With over four billion web pages catalogued by major search engines globally, your web site can easily get lost in the sea of URLs. For a fee, pay-per-click (PPC) search engines like Google and Yahoo! will place your URL higher in the ranking. These are the banner ads that appear on the right-hand margin under the section "Sponsored Links" when doing a keyword search. You pay for certain targeted keywords, so your pay per click banner ad only appears when those keywords are used or searched for. Your position is also based on how many people click on your link. The more clicks, the better the positioning. You will do yourself a great favor by selecting keywords that target your product or service and write a really compelling ad for your campaign.

Banner advertising that is not targeted like this is a total waste of money. The upside to pay per click banner campaign is you can adjust your listing until it works without going into debt. You can also list dozens, even hundreds of keywords that will bring up your link. The math has to be done to determine whether this is a viable cost for the sale opportunity. However, take into account, although pay per click banner ads gets prospects to your URL, they are not yet sold.

Ideally, these prospective customers are "qualified leads" by the fact that they searched for your targeted keywords. If these visitors were able to click on your pay per click banner ad after doing a search on a specific keyword that you had bought, at least they are in the market for your product. Now it is up to you to make your web site compelling enough for them to choose to spend their money with you. Remember that many web sites are selling the same things and your site must have a great appeal to the masses.

Although other methods of online and offline advertising have strengths and advantages over pay per click banner ads, the significant advantages of instantaneous results and the ability to self-manage your ad campaign, enhanced with the option of targeting a local market, makes it very likely that the PPC trend will not just continue, but increase. As further enhancements become available pay-per-click advertising will become even more desirable, both for advertisers and the buyers they are seeking. Get in on this trend before your particular keywords are priced too high.