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Google pay per click (PPC) advertising

Google is the best known 'pay per click' provider, but there are others.

With PPC you write an advert and select a set of keywords. When someone searches for your keywords your advert will appear. With Google the PPC adverts appear on the right of the page, and sometimes also at the very top. They are labelled 'sponsored links'.

You only pay when someone clicks on your advert. The minimum 'cost per click' (CPC) is five pence. Most of the time you will find that others also want their advert to show up for your keywords. That's where the bidding comes in. The more you are prepared to pay per click, the higher in the list of adverts you will appear.

You can sign up to Google's pay per click programme very simply and within an hour you can start getting traffic to your website.

That's the easy bit. The hard bit is getting it to work cost effectively.

Choosing your keywords

Be specific. Don't use vague or general terms. The more precise and targeted your keywords, the less you will pay per click and the better quality of visitor you will welcome to your website.

Getting lots of traffic is not the objective. You only want traffic that is likely to turn into sales. If your company sells to the local area, make sure to include your town or county in the keywords. There is no point getting lots of people in Edinburgh to your website, if you only deliver to Cornwall.

Remember that the web can be local as well as global. Google now has a facility to show your adverts only to those people within areas you select.

Writing your advert

Be specific, accurate and to the point. Don't try to tempt visitors to your site with a clever or obscure message. Tell it like it is. The more specific you are, the better targeted your traffic will be, and the more likely they will turn into sales.

Test and test again

Always run two adverts and compare results. Each month, take your best performing advert and write another one to see if you can improve on your benchmark.

Close the loop using Google's lead tracking software

Google provide excellent statistics, although they can appear a little overwhelming at first.

If you are using 123Live to edit your website, ask about integrating Google's feedback mechansim into the forms on your website. In this way you can measure which adverts or keywords resulted in an enquiry. The same can be done for e-commerce sites to measure which adverts resulted in a sale.

This measurement is far more effective than simply counting click-throughs.