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CPC Overview

CPC or “cost per click” is the fastest way to get to the top of the page on search engines. The Top two web sites that offer this way to advertise are “OVERTURE.COM” and “GOOGLE.COM “ with its ” Adwords” campaign package. Google lists your chosen search term words within their own search network “IF” you choose this only. In addition they will list your search terms in their “Content Network” which is a list of other websites that “they believe” has something to do with your product or service, although to date they do not tell you exactly where that will be! Nor do they list the names of all their “Content Network” sites. For this reason we do not like the unknown of “Content Network” for our advertising, hence we choose to only be listed within Googles search network!

The #2 choice is “OVERTURE.COM” this company offers you a section known as “Precision Match” which list you in search engines such as Yahoo, Lycos, MSN and other well known partners. They also have a “Content Match” section which could go to any website they feel matches your product or service based on your advertisement text but not on your search term! This is much like Googles Content Network. Once again we do not like to advertise where we do not know exactly where we will be placed!

These CPC companies charge you each time a potential customer clicks on your site that they found on a page with the search term or specific keyword you have specified in your account set up within their guidelines. In more detail it works like this, When a web surfer or potential visitor to your web site types in a search word in a search engine like Google or Yahoo such as ” Texas Church” It will bring them to a page that has numerous websites that have chosen to list their site with this search term word. Those web sites that are advertising with the CPC are “sponsored listings” and will usually be in a box at the top of the page or on the side near the top in a colored section.

The way it works is you pay a minimum price per click which is currently 5 cents for Google and 10 cents for Overture for each keyword you choose such as “Texas Church” When you sign up you get an account that you can log into that shows the terms, keywords, total clicks and other info to your site on any given day, week or month and the cost among other items of interest. We have found that for a successful CPC campaign you should go to your Google.com / Overture ads to check your cost and position at least once a week. We choose Friday as this is the day before the weekends and the largest qty of people are surfing the net on the weekends when they are off work. If your competition out bids you on any specific search term they will get a better position then you. It is a bit like an auction/bidding system for position if you will. Being first on the list and on top is great but not always necessary. We have found that if you just maintain 3rd or 4th position you get about the same amount of clicks as you would in first place but you pay less money. It depends on your service/product as we have found that if someone is looking for a service or product that cost more then $ 100.00 a visitor/customer will usually shop around 5 to 10 sites before they make a decision. You can set a daily budget of any amount, for example lets say $10.00. If you have a price on any term of say 10 cents your site would get clicked on 100 times before it would go off line for the rest of the day. In our case we do not want our ads to ever be off line so we set our daily budget at a high price that would not be reached easily so it is always listed. This is very crucial if you are selling a product and you need to be found every time someone does a search for a keyword you have.

If you do not have the budget to get your site in the top CPC or sponsored listings then you only have a few alternatives. Free or non paying sites will always be below the top CPC listings/boxes. In order for your website to be close to the top in a free no cost section you will more then likely have to list your search term/words in the Meta Tags section and or somewhere in the body/text of any given page. Alt tags on photos etc. A search engine spider will then have to scan your site and find that specific word thereby placing it on the first, second, third etc. page. This also depends on the competition of that key word and how many links your competition has and or clicks they have received in the past which ads up to seniority and clout if you will!