While focusing on natural search engine results is very important in the effort to increase traffic to your website, pay-per-click advertising and search listings can also play a valuable role. Of course, organic results have their benefits (see the Domainmonster.com article, "Organic Search Results, for more information), the main one being that it's free to optimise your site to achieve them. Why should you pay for high search engine results, then, or for AdWords-style advertising?

Suppose you sell digital cameras. If a customer searches for the word "digital camera", chances are they're looking to buy one. A high proportion of the people clicking your link are going to actually want to buy something. Once you've got them on your site, if it's well-designed and looks trustworthy, and your prices compare well, there's no reason why they shouldn't buy from you. That means that in a lot of cases, clicks will result in a sale.

Unfortunately, there are dozens of people selling digital cameras on the internet, and they are all trying to improve their search engine rankings. You can skip the queue by paying per click for a sponsored link at the top of the rankings for a certain search term (like "digital camera"). If you choose the right search terms, and you make sure that your page title and description clearly designate your site as a shop (rather than, say, a digital photography forum), the vast majority of clicks are going to be from potential customers. Remember that you only pay when a search engine user *clicks* on your ad, and not every time they search - so only people who are interested in your site are costing you any money.

You will probably have to pay quite a lot to get a spot at the top of the search engine listings in the "Sponsored Links" section. It's only worth paying that sort of money if you are a large business. Google and other pay-per-click services will allow you to bid for the top spots. You can set yourself a daily limit for how much you are happy to spend on clicks, and your ad will just quietly disappear until the next day as soon as you use that up. You can reduce the cost of a high ranking by making the keywords you target more specific. Not only does this reduce the competition, but you will also find that more of your visitors will actually buy something.

Google's "site-targeted" AdWords results have three key differences: the advertising is unsolicited by the user, the ads appear in more locations than solely on search engine pages, and you pay per mille (i.e. every time the advert appears). Almost anyone can add Google AdWords code to their site, so submitting AdWords advertisements for several strong keywords or keyphrases can be a wise decision, as your adverts will be exposed to people who aren't specifically searching for your goods, but who might be discussing topics related to your products or services, such as bloggers, email users (e.g. on Google's web mail service) and forum visitors. Because of the nature of this site-targeted advertising, it is best suited to impulse-buy items such as gifts or health products.

Choosing keywords is a complex business, but the key point to remember is that when you start, the more you can target, the better. Include keywords such as product codes and descriptive terms. Ideally, you should write targeted advertisements for each keyword. The actual keyword should appear in the advertisement. Users are more likely to click results that look relevant to the precise search that they made. If they search for "Brighton Donkey Rides" and get an advert that says "Brighton Rock, Lollipops and Candyfloss!", they're unlikely to click. Tailor your adverts to your keywords; however time-consuming this may seem, it will improve your chances of a click and your traffic will be more closely targeted.

Once you've been running your ads on a pay-per-click service for a while, it's worth reviewing which keywords have generated the most clicks and the most sales. There is tracking software available for low cost or even for free, which can inform you of these sorts of statistics.

Pay-per-click is no substitute for organic search results, but it can give your targeted traffic a boost, if the right keywords are used, it could lead to lots of sales. As an aside, it can also be used to test the efficacy of keywords for organic search engine optimisation. Also, if your situation is extremely time-sensitive (as in, for example, the case of a promotion or event which needs to be advertised *now*), pay-per-click can give you the exposure you need for a limited time while more elaborate organic SEO can be taking place.

By Natalie Catchpole

For more information on features of a domain name, pricing of domains, or domain registration questions please feel free to contact Domainmonster.com support team who will be happy to assist you.