What is pay per click marketing?

Pay per click marketing (or PPC for short) is a method of advertising on search engines. Rather than try to rank organically in Google’s search results, you pay for the ads that appear at the top of the results. What’s different about PPC compared to other online advertising methods is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad (hence the “per click” in the name).

It can be a great way of getting customers to visit your website without going through the hard work of getting your website to rank organically. This makes it particularly enticing for new websites who will struggle to rank organically anyway.

But it can also be expensive. If you have a high CPC (cost per click) you could be paying north of $10 every time someone clicks on your ad. And you have to pay regardless of whether they become a customer or not. Knowing whether you should invest in PPC ads is tricky, but here we’ll give you all the details you need to know.

 

How to PPC ads even work?

Let’s get things started by looking at how PPC ads work. Compared to explaining how Google ranks websites in its organic listings, this is relatively straightforward.

Once start by creating your ads in your Google AdWords account. You’ll need to write a title, a description and include a link to the page you want to send users to when they click. You’ll also need to choose the keywords that your ads will appear for and set a budget.

Once you’ve created your ads and Google has approved them, they will start showing in Google. You’ll notice that there are normally several ads that show in Google for every search. Google decides which ad goes where based on a number of factors.

These include:

• The quality score: This is a score out of 10 that works out how good your ad is. It is based on the relevance of your ad to the search term, the quality of your landing page, and the CTR of your ad. The better your quality score, the higher your ad will show.
• Ad extensions: you can add extensions to your add such as a link to your website, a call out or the option to call your business at the touch of a button. Extensions make your ad look better, so if you can add one, Google will usually give your ad preference.  

 

What are the benefits of PPC?

There are several benefits to PPC that business owners should know about.

The first is that you can see much faster results with PPC ads than you can with SEO. It can take months to get onto the first page of Google, whereas PPC ads can put you there in minutes. You’ll also know how many people you are likely to drive to your website to based on the CPC and your budget.

You also only pay when someone clicks on your ad. That means it doesn’t matter if thousands of people see your ad in Google but never click, you’ll only be charged when someone actually does.

Google also gives business owners a huge amount of control over their ad spend. They can set strict budgets on how much they want to spend in total, on each click, and when they want their ads to stop running.

Of course, PPC isn’t perfect. You’ll need to keep investing in PPC if you want to see continuous results. Unlike SEO, the traffic dries up as soon as you stop paying Google to show your ads.