Search Engine Marketing

Google’s Adwords system is an excellent way to get your business on the first page of the search results without spending months on SEO to get there. Instead, your ad is displayed on the top and right side of the page, and you pay a fee every time someone clicks your ad.

One of the first questions people ask me when discussing Pay Per Click Advertising, is “How much does each click cost?” The fact is, there is no way of knowing until you start running ads. There are many factors determining cost per click, not the least of which is the number of advertisers bidding on those keywords.

Google’s Adwords is based on an auction. You are in a bidding competition with other advertisers for the ad positions available on the page. Basically, the highest bids get the highest positions, but not always. It’s a little more complicated than that, but rather than me try to explain it, I’ll leave it to Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, who does an excellent job of breaking it down for you in this video.