Managing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising accounts (sponsored links on SERPs - search engine results pages) can be cumbersome. If your search engine optimization campaign is slow to take hold, the PPC provides some immediate relief to the challenge of getting people to your website.

The benefits of PPC are clear; speed to market, immense reach in competitive venues and the high potential for a positive ROI (return on investment) if utilized correctly. I emphasize "utilize correctly" because many users of pay per click advertising solutions such as Adwords, YSM (Yahoo/Overture), Kanoodle, 7Search and Miva simply are not as well acquainted with the user-consoles or the overall management of those advertiser accounts.

Define Keyword Strategy:
Yes, keyword strategy is an obtuse way of explaining that you need to know how to use keywords in your promotions in order to attract quality (and I emphasize quality) visitors to your site. Researching keywords is a necessary part of success with PPC but it does not end there. Your research is going to give you hundreds if not thousands of keywords for each URL (and in turn product) that you are promoting. As organization and monitoring keywords is essential to successful PPC campaigns, break those thousands of keywords into three groups (low or no traffic, moderate traffic and high traffic) and establish separate campaigns for each group. You will find that you will be moving keywords from category to category and adding new keywords frequently. An organized keyword strategy is worth the investment of time it requires.

Expand Reach At Every Turn:
One of the greatest errors PPC advertisers make is limiting their ad campaigns to one network. Setting up and managing a campaign takes time, granted, but what most do not understand (or want you to understand for whatever reason) is that the user of the Google Ad network (Adwords) do not use the Yahoo Ad network. Advertising on only one network limits your reach when in fact advertising on multiple networks increases your reach dramatically - and that means more visitors to your website (which is what we all want right?).

Test & Experiment Frequently:
Now that you have defined a proper keyword strategy, it's time to refine the advertisements associated with keywords through testing and experimentation. Monitor progress daily throughout the life of the campaign. You should have a good idea at all ti,es which keywords are working and which aren’t - which means that you will be able to dump keywords that are not converting. You should also have a good idea of what creative/landing page combinations are earning the best conversion rates. This is your opportunity to test whether those questionable keywords are worthy of an SEO effort.

In summary, by defining a solid keyword strategy, looking for opportunities at every turn and testing, testing and testing your keywords, keyword combinations and experimenting with landing pages will you be able to effectively and efficiently use pay per click advertising campaigns.