Pay Per Click Advertising for Local Campaign Websites
In many cases, particularly small local elections, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is not necessary. If you have an active campaign website, it is very likely that you already rank well for terms such as your name or phrases related to your political race.
For statewide campaigns, you may benefit from the added boost of PPC advertising.
Pay Per Click Placement
Paid placement is the quickest way to put your campaign website in the top positions of most major search engine searches — but only for the terms (keywords) that you are willing to “bid” for. The way PPC works is that you pay each time someone searches and then clicks through to your website using a search term that you bid on. For example, if you buy the keyword phrase “TinyTown Mayor,” your ad would display on the results page when somebody searches for “TinyTown Mayor.” If managed properly, paid placement campaigns can deliver very cost effective and targeted traffic.
The major pay per click services allow you to set a daily or monthly budget, so you can tailor the costs to fit your needs. Below is an overview of the two major pay per click search engines. Adwords
The Google search engine controls more than half of the web searches on any given day. The Google AdWords program displays paid listings that appear above and to the right-hand side of its regular search results. Besides the Google search engine, Google AdWord advertisers also appear on affiliates like America Online, About.com, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, Netscape, Compuserve, AT&T Worldnet and NYTimes.com.
Overture.com was considered the original Pay Per Click advertising program. Today, Yahoo! Search Marketing has partnerships with many search engines and portals, including Yahoo.com, AltaVista.com, CNN.com and others. With Yahoo! Search Marketing you strictly bid for placement in the search results for a particular keyword or phrase and pay each time somebody clicks through to your site.
Because your ads are reviewed by human editors to ensure that your website content matches the search terms that you want bid for, it takes a few days to get “approval” for your ads. There are strict guidelines about what terms you can bid on. The minimum click
cost is 10 cents per click. You will also need a $50 deposit to start your campaign but that amount is applied toward your click-throughs.
Should you use both AdWords and Overture?
Both services cover large segments of the overall search traffic. If you can afford the time to do both programs, go for it. If you want to make things easier by using one service, we recommend Google AdWords.
Other pay per click services
Other pay per click search engine programs exist besides Google AdWords and Overture. However, the amount and quality of traffic is generally not worth the time and effort it takes to set up and maintain.
The above was an excerpt from Running for Office as an Online Candidate, an e-book included FREE with your Online Candidate package.
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