To harp on a subject that you probably heard a hundred times before - keywords! One internet marketer put it succinctly - keywords are the oxygen of the internet. One of the most important steps in creating a successful pay-per-click campaign is selecting the right keywords. By selecting the right keywords for your website, you can attract a market of visitors who are ready to buy your product or use your services because they are actively seeking what you have to offer.

There are a few ways you can select the best key words for your pay per click ad. Check out your competitor's websites and advertisement to see what keywords they use. Go through your own website's copy to determine what words and phrases appear the most. You can also use keyword suggestion tools such as Overture's suggestion tools, Google AdWords keyword suggestion, or one of many third party programs. It is also important to think about your target market and what words or phrases are searched by most people.

Once you have found the best keywords for your pay-per-click ads you must do some keyword tracking to ensure you are only using keywords that get you good results. Most pay-per-click advertisers such as Google and MSN include tracking tools that allow you to see which ads and keywords get the most clicks and lead to the most sales. Keep track of which keywords create the most sales and focus on developing ads using them. Remember in pay-per-click each search engine - Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. has their own rates for your chosen keywords that depend completely upon competition. You may be in the 4-6 position one day, the next someone outbid you, and they occupy your place. Pay-per-clicks is a daily maintenance project if you wish to succeed. I use the first hour of every morning to review my PPC campaigns. Almost every day I will tweak my pay per click bids - up or down - and revise, add, or delete ads.

The best keywords will not help you if your ads are not effective and no one clicks on them. You must know how to write effective ads that make readers click on them. There are a few strategies such as using action words that compel readers to click, asking questions in your ad, promising important information, or making an extraordinary claim. The best way to figure out which ads are the most effective is to test different versions using the same keywords against each other to find the one that gets the most clicks and conversions. The search engine allows you to have many ads to the extent many marketers match each keyword to an ad to get the best click through rate.

Regardless of how successful your pay-per-click campaign is, you should strive to get your site optimized so you get organic - read that as free - search results. I know of clients willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each month on PPC but most of us cannot afford such expenses. Getting your initial traffic with PPC, while setting your site to the best optimization with keywords, and other marketing methods, remains the best long-term plan. There are a myriad of pay per click tools on the web and if possible there are also pay per click management sites that will instruct you and guide you through managing your online campaign. Look also to Google Adsense to see the money making potential it can have on your business.