Pay per click
One part of Search Engine Marketing is “pay per click” (PPC). The top search engines all have a “pay per click” service. Each search engine serves 2 different types of results when you do a search. The main results that most people see and that fill the page are called the organic results. You can get your site ranked here by doing search engine optimization. The other results, which are at the very top and down the right side, are called the sponsored results. These are the “pay per click” results. You have to pay the search engine to be listed there. The tier 1 pay per click providers are
Yahoo! Search Marketing,
Google Adwords, and
MSN Adcenter. Each provider will show ads on their own site and on partner sites. All of them use an auction system. You choose a keyword that you want to rank for and then you list how much you want to pay for it. The highest bidder ranks first and the 2nd highest ranks below that and so on. It is very important to write good ads and have quality pages that your PPC visitors land on. The PPC companies do look at this and may rank you lower or decline to show your add.
