Bid on as many low-cost relevant terms as you can. The cost of a top position with Overture or any of the other big PPC search engines depends upon the keyword you're bidding on, how many of your competitors are also bidding on it and how many people search for it.

If you've to bid on a popular word such as 'Internet marketing' be prepared to pay around $2 - $4 for a decent position. However what if you went for "Internet marketing articles" which costs less than a quarter of the price, it will produce far less visits of course but is much more cost effective. Imagine doing this on a wide scale basis, securing lots of low-cost positions, the combined traffic from these positions will add up to the level produced by a popular keyword but at a fraction of the cost.

It used to be a good idea to bid on all relevant terms (if you could), however some of the big engines now require a $.05 minimum bid. This means some terms will not be worth it, terms that are worth it will contain several words and are highly targeted, meaning that the searcher who clicks through is really interested in your page and more likely to buy or sign up, whichever the case may be.

Most pay-per-click search engines allow you to link directly to the relevant page of your site. This means that you're giving the searcher exactly what he or she is looking for. This way you're more likely to make a sale as the visitor is in the right mind-frame to buy and will not get lost or give up before finding the page that he or she is looking for.

If you've read the article entitled Search engine optimization guide you'll have learnt that it's more likely visitors will click through if their search term is in the title and description of your listing, this is because it appears to be exactly what they were searching for and hence they mentally associate it with a good find. Needless to say I highly recommend that you always include the exact search term in your title and / or description, doing so should increase your listings click through rate (CTR). Furthermore make your title and description as descriptive as possible. This has a few benefits.

• Searchers are much more likely to click on a link if they know where it's going.
   
• It saves you money because the people that click through are really interested in your page as your title and description is very 'descriptive'. If your title was not descriptive they would click through and investigate, if you didn't have what they wanted they would leave and you've just lost money.

With pay per click search engines you're only paying for actual visitors and not views of your listing, so being listed in the top 1-3 positions is not always the best strategy because the quality of people who click on top listings might not be of the highest standard. This is because a lot of searchers seem to click on a high listing without actually reading it, again if you didn't have what they wanted they would leave and again you have just lost money.

Now imagine if someone clicked through on a site ranked 9th after scanning through most of the other descriptions briefly, they'd be a much higher quality visitor because they've hunted down exactly what they wanted and are genuinely interested in that site. These people are the visitors you want as they're much more likely to buy your product or sign up to your newsletter.

Bidding on a top 3 position is a good strategy however on less popular words and phrases as this means they'll show up on partner sites (Overture.com currently partners with MSN and many other big names). These words are far cheaper than more searched for general words and have a better visitor to sale ratio. Partner sites such as MSN will help get the search count up on these words, hence this is another good reason to bid on the less popular words and phrases.

Get specific. Generally speaking the more words a keyphrase you bid on has the more likely a visitor will become a customer after clicking on your listing. Once again you only pay for clicks not views so you don't lose money if no one clicks and if they do the chances are good that they'll buy from you. It's very hard to lose money on really specific keyphrases.

Well that's it. I hope you can use this information to make you a bit of money, by the way Google Adwords, Overture.com and Findwhat.com are the pay-per-click engines I recommend the most.

Article by David Callan. David is an Internet marketing professional and webmaster of http://www.akamarketing.com/webmaster-forums/. Visit his webmaster forums for the latest discussions on search engines, website authoring and Internet marketing related issues and topics.

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