Which Pay-Per-Click Service Should I Use?
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a very useful way to bring traffic to your website in the early stages of your online business when you’re still building your search engine page ranking. PPC advertising is a system where you pay for ads on search engine pages and other websites. You bid for the best placement, and then you pay a set amount, say 10 cents, every time someone clicks the link to visit your website. PPC is beneficial to online business-owners because you don’t pay simply to have your ad posted, as you would with a traditional billboard or tv ads – you only pay when people actually visit your site. You can also strictly control your costs, because once your agreed-upon amount is depleted – say $300 – your ad is immediately removed.
The downside of PPC advertising is that the traffic can be of very low quality – meaning, visitors have a high “bounce rate” (they leave immediately after landing on your home page), or your traffic has poor conversion (you have plenty of visitors but they don’t buy anything). You can also have an issue if you’re paying for international visitors, but you don’t ship out of the country.
Obviously, you need to choose the right PPC service for your online business.
Which is the best Pay-Per-Click service?
The biggest and most popular PPC option is Google Adwords. Google generally brings the most traffic to your site, and the traffic is of relatively high quality. The problem with Google is it is usually the most expensive PPC option. Many small businesses find it difficult to compete with the big brands in PPC on Google. (It helps if you bid for placement at the end of the day or end of the week. Many large companies have a set PPC budget on a daily or weekly basis – once their fund is exhausted, PPC becomes cheaper for the little guys.
What are my alternatives to Google Adwords?
If you prefer not to use Google for reasons of cost or because you want a more specialized PPC program, you can consider the following options:
1. Yahoo! Search Marketing
Pros: Like Google, Yahoo! is a popular engine with a well-established program and quality traffic.
Cons: They are likewise expensive, though some keywords are cheaper.
2. MSN AdCenter
Pros: Known for quality traffic and a very useful keyword research tool.
Cons: Poor reviews for their difficult interface and overall useability.
3. SearchFeed
Pros: SearchFeed purports to be a more specialized PPC service. They promise more targeted advertising, which could be beneficial for people selling niche products – in particular they offer geo-targeting (traffic from your specific country). They are generally much cheaper than Google.
Cons: Smaller services like SearchFeed have been accused of providing lower-quality traffic. However, since the service is so much cheaper, you may still get a better ROI (Return on Investment). For example, if you received 100 visitors from SearchFeed for the same price as 10 from Google, as long as 10 or more of those visitors are of comparable quality, it’s a better investment. But it’s quite possible that all 100 of your visitors could be useless.
Note on SearchFeed: If you are receiving inappropriate traffic (too many international visitors, scam clicks, etc.), you can call the company and ask them to tailor your placement. This has resulted in better traffic for some users.
4. 7Search
Pros: Known for their high ROI, which they claim is better than Google’s.
Cons: As with many of the smaller services, users have reported receiving 100 visitors from all over the globe for every 1 from the US. If you’re not planning on shipping internationally, this could be a problem.
5. MIVA
Pros: Quite inexpensive, and offers a list of under-bid keywords that you can advertise for pennies.
Cons: Accused of having a very high automated traffic/scam traffic rate. Some users claimed to have spent hundreds of dollars without receiving a single viable sale, though others reported a positive experience with a good return on their investment.
Most of the reviews I’ve read on messageboards, blog posts, articles, and so forth are very mixed. The best course of action is probably to try a few different PPC services and monitor your conversion rates and overall ROI very carefull. I would recommend starting with Google, and then run the same PPC ads through other companies as well. (You need to use the same keywords and post on the same days/times so you can isolate the real value of the service.) Many PPC services offer a $25 or $50 credit for signing up, which would allow you to test their results without spending too much money.
