This article comes to us from the Diverse Solutions blog:

Short for "pay per click," PPC advertising is when you pay a search engine for prominent placement of your website on their search results pages. With even a small budget, any online business can increase traffic with PPC – the trick is knowing how to convert your traffic into real leads you can pick up the phone and call.

How pay per click works

Pay per click allows you to advertise your website at or near the top of search results or other pages of a provider's website. There are many providers to choose from, however Google AdWords, which manages ads shown in Google search; or Yahoo! Bing Network, which covers ads seen in both Bing (Microsoft) and Yahoo search, are the more well-known providers. Either of these options covers a broad audience and are great for beginners looking to promote their IDX and real estate website(s).

Setting up an account with any of these services is pretty straightforward. Simply sign up as a new advertiser, add funding to the account (usually in the form of a credit card), then create a few ads and decide where you want your ads to appear.

In most cases, you'll simply create an ad that will appear whenever someone performs a search on Google (or Bing or Yahoo) related to your site.

Here are the basic steps...