PPC, or to give it it’s correct title, Pay Per Click and webmasters beware, it’s a very quick way of emptying out your bank balance.
PPC is basically paying the search engines to circumnavigate the organic search nature of their indexing and shoot your way to the top of the pile.
There was thought some time ago that PPC would become the only way that a search engine would provide its indexing results. But that horrible vision would be suicide for any search engine provider, because rivals could maintain their organic algorithms and steal a march on their competitors.
So PPC and organic now sit in sometimes uncomfortable positions on a search engines page, but at least in the case of Google, they are distinct and separate.
What tends to happen on the average page, is that PCC has three positions on the top of the page (and distinctly differentiated from the SEO) and then up to around eight listings down a right hand column.
The organic search results hold their ground in the middle of the page and number ten individual listings, with the bottom of the page taken up with a number of other longer tail keyword phrase suggestions.
So, an orderly page.
But anyone contemplating PPC should fully understand that there is a charge for every time a person chooses from the list of PPC sponsored ads. Furthermore, unless the position is right (either top three, or basically reconsider) and the keywords are accurate (needs good copywriting), then you might as well throw your money away.
PPC is a very effective advertising tool, but only in the right hands!