Pay per click?  Is it wise to use pay per click search advertising strategies?     By John Bolduan RealWebMarketing.com

If you've been searching online a lot lately, you'll notice a proliferation of paid results that are coming up as a part of your search. There are many companies offering this type of product including Google, Overture & a some others that you've never heard of and may not want to. They offer to get you results on a pay per click basis. They can charge anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars depending on the competition for the keyword. 

It's hard to tell exactly how searchers view this kind of result.

If you look at things like spam in your e-mail box or pop-up ads which people have become very short tempered with, you might say that this type of pay per click advertising might fall under the same category. I believe that when people search the web, they're trying to find some information that is very specific. They're generally not looking around just to see what's out there or doing it for fun. So when someone is being specific, old types of ads were very annoying which includes pop-ups, pop-unders and e-mail spam. But pay per click advertising can be different but it can also be the as annoying as the other types of bad advertising. My opinion is that most of the pay per click ads are falling short of expectation and are becoming annoying. The trouble is with search engines like Google which have too much contextual crossover. For instance, if someone wants a portable appliance, some companies have taken the word "portable" as a pay per click option which is so general that it doesn't make sense when someone searches for portable toilet. Hopefully, most people who use pay per click will target some of their search terms. But sometimes they don't know that this type of cross context is even going on.

When you think about searchers, try to see how they will view your website. If they think you're being too pushy and you help crowd out good relevant results with paid ads, that might be seen as a negative just like pop-ups. If you're not getting good natural search results, then you probably have to do pay per click advertising anyway. You can minimize potential irritation of searchers by using pay per click that stays within contextual guidelines and gives people what they need to find. Don't be too general, it's a waste for them and for you.

Pay per click paid search is a big money maker for search engines, so understand that they want you to be effective with the ads and use them even more. Just don't go hog wild in bidding wars. If you do, you're costs could spiral out of control without a good return on investment. Be sober and think carefully about paying for this kind of search result.