Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising refers to advertising where the advertiser only pays for people that click on their ad and visit their website. Search engines like Google and Bing allow advertisers to run PPC ads on their search engine results page.
The search engines allow advertisers precise control over the keywords where the ads show as well as the ad copy, location of the searcher and bid for each click. Google’s PPC services is called Adwords and Bing’s service is called Adcenter. Other large online advertisers like Facebook have PPC advertising services as well.
Similar to SEO, placing PPC ads on the search engine results page allows advertisers to show their ad to people who have expressed interest in related keywords. This means that PPC clicks have a higher intent to need your product or service than many other forms of advertising.
In addition to ads on the search engine results page, you can also use Retargeting, which targets visitors to your website with ads on other popular websites, such as popular news and informational sites. This is a great way to target visitors who visited your site but did not take a defined action.