For a growing number of small businesses promoting their goods and services online to the local community utilising performance advertising or Pay Per Click (PPC) is an opportunity too good to miss.

But while most business people are being continually told the internet is the best distribution channel ever invented and probably agree, in practice many managers and owners don’t know how exactly to harness that power.

Any discussion of performance advertising should first examine Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural / organic search results by embedding Keywords strategically within a website. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list (SERP), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine.  For a more detailed explanation goto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

While it is common knowledge that 2-3 times more people click on natural listings as opposed to sponsored listings such as Google’s AdWords, the complexity and difficulty of making a company’s website appear on the important first page (Top 10 listings) has given rise to a whole industry of SEO consultants (of both the white and black hat variety) with what can only be called mixed results.

It has been estimated that the cost to optimise a moderately sized website is between $8-12,000 which probably explains why less than 8 per cent of all websites in this country are currently optimised. Add to that SEO is an on-going cost with no guarantee that Google (Yahoo! or MSN) won’t go and unilaterally change the rules and strip any page rank advantage you may have acquired with all your consultant’s work not to mention your limited budget – isn’t everyone’s.

Many businesses have turned to sponsored adverts (performance advertising is the fastest growing sub-category) as a more controllable medium particularly attracted to its promise of linking results with payment – the holy grail of all advertisers.

In any event, whether clicks actually convert directly to sales is debatable; although this criticism can in fairness be levelled at both natural and performance advertising.

But things could be about to change dramatically, in a positive direction.

A new entrant to the performance advertising category has recently emerged with a blend of both PPC and traditional SEO methods – it is being called PPK or Pay Per Keyword and may well become the vehicle of choice in the local space in the years ahead.

I should declare an interest here – SMARTPAGES PPK is a product of Your Online Community Pty Ltd, publishers of this e-magazine and operators of YOC SMARTPAGES directories, see www.smartpages.com.au developed with Patent Pending SOLD Technology utilising G.O.L.D (Geographically Optimized Local Directory) Keywords.

PPK work like PPC adverts but they appear in the natural listings, i.e. not on the right hand column of the SERP which means, all other things being equal, they will rate 2-3 times better than PPC adverts – certainly when they appear near or at the top of Page 1.

What’s the catch?

None really since you only pay if the adverts actually work! But they do take about 3 weeks to be indexed by Google and start appearing. Of course they're there 24/7 from then on!

Want to know more – just email me: andrewc@smartpages.com.au