Search Engine Marketing

Slipping Google a Fin

If you’re new to optimizing your site for the search engines, we hope you’ve already browsed our SEO page to get an idea of the basics. If you have and you’re ready to get your web site on the fast-track, then you’re all set to get a handle on Search Engine Marketing, or ‘Pay-Per-Click” advertising. Pay-per-click listings, which can be found on the right side of a search-results page (and sometimes highlighted at the very top of the left-hand side), are a whole new kettle of fish from the ‘organic’ listings we talked about on our SEO page. With Pay-Per-Click advertising, as the name implies, you get to give money to your favourite search engine in return for putting your listing on in the pay-per-click area of page one of the relevant search-result page. That’s the basic idea, but there’s just a little more to it than that.

Dis is Da Deal

So, let’s pretend your’re a real estate magnate in Toronto with a website. And, when people want to buy real estate in Toronto, they might very well search on Google for “real estate in Toronto.” That generates over 55 million page results in the ‘organic’ listings. You’d love to be at least in the top ten organic results, but, while not impossible, it’s difficult and takes a lot of time to get there when there are 55 million other people wishing they could do the same. That’s where paid listings can be a beautiful thing: no waiting. With paid listings you make a deal with Google: not surprisingly, where you’re listed is directly proportional to how much you’re willing to pay Google. You can say to Google: “I’ll pay you $7.00 if you make sure my website shows up in the top ten paid listings and someone actually clicks on the link and goes to my website.” That’s right, you only pay if someone clicks the link to your website, but you pay the $7.00 each time someone does so. Keep in mind, too, that if someone else were willing to pay $10.00 per click, they would appear above you, who are only willing to pay $7.00 per click. It’s a barter system. What you pay “per click” is very dependent on how competitive your term is—many terms might only cost a couple of cents per click, while very competitive terms could cost $100 or more per click. But there’s even more to it than that.

Be the Boss of Your Bribery Budget

A pay-per-click campaign can be set up for you that can micromanage almost every aspect or your advertising thrust. First, it can set an hourly, daily or weekly budget-limit on how much you’re willing to spend. If you said to Google “I don’t want to pay more than $49.00 ($7.00 times 7 clicks) a day for my pay per click advertising.” Then, after seven people clicked through to your site, your link wouldn’t show up on Google any more that day. The next day, you start afresh, or you decide not to. Not only that, but you can tell them “I’m only willing to pay the 7 dollars if the person is searching between 9 in the morning and 5 at night.” You could also say, “I only want my listing to show to people that live in York Region,” let’s say (yes, they know where people are searching from!) The whole idea is to precisely pinpoint your market, so you don’t needlessly use up your per-click advertising budget. Pretty smart, eh?

Getting Some Face-time with Vinnie “Two Clicks”

Pay per click is an excellent way to get where you need to go fast, but it does require vigilant management and the same keyword research and updates as you’d need to do well in the ‘organic’ listings. We estimate a commitment of at least three hours work a week, if not much more. You certainly could do it yourself, but we offer our experience and expertise to you at a very reasonable price. Plus, we bet that we can do it better than you can. Besides, don’t you have something more fun to do? Call, contact or drop by our office for more skinny or to get started right away..