PPC - Overlooked and Underrated

Guest contributor WebsiteBox says:

Pay-per-click advertising is the payment for premium placement in search engine results. Using the largest network, Google, as our example, it works like this:

1. You set up a Google Adwords account, develop ad campaigns around keywords and phrases, and bid against competitors for placement in the top and right side paid ad results.
2. You construct individual ads around individual key phrases, such as "yourtown real estate," and "yourtown homes for sale." Each ad has a title and a somewhat longer ad text block.
3. Your ads are placed in page positions on the top and right based on your bid in relationship to the competition, but also on other proprietary criteria used by Google.
4. When someone clicks on one of your ads, they are taken to your website and the page you designate, and your account is charged some amount up to the maximum CPC, cost-per-click, that you bid.

It's a pretty simple system, at least if you don't care how much you spend. In fact, when you talk to real estate professionals or business owners who have been unsuccessful with PPC, they usually say something like "it cost a lot of money and I didn't have good results or generate leads." They're not inaccurate, just uneducated in how to do PPC right, and one other very important bit of information. They're not aware of Google's Ad Quality Scoring and how it changes everything.