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Pay Per Click advertising was started by Overture in 1998. They pioneered the idea of selling contextual based advertising like today’s Google Adwords. During that time you can easily start a PPC campaign for as low as a penny or two per click. Now, it has quickly dominated the Internet as the most popular form of advertising.

Pay Per Click or PPC for short is a method used by advertisers, webmasters, and business owners to pay for targetted traffic through search engines. Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you to choose the right keywords you would like your ad campaign appear when a search is done. Search traffic for this kind of advertising depends on how much you are willing to pay each time a person or visitor clicks on your PPC ad. The higher the cost per click, the higher your ad will appear in search results for the keywords you choose and thus bring more traffic to your website.

This is ideal for your business if you are just starting and want immediate traffic to your site. It’s an effective way to get the word about your business. But don’t just take my word for it, although it’s a trial and error game, you should first do some keyword research, know the market and competition before starting a campaign. The key to a succesful PPC is relevance. The more time you spend tweaking and making your keywords as relevant as possible to your website, the higher your conversion rates will be.

Why Pay-Per-Click?
Doing SEO(search engine optimization) for your site might take sometime before getting any traffic and sometimes you just can’t afford to wait. With PPC advertising you can immediately test the waters and will allow you to do following:

• You can quickly gather results and feedbacks about a certain market in which you can base your future decisions.
• Know the demand of your business before actually investing more money and time.
• You can split test your landing pages to know how well they convert.

Getting Started with Pay-Per-Click
The major players in the pay-per-click industry are Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing(formerly Overture). Microsoft also started their own MSN adCenter last year.

There are also several smaller players in ppc advertising(Ask, Kanoodle, Business.com, FindWhat, LookSmart, 7Search, Miva, Search123, Enhance, Findoloy, ePilot) which might be worth looking after trying Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or MSN adCenter.

If you are just new to PPC, I would highly recommend Google Adwords to start with because they have the largest networks in terms of search reach. You can see results almost immediately after starting your campaign.

PPC Plus SEO
As you go along with your PPC campaign, it’s a good idea to combine it with search engine optimization for a long term benefits.