Pay Per Click

So how do we go about marketing a website? If today I decided I needed to get more visitors to my site Compare Mortgage Rates, what would my very first port of call be?

Well, if you want visitors direct to your website and you want them fast and you would like to know how many people are seeing the advert and how many visiting your site, then Google Adwords and other Pay Per Click (PPC) schemes are an excellent starting point.

Why? Well let's look at the search network today.

Potential visitors are searching on relevant keywords, in my case maybe 'mortgage tools', 'mortgage rates', 'mortgage help', etc. I can pick a number of terms that I think would be useful. To help me in this, the Google Adwords system examines the website and shows suggestions, making it much easier than it sounds.

So when Joe Blogs searches on 'Mortgage Help', my advert is displayed. If I'm paying enough, it's displayed high and gets his attention, so he clicks on it.

Now in some cases it is believed that people are more likely to click on adverts than natural results, trusting the adverts over the results because they are paying to be there. That's just an intersting point to note!

So Joe Bloggs visits my site. I know he's searching on relevant information and using the Adwords system I can even send him to a specific page. What's more, of there are irrelevant keywords in use, I can exclude them so he doesn't see the advert.

Google provides loads of reporting information, which seems to grow by the month! From the number of times the advert is displayed to how many clicked on it. You can place a snippet of code into your checkout routine and they will then track how many people actually buy from you.

There are, of course, some problems with the Adsense system. More about that tomorrow.