You’ve decided to optimize your pay per click advertising, but aren’t exactly sure where to start. Where should you invest your ad dollars? We’ve come up with best approach to pay per click advertising or expanding what you are already doing now.

The Big Three in PPC

Google, Yahoo and MSN provide the best results these days. They’ve morphed into more or less the same sort of PPC services. You can geo-target ads, you can set ads to turn on and off during peak times, you can split test ad copy, you’ve got complicated quality scores to optimize, etc., etc. Google still holds the lion’s share of the search traffic, but each has something to offer.

AdWords From Google

More and more quality traffic is being driven by Google, but you should still monitor your results often to maintain that quality. You can do this yourself if you have the time, expertise and attention to detail, or you can hire a professional PPC management company.

One of the main problems with Google is that it is not only becoming more and more competitive, it is also getting more and more difficult to master. With “Quality Scores” playing a more important role these days and more bids coming up “Inactive for Search,” it introduces more variables into the equations. If you are willing to put in the time to continually test and monitor your keywords, you can maintain a healthy Google account. If you don’t, you get penalized. You’ll see bid minimums raised or forced to pay higher prices, or even be purposely priced out. The good news is that with consistent effort, you can actually fine tune and tweak your ad campaigns to the point where you are actually paying lower prices, but getting higher ranks than your competitors.

With any of the PPC engines, you need to make sure you separate out your content network advertising from your search advertising and track those separately. If you don’t in Google, bad keywords are probably leaking your account right now.

If you are an advertiser with a large monthly budget, you just can’t afford to ignore constant vigilance with Google — it will cost you. Either spend more time on it, dedicate more staffing and hours or outsource it to a professional management company.

Using Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo Search Marketing (Formerly Overture, which was formerly Goto.com) underwent a major change early in 2007 with their Panama update. This overhaul was in direct response to what Google had done in the PPC marketplace. While they no longer dominate the pay per click arena as they had years back, they are still a very worthwhile place to invest.

Yahoo also followed suit with their own “Quality Index” … again, this is something that you have to work at. Quality scores must be dialed up with continual testing. Yahoo won’t slap you with the frequency and force that Google does, but you will suffer if you don’t do frequent split testing to refine your ad quality.

With ad copy testing, you want to focus on the three C’s: Customer, Competition and your Company. What makes you special from your competition? What makes you more relevant to your customers? Test different ad concepts. Then, when you find a winner, use that as a control and refine your ad with small changes to variables. The key is to consistently test to crank up that Yahoo Quality Index.

AdCenter by MSN

MSN is a late comer to the PPC game, but still a player to consider. MSN’s AdCenter has some excellent quality traffic and some unique targeting tools. AdCenter lets you manage the same geo-targeting type of local pay per click campaigns as the others, but you can also take it up a notch and target user demographics. If you find that you have high conversions for a certain demographic segment, you turn up your bids when AdCenter identifies those potential customers searching your specific keywords.

MSN also recently launched a new method to import your campaigns from Google AdWords. This will make your expansion easier than before. Word of caution when you do this: Make sure your Google account is as fine tuned and optimized as possible, or you will be simply repeating the same mistakes. If you have large Ad Groups with large lists of keywords, you need to break those down into smaller, more manageable ones. This will allow you to target the searches with more relevant ads. Again, test, test and re-test that ad copy.

The Others

With others like Ask and Looksmart, we’ve seen varied results. You can launch a campaign, see it succeed short term, then absolutely bottom out and put you in the hole. You can’t afford to mess around with these results for too long…your budget may not survive. Miva can also have up and down results. Be very cautious with high bids and don’t ignore your account for days at a time. Should you still venture into these other search engine markets? Not if you are struggling with managing your other PPC accounts. The good traffic is attainable, but you have to double your efforts on tracking and keep a tight eye on results since things can turn sour fast. Beyond these PPC engines, don’t waste time on all the others.

Should you as a PPC advertiser use more than the Big Three? Well, if you are already using Google, Yahoo and MSN, you are probably more than busy. Especially if you are going about it the right way — running split tests every day, monitoring earnings per click results down to the keyword, and continually looking for the profitable keyword real estate that your competition is on and expanding to relevant keywords. Make sure you are investing your time wisely with the Big Three before venturing elsewhere.

Continual Effort Pays Off

Ignoring the daily management needs of your PPC accounts will most likely result in bad keywords depleting your funds. On top of that, good keywords are getting more and more expensive because your quality scores are slipping compared to your competitors. Under-performing campaigns cost advertisers a huge chunk of potential business. It’s up to you to protect your investment with effective, intelligent supervision of your in-house PPC marketing or by outsourcing this essential work to a professional pay per click management company.

About the Author:

Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and PPC Expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a pay per click management company. Check out his site now to learn more about how to improve your PPC advertising campaigns and performance.