Pay per click can be a super way to begin your Online Marketing campaign. However it is easy to get into a difficult situation if you are new to the system or if you do not keep a close watch on the statistics that will be offered by your pay per click provider.

The idea is simple, you instruct you provider, generally a search engine company, to display your advert in one of the non organic sections of the Search Engine Placement listings ie the search results. You tell them to only display the advert when certain keywords or phrases are typed into the search by the searcher. The beauty of the deal is that there is no cost for that advert unless a customer actually clicks on the advert to take them directly to your website. So in theory you are only getting customers who are in fact interested in your goods or services.

The first problem to be especially careful about is which keywords or phrases you choose. Too broad a selection of key words may give you hundreds of clicks (and therefore a large pay per click bill) but hardly any sales, as only a small amount of the searchers using those words and phrases were either interested in your exact product, or ready to buy right now. The trick therefore is to be as precise as possible with your keywords. If you only supply pens it would be far better to have all the searchers keying in “pens for sale” see your advert than it would to have the much larger category of searchers who would input just “pens” or even “stationery for sale”. With “pens” the searcher could be looking merely for information on pens, when they were invented, different sorts, reviews etc. They may all click through to your site, costing you money but not with any intention of actually purchasing one! With “Stationery” of course you will gain a large number of people searching for the word but only a proportion of them will be looking to purchase a pen. So the advert may be listed often but have a small “click through” rate.

Once you have resolved the keyword part of the pay per click you really do need to check the whole campaign carefully. It is vital to know how much you are spending and what you are getting for your money. The search engine repeatedly asks you to place a daily limit on the amount you want to spend, this can be deceptive as