The Small Business Search Engine Consultant header image 3

An Introduction to PPC

There are three main providers of PPC (pay per click) advertising services just as there are three main search engines, and they are the same. They are:

  • Google Adwords
  • Yahoo Publisher
  • Microsoft Adcenter

PPC advertising is also commonly known as paid search involves you bidding for a space on the Search results Page (SERP) of the search engines. All three major search engines provide two types of listing- organic and paid.

The listings vary slightly from search engine to search engine but you usually find the SERPS (search engine results page) divided as shown below:

Serps Page showing organic and paid listings schematic

And here is how it appears on Google:

Google Serps showing Paid and organic listings

Targeted Advertising

All of the Major PPC providers provide targeted advertising based on the searchers search keywords. If you look at the screen shot above the search term was seo consultant and all the ads relate to that search phrase.

They also increasing provide more sophisticated tageting mechanisms like:

  • Country
  • State or city
  • Time of day,day of week
  • demographic

I’m currently not offering PPC consultant services but I cover this in the search engine consultant newsletter. I will also be putting together an introductory course that will be made available to newsletter subscribers.