When most people hear PPC, they think Google Adwords. And for good reason. . .In the US, Google leads the top PPC sites and now controls 74% of all searches in the US. Yahoo holds 11% of the market share and MSN 9% of the pie. The remaining 6% goes to all the other search engines combined. While Google is probably the best place to start with your PPC campaigns, there are reasons to consider some of the other search engines, if not now, then later on. Why start with google?
First of all, it’s extremely easy to get started with Google and the initial one-time fee is minimal. Another benefit of using google is that it’s very easy to track which keywords are converting and which ads are getting the best click-through rates. Also, the sheer amount of traffic you’ll get with google is the main reason you want to start there. If you can’t get the results you want with Google Adwords, you most likely won’t be able to do it with any of the other search engines either.
When should you consider other PPC Sites and which ones should you choose?
Once you make some money with Google AdWords, move your most profitable keywords and best ads over to the other PPC sites. MSN is definitely on the rise and currently matches or betters the search results that Google does today.
MSN is also spending about 20 times more than Google on advertising so it’s likely that it will win more market share from Google over the next year and continue to do so. As with Google Adwords, the initial start-up fee with MSN is minimal, making it easy to get started.
Yahoo! Search Marketing is generally considered to be a little more expensive but offers fantastic tutorials and support and provides detailed reporting tools to help you track your ads’ performances. If you want fast results and you’re willing to pay top dollar for a well-known site with a worldwide reputation, Yahoo! Search Marketing is the place to advertise.
7Search is another up and coming PPC Site with traffic reaching up to 1.5 billion searches a month. The company also claims better Return On Investment than either Google or Yahoo! because of their high quality traffic sources. The initial start-up fee is $25.00.
Why move to other top PPC sites?
The advantages of using Google Adwords are clearly ease and popularity among information seekers all over the world. If you are new to PPC, you’ll definitely have to start advertising with the very low searched keywords on Google Adwords because the competition will be extremely high for those terms that most widely sought online. It’s getting harder and harder to make a low bid on Google Adwords and still come up in the top rankings. Google is also frowned upon often by its advertisers for its changing of rules without much (any) notice. This is what companies who own 75% of the market share have the luxury of doing.
These top PPC Sites should eventually all be included in your marketing plans for the most thorough coverage and results.
