Wright to Holics

Over the last few years search engine advertising has become an integral part of most online advertising campaigns. The simple format coupled with low test costs have proven to be a popular and attractive format for many businesses. However, there is a lot more to this than just setting up and forgetting.

Search Engine Advertising is a relative newcomer to the field of advertising, but is one which is already an integral part of many campaigns. Businesses of all types are already using search engine advertising, having become aware of the benefits which the medium can offer; and other businesses which have not yet begin to employ this approach are starting to see themselves losing market share to companies who have kept up with new technologies.

While there will likely always be some people who use printed telephone directories, a large number of people have already begin to favor Google and other search engines for the sort of information they once turned to the phone book for. Companies in the know about this trend have begun to engage the services of advertising and marketing firms to help them establish a presence where consumers can readily find them. In our ever more connected age, this is more and more likely to be on the World Wide Web.

Search engine advertising is an incredibly cost effective and highly targeted means of advertising; ads are placed alongside search results according to their relevance to the search term, exactly the way that the results themselves are retrieved by the search engines.

This media demands the skills of experienced search engine advertising professionals who can create pay per click (PPC) advertising campaigns which will get results. The right keywords in and tied to your search engine advertising campaign can spell success or failure for your efforts.

Of course, unlike a traditional advertising campaign, there is not necessarily a lot of money wasted in a failed PPC campaign. Ads cost the advertiser nothing unless they are clicked and they can be fine-tuned at any time to get better results; another advantage of search engine advertising as a means of reaching your target market.

Network advertising is similar to search engine advertising. Like PPC ads, they are contextual; but rather than relying on the user’s search terms for this context, they are targeted towards consumers based on their internet behavior and any demographic information which they have given to websites which are part of the network. This is a form of advertising which is used especially to reach the users of social networking services, since they furnish these social networks with a wealth of demographic information of use to advertisers. The network delivers video content, banner ad and other types of new media advertising to users based on a very educated guess about which products and services would appeal the most strongly to them.

The online world is one which is changing and growing daily. Any business which wants to stay ahead of the curve and maximize their potential as a web presence should consult with search engine advertising professionals who know the ins and outs of using the potential marketing avenues of the World Wide Web to reach their target markets.

Is pay per click advertising better than search engine optimization? This is a fundamental but unvoiced argument going on the internet today, in which internet marketing gurus are having a hard time giving a clear cut answer to.

Pay per click advertising is when advisers use search engines to advertise their products. It is called pay per click because the advertiser’s total advertisement cost depends on the total number of clicks on his ads. This means that advertisers pay an amount every time someone clicks on their ads. The main pay per click advertising media on the internet today is Google with Google AdWords. You also have Yahoo with Yahoo Search Engine Marketing, and MSN.

Search engine optimization (SEO) for its part is a process where by, webmasters efficiently optimize their WebPages, so that their websites could rank high on the search results pages of the main search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. This type of search result is called natural or organic search results. Ranking high in the organic search results for a popular and profitable keyword is the dream of every advertiser or webmaster.

On all search queries performed on Google, Google returns the search results on a search result page. A typical Google search result page has 2 sections. One of them is the result for the natural or organic search which appears on your left hand side. The other section of the result page is called the sponsored links, which appear on your right hand side. Now the million dollar question here is: which side of the search results do you want your website to appear? Organic search results or the sponsored links search results.

Just as there are always 2 sides to every story, there are always advantages and disadvantages linked with everything. Search engine optimization versus pay per click advertising is not an exception. There are good and bad sites of both methods. There are people for and against search engine optimization, as well as people for and against pay per click advertising.

Most people would quickly jump to the conclusion that search engine optimization is better since it is free. That could be true, but don’t capitalize on that until you hear and learn some of the drawbacks of search engine optimization (organic search results) and some of the advantages of pay per click advertising. (Sponsored links search results).

I have outlined below 4 advantages of pay per click advertising

1-Pay per click advertising is more targeted. The user clicking on your ad under the sponsored links section knows that you are trying to sell something. So there are more ready to buy what you may offer, provided the offer is interesting to them.

2-The second and the most important advantage of pay per click advertising is the time factor. Within minutes of setting up your AdWords account, you will start getting clicks to your website. You don’t need to perform some SEO magical algorithm and wait for ages for Google to index your page and then try to rank high.

3-Mysterious Targeting. With pay per click advertising you can accurately monitor the exact keywords that convert into buying customers. If you have this valuable information, you can then optimize your campaign by paying only for such keywords.

4-Pay per click is a great Money-Making device. Ok, imagine this: what would be your answer to this question? “Is advertising expensive?” if you say “yes”, then you need to think again. If you say “it depends”, then you are bright. Most people usually say advertising is expensive. Come to think of it, if you could spend a dollar today to make two dollars tomorrow, would you go in for it? Of course you would. That’s precisely how a well optimized pay per click campaign works. So next time someone ask you if advertising is expensive or not, tell her that it depends if that advertising is profitable or not. Advertising becomes very cheap if it is profitable.