What is Search Engine Advertising?
As well as displaying unpaid (or organic) search results, search engines such as Google also carry paid text advertisements. These advertisements appear based on the search terms (keywords) entered by a user. Advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks through on the advertisement (i.e. Pay Per Click).
Search Engine Advertising is also known as Pay per Click (PPC) advertising, Paid Placement, Google AdWords or Paid for Performance Advertising.
In simple terms, Search Engine Advertising works as follows:
- You choose your target audience and identify what they are looking for.
- You decide on the keywords you want to target with your advertisement.
- You put together an ad with a link to your website that users will follow when they click on the link.
- You decide on the budget for your campaign and the amount that you are willing to pay for a person to click on your ad when the ad appears.
- The search engine will decide whether to display your ad based on the keywords entered by the user and the amount you have bid for the keywords.
- If your ad is displayed and the user clicks on the ad, you will charged the bid amount.
- Once you exceed your predefined daily budget, your ads will no longer be displayed.
One of the key benefits of Search Engine Advertising is that because your ad is only displayed when the user enters predefined keywords, you know your ads are being delivered to an audience that is specifically interested in what you are advertising, so the traffic that the ads direct to your website is pre-qualified.
