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Search engine pay per click advertising has become one of the most popular advertising methods used in internet marketing, and once a person understands the potential of this kind of advertising it’s not difficult to figure out why.

With pay per click advertising, instead of you going out and searching for customers; the customers actually go searching for you. In adition to that, customers that see your ad are specifically interested in what you have to offer. There’s more…you don’t pay for the ad until someone actually clicks on it.

Sounds great! But as with most things in life it’s not that simple. Because of the above mentioned positives for pay per click advertising a whole bunch of people have jumped unto the bandwagon so to speak and so there is tremendous competition for the top ad placements. The question is; how can you squeeze out a sensible profit from pay per click advertising?

Choose the right things to advertise.

If you’re advertising something using a pay per click program it’s very important that you choose something that people are interested in actually paying for. And that is because pay per click (PPC) advertising costs you money. You don’t want to be paying the advertising company to advertise something that won’t bring you returns. Do some marketing research before hand to find out how much your product or service is in demand and if people will be willing to pay for it.

Choose The Right Keywords

Keywords should always be customer oriented. If you’re selling ipods for example, it might not be wise to use a keyword like “mp3 player”. Not only is that keyword not targeted enough in that it does not specify which mp3 player you are advertising but it is also not customer or buyer oriented. It would be wiser to use a keyword like “buy ipod”. An even better keyword would be “buy ipod now”. People who type in keywords like “buy ipod now” mean business; they are buyers and those are the type of people you want clicking on your ads. Of course you’ll need a keyword popularity tool to determine the best keywords based on what people are acutally searching for. I personally recommend wordtracker.

Write A Good Ad

Of course that goes without saying, you already know that you need to write a good ad. But the question is; what constitutes a good ad? Search engines don’t allow you much space for your ad, so you’ll have to use the small space given to the best of your ability. If you’re selling a product, mention the price in the ad. That way people can make a decision as to whether or not they are interested in your price before they click on your ad. If you don’t mention the price and someone clicks your ad then decides your product costs too much, you’ll lose money for that click.

Always capitalize important words in your ad, this makes your ad stand out and people are subconsciously drawn to your ad as opposed to one written in only common letters. Make your ad seem different from the others, take a look at the other ads that your ad will be competing with and create an ad that will stand out as different.

Spilt Testing

Split testing is when you create a number of ads and run them either simultaneously or one after the other and then compare them. This will enable you to determine which ads are making the most money for you and so you’ll be able to improve your return on investment. Never stop split testing, this should be an ongoing endevour.

Pay per click advertising can be costly and challenging if you approach it without sound guidance and a plan of action. But if you remain conscious of your customer base and offer them just what they want, you’ll be surprised at how rewarding this advertising method can be.

In my experience, the number 1 secret is choosing the right keywords…once you’ve selected ’buyer-oriented’ (not popular) keywords for your ad, all you need to do is to observe and tweak your ad as you manage your campaign. And you’ll certainly profit.

Anyone who is involved in online business will recognise the importance of increasing traffic to a website. More traffic means more visitors and hence an increased chance of making sales. The result is more trade and hence more profit. In general there are two methods in which to do this, one of these is organic search engine optimisation, the process of changing the make up of a website so that it ranks higher in search engines. The other method of increasing traffic is through pay per click advertising.

Pay per click advertising is extremely popular, in fact whenever we use the internet we are exposed to it. The majority of search engines support pay per click advertising, for those in the know these are usually the links on the results page that appear at the very top or along the right hand side. It is not just on search engine results pages however where pay per click advertising can appear. Adverts appear on thousands of high traffic sights all over the web.

Without search engines however it is doubtful that pay per click advertising would be as profitable, even perhaps in existence. Whenever you type something into a search engine, termed as a search query you are presented with a list of links that take you to relevant websites. Typically the top two or three and the links down the side of the page are pay per click adverts. Search engines such as Google offer anyone who wishes to utilise pay per click the chance to do so with Adwords and Adsense programmes.

In order to place a pay per click advert the first step is to find a suitable list of keywords that customers are likely to type into the search engines when searching for your products or services. These keywords are then submitted to search engines to be part of the pay per click advertising structure. In many cases no charge is required for placing the advert but instead a fee is paid each time the link is followed; as with many things in life, the clue is in the name. The fees applicable depend greatly upon the popularity of the search query. For instance, a term such as insurance is likely to cost much more for each click than say, wicker chairs.

Selecting the keywords for your pay per click campaign requires a great deal of consideration. Many may be inclined to advertise for queries such as Britney Spears or golf as these are excessively searched for every day, however remember that the point of PPC is to attract worthwhile traffic, if a visitor comes to your website expecting to see items pertaining to golf they are likely to be disappointed if they do not find them. The result is that you have wasted the money spent on the click. Above all the words you choose should be relevant to your business and the products or services you sell.

It is not just the keywords however. Designing the adverts is also an essential part of a pay per click campaign. As your link will be presented with many others it is important that they are written in a way that is enticing, if you create boring and uninteresting adverts it is unlikely that you will receive the desired levels of traffic. Keep the adverts short and punchy, by doing this more people will follow the link.

Hopefully this article has given a brief introduction to the process of pay per click advertising. It is no way intended to be an all encompassing reference point but instead an introductory guide to PPC. The ultimate objective has been to highlight the worth of this type of advertising and how it can reap benefits in terms of increased trade and higher levels of profitability.

Click fraud is the latest ‘hot topic’ circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-click campaign?

Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc. With around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Here we offer you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent click fraud and how to best report instances of suspected click fraud on your PPC campaign.

What is Click Fraud?

According to Wikipedia “Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad’s link”

Click Fraud is estimated to range from 5% – 15% of pay-per-click traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% – 35%) although Google estimates click fraud at only 2% due to the rigorous detection methods they claim are in place.

In a recent study by Click Forensics, click fraud reached a new high of 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006 with the average rate of click fraud on ‘content networks’ as high as 19.2% for the same quarter.

So who is likely to commit Click Fraud?

The click fraud villain is most likely to fall into one of three categories:

- Online vandals with nothing better to do than cause a nuisance

- A competitor clicking on your search network PPC ads, with the sole intention of increasing your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This could be interpreted as click fraud, although currently the search engines do not consider this kind of activity as click fraud

- Search Engine advertising affiliates who generate self-income from fraudulent clicks on ‘content network’ adverts displayed on their own websites. This practice, at it’s extreme, involves the use of unscrupulous ‘paid to read’ or PTR sites, which are basically click-fraud rings, some with hundreds or thousands of participants, paid to click on your ads with no regard for your return on investment (ROI) as the advertiser

What are the Search Engines doing about it?

Both Google and Yahoo claim that they filter out most fraudulent clicks. The costs involved for these clicks are either not charged or are reimbursed to advertisers who have been wrongly billed.

To combat click fraud Google applies four layers of fraud detection:

1. Automatic detection – this filters clicks from both the search and content networks in real-time with the goal of removing them before their existence is ever shown to the advertiser

2. The “Flagging system” – an automatic process to remove invalid AdSense clicks

3. The “Manual review” – this process has more than two-dozen Google employees tasked with manually reviewing and removing any suspicious AdSense clicks

4. If the first three layers of protection fail then the fourth and final layer of click fraud detection falls to the advertiser and 3rd party click fraud detection companies. Google refers to this layer as “requested investigations”

Googles main aim is that the first three layers of filtering will identify all invalid and fraudulent clicks. These layers currently filter more than 98% of invalid clicks.

And should you be in any doubt, both Google and Yahoo have, in the past, released the following statements:

”We think click fraud is a serious but manageable issue” says John Slade, Yahoo’s senior director for global product management.

”Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system” says Shuman Ghosemajumder, the Google manager for trust and safety. “It’s absolutely in our best interest for advertisers to have confidence in this industry.”

As a positive for the future, Google is currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) platform, which should effectively deal with click fraud. With CPA ads you don’t pay by the click but instead pay when the customer reaches a certain goal: buys a product, fills an enquiry, etc.

How to identify click fraud on your pay-per-click campaign

Before you can even contemplate identifying click fraud you must have effective tracking tools implemented on your website and, if possible, access to your server logs. With tracking tools in place, the most obvious way of spotting click fraud is to simply observe any spikes in traffic where there is no particular shift in your conversions.

Once identified, these spikes can then be analysed by looking for repeated clicks from sources that look similar. This similarity could be an IP address or an IP range; it could be a combination of IP range; browser version; operating system. Basically look for data in groups that looks fraudulent.

If all this is just ‘a bit too heavy’ for you then there are a number of companies out there that can help.

- AdWatcher: claims to able to spot click fraud so that you can report it. Covers other aspects of PPC marketing, by helping you track your ROI, email success, etc.

- Click Auditor: offers the ability to check whether your competitors IP is the one performing any abusive clicking, and says it will stealthily gather your competitors IP addresses for this purpose

- ClickSentinel: focuses on helping you get refunds on fraudulent clicks, as requesting a refund from your PPC provider can often be very difficult for the un-initiated

- Click Tracks: reportedly has automatic click fraud reporting along with other click tracking (analytics) tools

Reporting suspected Click Fraud

When reporting suspected click fraud, you must include as much captured data as possible to increase your likelihood of obtaining a refund or credit.

The following guidelines are recommended:

- Clearly state, at the very beginning of your claim, that you are reporting suspected click fraud

- Provide a full explanation to support your claim

- Include your account details (do not include your password or payment information)

- State the exact keyword, ad and campaign where you suspect click fraud has occurred

- State the exact time, date and IP address of each instance of suspected click fraud. This data can be gleaned from your server logs or 3rd party tracking tool

- Finally, state whether you are requesting a refund, credit or investigation

If you were using any software tools, such as those highlighted earlier, to help you track and report click fraud then include any reports generated by these in your claim.

Lowering the risk of Click Fraud happening to you!

Always bear in mind that your PPC objective is to get conversions and not just clicks.

The more you have researched the demographics of your intended client base the better your chance of avoiding click fraud. Are your clients from a specific country or location? When are they likely to search for your product or service? What are the key search-terms they are using?

With demographic data in-hand you can target your ad campaigns more effectively and lower your risk of click fraud.

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At its most simple, Pay per Click or PPC as it is known and as the name suggests, is a way of advertising on the Internet where the advertiser pays for their ad when their ad is actually clicked on by an Internet user. As it hasn’t been around for that long, many people still don’t understand how Pay per Click works or if Pay per Click is something they could actually benefit from. If it’s managed properly, a Pay per Click campaign can be highly lucrative.

Pay per Click search engines are those search engines that offer the Pay per Click option. When an Internet user runs a search on an Internet search engine, say Google for example, which is one of the most popular Pay per Click search engines on the web, they will obviously put some key words or phrases relating to what it is they are searching for.

When the results page appears, they will also see some adverts appearing on their search page. If they then click on these Ads and are taken to the landing page of the advertiser, the advertiser will pay the amount they originally bid on the particular key words or phrases. Of course there’s no guarantee that by arriving at the landing page the Internet user will actually engage and sign up for or buy something, that will then depend on the appeal of the advertisers website. The fact that someone clicked on the ad is enough to generate a fee.

If a content website or blog chooses to display Ads on their website, advertisers will usually pay a fixed amount for the keywords as opposed to a bid. Again, they will only pay when an Ad is clicked on.

Pay per Click Campaigns

Basically when setting up a Pay per Click campaign you would have to choose your key words, decide how much you are willing to pay and which search engine or search engines you want to go with and then open an account with your chosen search engines. The greater the market coverage of the search engines the higher the price you are likely to pay.

Different search engines will have different ‘rules’ or guidelines concerning the Pay per Click ads you can place. Generally though, they will consist of a short title and description of what you are offering along with a link to your website. This title and description has to be relevant and is subject to review before your Ad will be accepted.

Obviously, the particular search engines you want to go with and the key words and phrases that you choose are of the utmost importance if you want to have those click throughs to your site.

When bidding on your chosen keywords you will pay more for popular keywords. It is you that decides what the maximum amount is that you are willing to pay for any particular keyword. Those who pay the most will appear higher on the search pages. The price of keywords can range from pennies to pounds or cents to dollars and will vary from country to country.

A properly managed Pay per Click campaign will increase click throughs (traffic to your site) and the number of conversions (those who actually become customers) which will give you a greater return on your investment.

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To make money with articles that you place on websites, you will also need a variety of good affiliate links that will help to generate revenue. It is important that you know where to find affiliates and that you choose the best affiliates for you and your niche site.

When you pick an affiliate, it is important that you determine which companies you will profit best from based on the frequency that the product is likely to sell. There are several types of affiliates and some will offer you more money from a sale than others will. Before you get hazy-eyed by dollar signs, however, remember some products are bound to sell more than others. If you sell on product four times a year from a little known company that gives you $100 per sale or sell a well known product 3 times a week at the rate of $10 per sale, then you will make much more money with the $10 per sale product. Often times large well known companies will offer a very small profit per sale because they are established and know that their product is likely to sell well. Small, unknown companies, on the other hand, need all of the promotion they can get. Also, because they are unknown, their products are likely to sell less frequently.( Best Affiliate Programs)

The most important rule when picking affiliates to promote on your site is to pick products that would be of interest to those who would likely visit your niche site. Otherwise you will be promoting a product to a group of people who do not even want nor need it. If your niche site targets parents of young children, then promote baby products. If you niche site targets gardeners, then promote gardening products. If you promote baby products to gardeners, you are almost guaranteed to not make a profit no matter how much money the affiliate company offers for a sale.

Lastly, there are two main ways to find an affiliate company for your niche website. You can sign up with a company that manages the accounts of hundreds of companies, big and small, and apply for the products within these accounts or you can do a web search for companies that would match well with your niche, visit their websites, and see if they advertise an affiliate program.