than sites with less traffic because the advertisers who bid on those spaces get more exposure, which is what makes their rates higher than others.
What does this all mean to you as a website owner or entrepreneur? It means that if you want to sell more products or services, you need to place more ads on your site. The more your ad shows up, the more likely it is that someone will click on it. And the more clicks you get, the more money you will make. It’s that simple.
Now, how does pay-per-click work? First, let’s discuss how the search engines work. When you search for something on the major search engines, what happens? If you are lucky, your site or ad will show up toward the very top of the list. This is where you can grab some serious conversions.
However, this is not always the case. Sometimes your advert may show up but nobody clicks on it. Why? The search engine rules of gravity are such that you must attract as many potential buyers as possible, otherwise nobody will ever click on your advert. This is the reason why many online businesses struggle to get any sort of traffic – they simply do not have enough good quality targeted visitors to begin with.
So how do you overcome this? You do it by choosing good quality low competitive keywords that are searched for often by people looking for the product or service that you offer. The rule of attraction here is pretty simple. If you can get more traffic to your site from a search engine query than from people actually visiting your site then your chances of making sales will be greater. This is how the search engines work – they provide a link that points to your site, and the visitors that click on this link are more likely to become customers.
The next step is quite technical, but I shall do it in a few sentences. Essentially this works by bidding on keyword phrases that other advertisers are bidding on. When a visitor types in a search term that matches your advert (also known as a bid keyword) and another website has also chosen that same keyword, your website will be ranked ahead of its competitor. In other words your advert will be seen first, even if your site doesn’t have that particular keyword. How does pay-per-click work in this case?
It’s surprisingly simple actually, although there are many different aspects to take into account. Basically you just bid on words that will give you good placement for your advert, and when someone clicks on your advert you are charged a small amount. If you want to be successful with how does pay-per-click work you need to spend time researching how your competitors are bidding on each keyword phrase, and how you can beat them. However you should be aware that not everyone who is bidding on the exact same keywords will do so. Sometimes the terms will overlap, and sometimes they won’t.
