In recent years, Pay Per Click advertising has risen to become one of the largest and most recognised forms of online advertising. It differs from more traditional banner advertising in that you only pay when someone clicks on your advert. You can also set your advert to only appear for specific search terms, or in certain geographical areas.

Some people (maybe up to 40%) say they never ever click on pay per click advertising links because they’re a little wary of “advertising”. Does that concern you? It shouldn’t! It’s just like some people not reading the ads in their newspaper. So if your business is based in the UK, you’ll just have to make do with the remaining 25 million potential customers!

If you’ve got a great product or service and it’s competitively priced, you’ll probably find that search engine marketing becomes a dependable, if not essential marketing tool.

For most businesses starting out with online marketing, we recommend a small budget trial on Google. We test out your advertising, your keywords, your website and how your company handles the extra business. If search engine marketing works well on a trial, then you’ll want to crank it up by expanding your reach through Yahoo and MSN.

If you run an e-commerce business, extra sales can mean extra product discounts from your suppliers. You can use these to offset your search engine marketing budget or give your prices a more competitive edge, which will bring in more sales.