PPC is an acronym for Pay Per Click. PPC is a method of advertising where the advertiser selects a set of keywords or phrases they would like to bid on and they only pay when someone clicks on their ads, hence the term pay per click. Pay per click marketing uses search engines to advertise on such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Many people have chosen to steer clear of PPC advertising just because they have heard horror stories about how expensive PPC can be, but the simple truth is that a well executed campaign will earn you a high return on investment.

Today I am going to educate you on the many advantages of Pay per click advertising and what sets it apart from search engine optimisation. So for those of you out there who feel ambivalent about PPC advertising, I offer you the following points to consider:

• PPC advertising is quick and easy to implement, you simply select your keywords and phrases and how much you would like to bid on them and you are on your way. There is no hassle or fuss as Google Adwords (The Google PPC advertising tool) makes the process of uploading your keywords a simplistic one. This is especially advantageous when you have a promotion/sale or there is an event you would like to capitalise on such as the world cup as you can write many ads for one keyword and pause them just as easily when the event is over. While developing a sites search engine optimisation on the other hand could require months in many cases
• You should be pleased to know that with PPC you only pay when someone clicks on your ads and not for each impression (each time your ad is viewed is one impression)
• Google assigns a Quality Score to each keyword, depending on how good your quality score is you will pay far less per click than what you are actually bidding for on that specific keyword. So PPC is not as expensive as some believe it to be after all
• You have complete control of your budget, you decide what to spend and when, for example if you feel a keyword is out of control you have the power to reign it in by decreasing your bid cap or simply pause it or if a keyword is doing really well and is highly profitable you may want to increase the budget to broaden its reach. It is completely in your hands
• You can write highly relevant ads suited to your product and relevant to your list of keywords thus ensuring that you receive highly qualified traffic that are most likely interested in your product or service. Organic listings (SEO) does not have ads that briefly describe your product so the traffic to an organic listing is not as qualified as it would be with PPC
• With PPC advertising even if a user does not click on your ad they will still see it on the Google landscape (impression) when they search for a keyword your are bidding on, so you achieve brand awareness and remember an impression costs you noting at all
• The Pay per click method of advertising generates immediate results whereas SEO is time consuming and is more suited to achieving longer term results.
• With PPC you can choose the language you want your ad to display in and also can target many geographical locations whilst you cannot do this with SEO
• The biggest advantage of PPC for me and what really sets it apart from SEO is that PPC is completely measurable. Google Adwords allows you to generate accurate reports on pretty much any statistic you require from your number of clicks, impressions, cost, conversions, conversion rate and click through rate. You can also get reports on your budget and return on investment.

So with all these advantages I think it’s pretty clear that Pay per click advertising can achieve phenomenal results for you or your business if executed well. Well, now I have armed you with some cold hard facts so that you can go in confidence to your boss and motivate him to try PPC advertising remembering that with more and more businesses are choosing to market their products online, one of them may be your competitor, so why not get a head start.