Pay-per-click search engines allow you to bid for keyword placement within the search engines. For example, if one of your pages focuses on the topic of "Offshore Investment," you can bid for the first five placements on Google first page when someone searches with this keyword.

Though a time saver but there's a catch, as most popular keywords are very expensive.

So your best strategy is to bid on less popular keywords related to your business baceuse you do not always need to bid for the Topmost placement. Slightly lower placement but on the first page is much more cost effective.

PPC is the only means by which you can receive instant visitors. It is generally the first step to start getting instant traffic.

If you are using any dedicated PPC search engine like Overture (GoTo.Com), FindWhat , Ah-ha.com or Kanoodle you can save a considerable amount of money by monitoring your bids.

Example: Your bid for "your keyword" is $0.75 and you hold position 4 with that amount. Your next competitor bids $0.63 for position 5. That means that you still would be listed under position 4 if your bid were $0.64 (i.e. you are paying $0.11 more for your listing).

You can save a lot of money by finding pricing gaps and lower your bids while still maintaining the same position. A PPC Account with a search engine optimisation company would save you hundreds of dollars and you can avail various free PPC bid management tools at Kolkata, India based www.dassnagar.com.

In addition to bid monitoring PPC customers should be aware that there is significant fraud going on in the PPC business. Most PPC search engines have affiliate programs and partnership programs. These affiliates often generate bogus clicks to inflate their commission. Highly competitive keywords like "Health Insurance Quotes" with high bids are the most popular targets and you can be one of those victims.

Dedicated Search Engine Optimisation companies have their own trackers which monitors clicks on their customer sites. With IP tracking they can differentiate between unique and repeatative visitos. They have also build their own toolsets based on google analytics results which is another genuine source of lead monitoring. Their are many such tricks of the trade which search engine optimisation experts practice. Thus to get the maximum PPC benefits it is advisable to hire an SEO Company than making an account directly with the PPC search engines. PPC is effective as a start up solution to get instant traffic but not as a long term goal.

- By Rajib Menon
- About the Author : The author is one of the founding members of Dassnagar Infosystems, Which is one of the leading Web Design India Company specializing in helping their clients to build online business in cost effective manner. The company is lead by experienced Internet consultants, computer scientists and management professionals.