What is Paid Search?

Paid Search is when you pay for clicks to your site (PPC), when your site is listed in the “sponsored listing” section of search results.

While it’s relatively simple (you create an ad; have it displayed for certain keywords; clicks take visitors to a specific page; you pay for the click) — the whole world of paid search is much more complicated in reality.

First a brief history.

I remember when GoTo.com came out, and I was contacted by Patrizzio (forgot his last name – sorry!) from their business development team.  I had no idea that this introduction to their company was the beginning of an entirely new industry.

Remember, before Goto.com, the only “Search Engine Marketing”, was simply natural search.  (Now, “Search Engine Marketing” is an umbrella term that covers both PPC and Natural Search.)

Goto.com was the first paid search vendor, and launched this entire industry.

They saw the need for top placements in Search, and knew that advertisers would pay for it.  The “pay per click” model was their answer for charging.

However, back then – it was really simple:  You simply outbid your competitor by one penny per click, and BAM!, you’ve outranked them.  (But then again, the competitor would immediately outbid you by a penny.  It was a vicious circle.)

After a few change of hands, Goto.com was ultimately acquired by Yahoo.  Around that time (give or take a couple years) Google saw the dollar signs in Paid Search, and launched their version of it. (See the history of Goto.com here.)

…but, Google decided that this whole “simply outbidding each other thing” wasn’t enough to produce quality end user results.

Enter:  Google Adwords

Google’s Adwords is the most well known (and leading) PPC solution for advertisers to pay for placement in the top of the search results for specific search terms.

…but it’s much, much more complicated now.

Choose Keywords Carefully or Throw Money Down the Toilet

When you’re paying for every click to your site, you need to carefully select the keywords you’re going to bid on.

Why?  Well, if you want to just get eyeballs on your site, then bid away.  (You’ll burn through your budget in no-time.)

But, if you want to be sure you make money from the keywords you bid on, then you need to determine who you want to reach, exactly when to reach them, the exact message you want to reach them with, and exactly what they will do when they get to your site.

Phew.  That’s a lot to consider!

(And that’s not all.)

Choose “Buying” Keywords

If you want to reach buyers — people with wallet in-hand, ready to purchase and simply need to know where to buy, then you need to understand the exact search terms they use.  Those are the “buying” keywords.

Understanding the intent of the user is critical when selecting keywords to bid on.

It’s all about ROI

With Paid Search, tracking the spend is simple:  You get charged for every click.

But what about the money you made from that expense?

It’s rather easy to use an ROI Tracking Mechanism on your site to directly tie each sale made (or lead captured) with the exact search term that you paid to bring the new customer to your site.

There’s a lot to cover in Paid Search

We’ll help demystify this complex traffic source, and help you learn the ropes — step by step.