In our last installment on our series on tools, I went over just a few of the many design tools. In an earlier installment, I went over some keyword research tools, which can actually be used in this installment as well. But since we’ve already covered them, we’ll leave them out of this installment on PPC tools.

PPC, or Pay Per Click for those who aren’t familiar with the abbreviation, is probably the most popular form of advertising on the Internet. It is also the most intricate and probably the most costly, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. That is why there have been so many tools created to help us with our PPC promotion. In addition to the keyword tools that I’ve gone over previously, we have a boat load more at our disposal.

One of the biggest tools at our disposal is the bid tool. Overture had a great one but it is long gone, at least for now. What a bid tool basically does is show you how much a particular keyword is going to cost you for a position one rank if you use Google Adwords. This is almost a must have if you’re going to do any PPC advertising. Fortunately, even though Overture is no longer available, you can use Google’s own tool. It will tell you, probably even more accurately, how much your keyword is going to cost you to get a number one ranking, or any ranking beyond that if you like. After the keyword tool, this is probably one of the first tools that PPC advertisers go to.

Then of course there are sales tracking tools. The best one, in my opinion, is Google Analytics. It will show you how many clicks each of your ads is getting and how many sales each ad has made. If you’re going to do any effective tracking of clicks and sales, this is a must have. Of course there is AdTrackz which is a paid tool, and an excellent one at that. But if you can’t afford it, Analytics will do the trick.

One of the biggest problems with PPC advertising is click fraud. Click fraud is where a competitor clicks on your ads to drive your costs up by driving down your click through rate. This is a growing problem on the Internet. Fortunately, there are tools to deal with this. Who’s Clicking Who is probably one of the most popular sites to find out if you’ve been a victim of click fraud. To track 5,000 clicks a month only costs about $30, so it is definitely worth it if you do a lot of PPC advertising.

Then of course there are tools to optimize your landing pages, such as SEO Elite. These tools are critical to have because Google will really whack you good if your landing pages don’t measure up to their standards.

PPC advertising is big business and the tools that people use for them are a must have. That’s why there are so many of them.

Fortunately, you can get most of what you need for free.