Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Search Engine Marking - Understanding Paid Search

By Terry Stanfield

There are a lot of options when it comes to advertising on the Web. One of the many options that you can use to advertise your website is paid search. Have you ever noticed that when you use a search engine like Google to search for a particular thing on the side of the search engine results page is a long list of features websites and links?

There are usually some at the very top of the page also. Those are all website that use paid search. Paid search is one form of search engine marketing. Users pay a certain fee that is usually based on a sliding fee schedule depending on the search engine marketing content of the website to have a link and a description of their website placed at the very top of the search engine results page.

The website still needs to use search engine optimization and search engine marketing in order to get listed but the extra fee will guaranty that there is a prominent link to that website at the very top of the page whenever someone does a search for the keywords or key phrases that are listed on your site. Paid search might seem similar to pay per click advertising, where a company only pays when someone clicks on an ad that leads the customer to the company's website but the two advertising options are distinctly separate. Most companies use a combination of search engine marketing, paid search and pay per click advertising in order to drive more customers to their websites.

It can be quite time consuming to manage the budget for pay per click or paid search advertising because many search engines have a complicated rate structure that encompasses many factors. Usually the fees are based on the keywords or key phrases that you are using and how many people are clicking on your ads. If you don't have the time to manage your online advertising or you're not very experienced at setting up online advertising it might be a good idea to hire a ppc management company or a paid search management company.

Companies that specialize in ppc management can work with you to make sure that you don't go over your advertising budget and that you are getting the most traffic that you can get out of these advertising methods by using only relevant and popular keywords. Paid search management companies can also make sure that your online advertising is being targeted to the right target market so that your ad dollars aren't being wasted. You can use great search engine marketing techniques and pay a fortune for paid search and pay per click advertising but if you're not reaching the right target market your sales won't go up at all. Internet advertising is nothing like traditional advertising so if you're not sure how Internet advertising works you should consider hiring a search management company to help your company get the most from advertising online. - 16651

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