The pay per click or PPC is a type of advertising over the internet where the advertiser only pays a certain amount of money when someone clicks on their advertisement and is redirected to their website. This advertising model is usually applied on search engines and content sites such as blogs and works on a keyword system. The advertiser decides on the keyword or keywords that are usually related to their target customers. Whenever the chosen keyword or keywords matches the keyword searched by the user, an ad will be displayed. The mere appearance of this ad does not have a cost for the advertiser yet; the payment will only be made when the user clicks on the ad.

The cost of PPC is determined by either flat rate model of bid-based model. In a flat rate pay per click, the advertiser agrees to pay a certain fixed amount every time the user clicks on an ad in the page and is usually used for content pages and cost comparison engines. In the bid-based model, the amount placed on a certain keyword depends on the competition for that specific keyword. The advertisers bid on the keyword by specifying the maximum amount that they will be willing to pay.

The idea main idea of the pay per click model is to stay on top of your competitors and it is very effective with search engine optimization.