Who are the pay per click players.
Very simply, for the majority of business it
is our opinion that Google (
https://adwords.google.com/ ), Yahoo (
https://secure.overture.com/ ) ,
and Verizon Super Pages
http://www.superpages.com/advertisewithus/ ) are the only pay per click
programs that are worth the time and money. The new web master should be
very skeptical of some programs. Keep in mind that click fraud is a real
problem in the major PPC engines and the smaller ones may simply not be able
to combat this at all. Google has a tremendous reach with over 55% of
the internet traffic, Yahoo holds about 25% and Verizon is simply the larges
on-line yellow page directory in the US. Here is a run down of each of
the players.
Google - Google is affordable and offers a huge range of options. All
of three of the PPC engines mentioned have the ability to limit clicks and
therefore cost to a geographic range. Google is the best at this for normal search engine results.
Google will allow you to pick a range of miles from a central address as a
starting point. Then set the distance up to 300 miles or a much smaller
area if you chose. You can also use multiple adds, both text and image
ads such as banners. They have a great budget feature which allows you
to limit your spending to avoid any nasty surprises. This geographic
range limit is a tremendous tool for plumbing companies, waste companies, fuel
oil and propane companies, and any company that needs to serve a particular
area.
Yahoo - Yahoo has a tremendous reach across the internet and
anyone wanting to promote a web site must consider Yahoo's PPC program.
However, it differs substantially from Google. Yahoo's local PPC program
is geared toward setting up your business as particular location. You can only
have one ad text per location and this does not rotate like a Google ad that
can change with multiple adds coming from the same location. You are
limited to one ad per location. While this can be manually changed from
time to time it is a much slower process. However, the competition here
seems to less fierce and so good key words are still available for reasonable
rates. By all means use Yahoo and Google when planning your PPC
strategy.
Verizon - Verizon has there own program which differs
substantially from the two search engine PPC programs above. First of
all you should ALWAYS set up a free business profile which is rich in content
for you business. Then you can set up as many different adds as you like
and tailor you geographic area by zip code, city, metro area, state, or
national coverage. The range of geographic options are the best anywhere
for PPC. The keyword's work differently in Verizon. You bid on an
ad display in a CATEGORY such as "website design" or "waste equipment" instead
of individual words. You can bid on as many categories or as few as you
like. Among yellow page search engines, Verizon powers more search
engine results than any other company.
Who else should you use for PPC?
Perhaps Citysearch which powers AOL (approx. 10% of the internet traffic) or a
few regional companies but in my experience you must use the "Big Three" to
get real results in PPC.
