Hundreds of thousands of businesses are using PPC to advertise on the internet, and there are also thousands of businesses selling their services for something that you can easily do for yourself.
On the surface, it may seem to be a cost effective form of advertising; you choose your keywords, set your budget, and only put as much credit as you can afford.
Different keywords will cost different amounts depending on their popularity.
However, there are 3 problems with PPC that mean that it is a waste of your time and money: Pay-per-click Problem number 1 - Competitors Here's the most costly problem; your competitors can use up all of your credits without you getting any real leads from all the traffic being generated and directed to your site.
Click fraud has two sides to it.
Some service providers of PPC advertising will deliberate click on your ads to use up your credit to make more money.
Or more maliciously, your competitors, who are bidding on the very same keywords can click away, again and again, and use up all of your budget.
Whist they cannot run up a bill for you, your losses will only be limited to your predetermined credit limit.
That is, if you are using Google AdWords or a similar service.
Some commission based sites not work out so cheap.
So, it wastes your time in setting it up, and money for no return.
Companies are working on ways to reduce click fraud, logging IP addresses and so on, however in such a large, expanding and virtually unregulated market, it is impossible to control these things at this stage.
Pay-per-click Problem number 2 - Browsers Some browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, have for some time enabled searchers to use software plug-ins to screen out paid advertising on searches, as well as to block banner ads.
A searcher using a program with this feature enabled can conduct searches on Google without ever seeing your paid advertisement.
This goes for those thinking of paying for banner ads too.
They can be very effective at getting exposure, but a certain segment of your market will never see you ad thanks to plug-ins like 'adblock'.
With innovation occurring at break-neck speed, this sort of software ad-on is sure to become more popular and widely available.
Pay-per-click Problem number 3 - Smart/Biased Searchers Some savvy internet users will deliberately avoid those links which they identify as sponsored or paid ads.
I have had discussions with clients who will not click on those paid ads, and here is why.
The purpose of search engines is to search the internet and rank and categorise the website and information that they find according to relevance to the search term.
That is, when you punch your keywords into a search engine, the point is to give you the most relevant result, the most useful information.
For those who know this, paid ads are just cheating.
They know that the most useful information is more likely to be in those non-sponsored links.
Also, the information is more likely to be unbiased.
It is true that a paid search campaign can be useful in some circumstances, if you don't get all of your credit used up by a malicious competitor.
This may work, for example, in the situation of a very specific and non-competitive search term that you may have come across.
Also, a certain segment of searchers will not mind that you have paid for your advertising, or that use a simpler web browser.
However the most effective long term option is to have relevant, up-to-date content on your site.
When people find your site useful, they will link to it, which in for your search engine optimization is like building your reputation.
This kind of SEO is the best strategy for promoting your business through search engines.
On the surface, it may seem to be a cost effective form of advertising; you choose your keywords, set your budget, and only put as much credit as you can afford.
Different keywords will cost different amounts depending on their popularity.
However, there are 3 problems with PPC that mean that it is a waste of your time and money: Pay-per-click Problem number 1 - Competitors Here's the most costly problem; your competitors can use up all of your credits without you getting any real leads from all the traffic being generated and directed to your site.
Click fraud has two sides to it.
Some service providers of PPC advertising will deliberate click on your ads to use up your credit to make more money.
Or more maliciously, your competitors, who are bidding on the very same keywords can click away, again and again, and use up all of your budget.
Whist they cannot run up a bill for you, your losses will only be limited to your predetermined credit limit.
That is, if you are using Google AdWords or a similar service.
Some commission based sites not work out so cheap.
So, it wastes your time in setting it up, and money for no return.
Companies are working on ways to reduce click fraud, logging IP addresses and so on, however in such a large, expanding and virtually unregulated market, it is impossible to control these things at this stage.
Pay-per-click Problem number 2 - Browsers Some browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, have for some time enabled searchers to use software plug-ins to screen out paid advertising on searches, as well as to block banner ads.
A searcher using a program with this feature enabled can conduct searches on Google without ever seeing your paid advertisement.
This goes for those thinking of paying for banner ads too.
They can be very effective at getting exposure, but a certain segment of your market will never see you ad thanks to plug-ins like 'adblock'.
With innovation occurring at break-neck speed, this sort of software ad-on is sure to become more popular and widely available.
Pay-per-click Problem number 3 - Smart/Biased Searchers Some savvy internet users will deliberately avoid those links which they identify as sponsored or paid ads.
I have had discussions with clients who will not click on those paid ads, and here is why.
The purpose of search engines is to search the internet and rank and categorise the website and information that they find according to relevance to the search term.
That is, when you punch your keywords into a search engine, the point is to give you the most relevant result, the most useful information.
For those who know this, paid ads are just cheating.
They know that the most useful information is more likely to be in those non-sponsored links.
Also, the information is more likely to be unbiased.
It is true that a paid search campaign can be useful in some circumstances, if you don't get all of your credit used up by a malicious competitor.
This may work, for example, in the situation of a very specific and non-competitive search term that you may have come across.
Also, a certain segment of searchers will not mind that you have paid for your advertising, or that use a simpler web browser.
However the most effective long term option is to have relevant, up-to-date content on your site.
When people find your site useful, they will link to it, which in for your search engine optimization is like building your reputation.
This kind of SEO is the best strategy for promoting your business through search engines.
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