To Pay, or Not to Pay
Article by Paul Noia

I firmly believe there is a time and place for everything, even PPC advertising. While it’s not something that I highly recommend, it can be helpful if you have just put up a brand new site under a new domain name, and you want to start driving traffic to your site as quickly as possible.

The problem with PPC, is that internet users are much savvier these days and they realize that organic listings turn out more relevant results pertaining to what they are really interested in. Also, people have been burned by clicking on a PPC link, because that business is paying for that listing under the keywords that you searched for. The reality is that the PPC link you visit may have absolutely nothing to do with what you're surfing for because those keywords were bought. Additionally, there are sites that do things less than ethical like downloading spyware and adware on your computer without you knowing about it (a great reason to keep your virus and spyware software up-to-date).

With that being said, if PPC advertising is turning out some serious casholla for you, then why stop a good thing? Also, SEO is not an exact science. If all of a sudden, search engines change their algorithms (mathematical formulas that determine page relevancy for indexing) your page rank may change to something less than desirable and that could affect your bottom line, in which case PPC may be your saving grace until you can re-optimize your site. If you are interested in PPC campaigns, my advice is really stay on top of and manage how well it is working for you using the analytic tools provided by the PPC provider. If you are going to look into a PPC advertising campaign, I would highly recommend looking into either Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing in order to ensure you are getting the best possible service, tools, and results for your investment.