Pay Per Click Marketing

Adwords at Google

At the time of writing the search engines Google and Yahoo! both offer businesses an opportunity to promote their website through an 'adword' scheme.

You bid on a certain amount of key words or phrases, that visitors might use to search for whatever it is you're selling. Which page your site gets listed on will depend on how much you bid.

For example in our Dutch bike business we could go to Google or Yahoo! and bid on the words `Dutch bike'. Lets say we offer them 5p a word. This means that as soon as someone searches Google and enters the key words `Dutch bike' they will at some point be presented with our site. And as soon as they enter our site through the search engine our account at Google will get debited by the amount we have bid on the word.

You open an account and then pre-pay an amount into it, which is then debited until either there is nothing left in your account or you pay more money in. How high your listing gets in the search engine will depend on whether you have been outbid on that particular key word.

Because if someone else is also selling Dutch bikes and they bid l0p on the same words their website details will be listed before ours.

The system has its advantages but the biggest drawback is that you are being charged for every visitor who comes to your site via this search engine, which mightn't be that cost effective. Nevertheless it's worth checking this scheme out to see if it is suitable for your business.