Generating traffic on the internet . . .

This is a very hot button topic for anyone who is in business online or who is thinking of going into business.

The premise is very simple here. No rocket science involved at all. Just because you build it, doesn't mean they will come.

Even if you have the friendliest most helpful web site along with the most incredible product the world has ever seen, without traffic to you site you have nothing.

It would be just like having the fastest best engineered car ever built without any wheels. It's not likely to get very far.

So, what's the fastest, easiest (relatively speaking) way to send boat loads of people interested in what you have to offer to your site destination?

Simple answer . . .

Pay per click marketing or PPC is the fastest way to do this.

This is why . . .

When you're looking for something online but, you don't know where it is . . . what do you typically do?

The same thing just about everyone else does . . . You go to a search engine.

Now, I'm sure that like me, some of you like to see the numbers and statistics to help you put thing into perspective. Here are just a few to help shed some light on why PPC marketing works as well as it does.

So, about 55% of all sales that occur online do so as a result of search engine traffic. That's over half of all online sales!

Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search reach roughly 85% of all internet users through there extensive networks and partner sites.

Starting to get the picture now . . .

Of all the search engine giants, Google is at the head of the pack. 43.7% of all searches done online are done through Google or it's partner sites. That's huge!

So, hopefully you have some idea of just how much influence search engines have on the distribution of information online as well as online sales.

What is PPC or pay per click marketing?

When ever you use a search engine, there are two types of listings that appear on your results screen. You have natural or "organic" listings and you have paid or "sponsored" listings.

Web sites and other listings that are indexed by Google according to their relevance to your search key words will appear in the center of your search page.

The listings that appear at the top or on the side in the highlighted area, those are the sponsored listings.

Organic listing by a search engine can take up to 4 months.

How do the sponsored listings work then?

Individuals or companies bid anywhere from $.05 to $2 per click for top placement on a search engine's search result pages.

You set up an account (takes about 5 or 10 minutes) write and ad and within minutes, not months, your listing begins getting exposure.

When someone sees your ad, clicks on it, you pay whatever you bid for that keyword term.

That's why it's called pay per click . . .

You may be tempted to think that all you have to do is set up an account, throw together an ad and the traffic will start rolling in.

Well, not so much . . .

We talked earlier about the importance of being seen online. If people don't see your site, or listing it might as well not be there.

Think about how you typically search for information . . .

40% of web surfers stop reading after the first 10 results and only about 8% bother searching past the top 30 results!

In order to be "seen" by search engine traffic, it's important that you be at least in the top 20 search results preferably the top 10.

So, what's the key to top organic or sponsorship listing . . .?

Relevance, relevance, relevance . . .

The more times the keyword being searched appears in a listings text as well as the landing page text, the more relevancy that listing has.

What would you think if you were searching for beach cruisers and the listing you click on leads to a page about toasters or fly fishing?

You would most likely use a different engine to conduct your search.

Sponsors won't pay money to advertise on a search engine no one uses.

So, Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live Search are all about making your search results as relevant as possible.

The more relevant your listing, the less you pay per click, and the higher you search listing will be.

If you can properly manage the content of your listing as well as you landing page PPC is a method which will flood your site with as much traffic as you can stand both quickly and efficiently.

The quote of the Day,

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

-Aristotle