Pay Per Click listings are the prime real-estate of search engines and directories. These search engine listings appear before the natural listings under relevant searches (often in a boxed off area at the top of the page); and are commonly the first links that potential customers will see when they receive they search results.

Like all prime territory, unfortunately, these positions do not come free. Sponsored listings are powered by pay per click search engine advertising programs. This means that every time anyone clicks on a listing in the sponsored listing section, the owner of the sponsored website pays a set dollar amount for that click. Prices per click vary depending on the key phrases you have chosen and the ranking you want to achieve with your pay per click listing (i.e. do you require the top PPC listings or are you content with the third or fourth on the list?).

Creating and maintaining a pay per click account is not technically difficult. It is, however, time consuming. Why?

1) To create your pay per clicks, first you must research the rules and guidelines of each search engine you want to advertise in. You must compare search engine's PPC listing packages, add start-up costs into your budgets and attempt to determine which search engines give you the better deals and where you will obtain the greatest return on investment (ROI).

2) Secondly, you must take the time to set up your pay per click advertising account and determine under what key phrases you would like to be seen. This involves more research as the most obvious key phrases are almost never the most affordable; and will oftentimes not provide the greatest number of visitors to your website.

3) Third, your pay per click listings must be monitored daily in order for you to maintain your rankings. If a competitor agrees to pay more per click than you currently pay for your sponsored spot, your spot will be given to them. You must then decide to either bid more than your competitor for that spot, or bid for another spot that is cheaper.

4) Fourth, if your advertising budget changes and you decide to spend less money on sponsored PPC listings that month, you must again research key phrases and prices or you will run out of money in your PPC listing accounts and your keyword listings will cease to appear at all.

To save you the headache of managing your PPC campaign and sponsored listings in the search engines, Directory One offers this PPC campaign management plan.


Overture is the largest of the PPC search engines. The top search result listings for a keyword or phrase on Overture also appear on other major search engines and directories, including Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Yahoo, for example, includes the top three. However, the biggest can also be the most expensive. That's why the front-end work to develop a strategy using the most cost-effective keywords and phrases is vital to maximizing your ROI.

Google Adwords Select programs offer a slightly different format for PPC marketing. Google is the Goliath of search engines, and the growing popularity of these programs -- supported by Google's distribution partnerships with search engines such as AOL, Ask Jeeves and Earthlink -- has moved Google Adwords into a strong position as co-PPC king with overture.