When To Use PPC Advertising

Pay per click advertising drives qualified customers to your website from relevant websites featuring your ad placement. Similar to search marketing ads, PPC advertisements are designed to be dynamically displayed on pages relevant to whatever page the web users is visiting. The main difference is that with search engine marketing, people are actively searching for information and ads are being displayed based of of the search terms or keywords people use. With PPC advertising, people are visiting websites and are being given ad impressions based off that page's content.

Example of a PPC Ad - Click to Expand

Some individuals also describe pay per click and search marketing ads as push and pull advertising. Search marketing ads are being pulled by the users actions in searching on keywords, while PPC ads are being pushed on pages with content relevant to the advertisement. The bottom line is that both are effective online marketing sources of traffic.

One of the largest ppc advertising programs is Google's Content Network. Yahoo and Microsoft also offer their own brand of content networks to display PPC ads. If you have spent anytime online you have no doubt run into Ads by Google (see example above). In addition to text ads, Google's Content Network also allows you to run image, flash and video campaigns.

So when should you consider using PPC Advertising? Our suggestion is that you start with search engine optimization, then move on to search engine marketing followed by pay per click ads. PPC advertising is a good addition to SEO/SEM campaigns, but you will do better converting your traffic with good organic rankings and search marketing ads. Does that mean that you should never consider pay per click advertising? No. PPC is a great way to get supplemental traffic once you have a solid search engine optimization and search marketing strategy in place.