PPC Campaigns: Pay per click (PPC) is a internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked on. With search engines, customers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market.
Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to the website.
Although many PPC providers exist, Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the search engine and level of competition for a particular keyword.
Pay-Per-Click campaigns have some advantages over traditional search engine optimization. First of all they require no changes to the sites content or look to obtain top positions, just a willingness to keep paying. Also, the implementation of a pay-per-click campaign is relatively quick, it can take just a few minutes to start getting targeted traffic.
Of course, there are limitations to this type of advertising. New bids can lower the positions of other firms, and many will react by raising their bid to regain a previous ranking. Monitoring of positions becomes crucial. These campaigns can also become prohibitively expensive, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword phrases and the aggressiveness of the competition. In addition, many of the of the “savvier” search engine users have learned to recognize PPC results and will bypass them without consideration.