Pay per click (PPC) is paid search advertising, a fairly new advertising model in which, as the name suggests, the advertiser pays nothing for the placement of his advertisement until a potential customer actually clicks on it to visit his website.

The advertisements are small, with the size of the ad, the number of words and the type of text used being strictly controlled. They usually consist of a short heading, no more than 50 characters, a brief description of the service or product offered, approximately 200 characters long, and a link to the advertiser’s website.

Depending on the search engine chosen the advertisement might have to be approved before being listed. The upside of this is, of course, that the advertisements do not require extensive content development.

The advertisement may be placed in various locations from search engines to content websites and blogs. When they appear in the results pages of search engines they show up under the heading: sponsored links or sponsored ads, generally on the right hand side column. On content websites or blogs they may be placed anywhere on the content page that the webmaster or blogger chooses.

In the latter instance, when no search function is involved, advertisements are matched to the content of the webpage by ad networks such as Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network. These advertisements, however, are less likely to attract genuine buyers to your website.

The choice of keywords is vital to the success of a PPC advertising campaign and advertisers have to try to predict which keywords their target market would use to search for the product or service they are offering. They then have to bid for the keywords they have selected.

Each keyword or phrase has its own bid price depending on the search engine used and the popularity of the keywords, the average price being between $1 and $10. Although PPC is a very effective way of putting your product exactly where searchers are looking for it, obviously a glut of curious visitors could quickly consume your advertising budget.

Despite this the growing trend for online marketing has made PPC a popular choice for advertisers who enjoy the simplicity of the marketing technique, the control it allows them over their advertising campaign and the feedback they receive on its performance. Sales in paid search marketing was over $14billion last year and are predicted to grow at over 35% per annum as everyone scrambles to get on the bandwagon.

There are many search engines which offer PPC as a marketing option. The most popular of these are Google with their AdWords program and Yahoo! Search Marketing. However, many other search engines offering PPC marketing are available, from large metasearch engines which include traffic from numerous other engines to small specialized engines focusing on a few specific topics.

The advantage of the larger search engines is the greater market reach and the tracking and return on investment statistical features which both Google and Yahoo offer.

Compared with other, more traditional forms of online advertising, PPC marketing, if used judiciously, can be an effective and comparatively inexpensive way to generate traffic to your website.