Many marketers plan to increase spending by over 11% next year. Why? Mainly because of higher cost per click prices. As more and more businesses realize how effective search marketing is, the costs can only go up from here.

Of course, one has to ask how much effort those marketers are putting into their search engine optimization or organic search efforts. In my experience throwing more money at a problem is not the answer. Instead, businesses should be improving their usability of their web-sites and landing pages. Adding more pages and putting more effort into organic search engine placement would also be a wise choice IMO.

While click fraud is real, Google, Yahoo, & MSN, have many precautions in place to protect their multi billion dollar pay per click revenues (If your not happy you won’t be using their services). In fact, most surveys have determined that only about about 5% of all Adwords advertisers have received fraudulent clicks.

For you to determine your plan of action you should first look at your pay per click budget. There are several ways to monitor click fraud on your own but the cost alone may offset the actual fraud.

1. Monitor your CTR (Click Through Rate). If you see a sudden, unexplainable increase in your CTR this may be possible click fraud.
2. Sudden drops in conversion rates (Not tracking conversions or sign ups? Shame on you!) Let us help you: Contact us
3. Suspicious IP addresses: Check your Google analytics reports for recurring clicks from an IP address

If you believe you have found possible click fraud keep detailed notes and contact the support staff for your search engine. They will review your reports and can credit your account for the fraudulent clicks.

Lastly, just remember that few companies suffer from click fraud. Don’t be afraid to test out a sponsored search engine placement services because some one knew someone that didn’t have success with PPC. Pay per click campaigns can be a great way to supplement your natural search engine optimization efforts and provide quicker results.

Starting any marketing campaign without setting goals and measuring success will surely lead to poor results - typically over spending or under performing. Before we sign a new client we ask for the following things:

1. Analyze & send us a report your current web site traffic
2. Determine your current CPA (cost per action) from both your web-site (we also suggest determining your CPA for offline marketing efforts)
3. Set goals: Determine what you want your cost per action to be and set a goal for the amount of actions you want to generate per month.

With your new goals we can work towards a specific cost per action by optimizing your keywords, adjusting your budget, and tweaking your contextual ads. With the knowledge of your previous cost per action we will also be able to help you determine your return on advertising spend (ROAS).

• Your web-site is new (since SEO takes longer for new sites ppc helps fill the void).
• You have a regional service and more products then you do web pages.
• You have an e commerce related site.
• Your releasing a new product or service and need fast results.

Pay per click marketing may not be needed for customers that only have a few products and services and or already have a established site with a good link popularity. In these cases search engine optimization will more then suffice (and save you money).

If you still have any questions whether PPC is right for you don’t hesistate to contact me.