What is Pay Per Click? Whether you are new to PPC advertising, or you just need to jog your memory a bit, this is the right place. If you are not gaining enough organic traffic, you can use an alternative forms of advertising. Alternative forms which help drive traffic to your website for you. Essentially, it is a way to buy viewers to your site.

Search engine advertising is by far one of the most popular forms of PPC. This method gives advertisers the ability to bid for ad placement in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches for a keyword related to their business offering. So, if we were to bid on the keyword “local SEO company”, our ad has a chance of showing up on the top spot on the Google results page.

Every time our ad is clicked, which would send a visitor to our website, causes us to pay the small search engine fee. When working correctly, PPC fees are trivial. This is due to the fact that the visit is worth more than you pay for it. So, if you pay $4 for a click, and that click ends up converting to your $500 package, then you have made quite a hefty profit. However, odds are you don’t hit gold on your first click. Therefore, you set a budget and a max CPC.

Budgets

With a budget set in place, you are able to submit a maximum amount of money you want spent.  As a result, the higher the budget, the more clicks you can ultimately receive. For example, if you put $1000 in your budget, then you will be bidding on clicks until it runs out.

Max CPC

So, you’ve got your budget in place, now you must set a max CPC, which is not an easy thing to do. Depending on the keywords you have selected, you will know what the average bid for the keyword is. Therefore, if the average winning bid for your keywords is over $5, you should raise your max CPC. However, if the average winning bid is lower that $5, then you should drop your max CPC in order to save money per click. Also, you are  maximizing the amount of clicks you are able to receive.

To fully understand the question “What is pay per click”, now that you know the basics, you must know what Google Ads is. Formerly known as Google Adwords, Google Ads is the single most popular PPC advertising system in the world. Their platform allows businesses to create ads that appear on Google’s search engine and all other Google properties.

So, Google Ads also operates on a pay-per-click model where users bid on their chosen keywords and pay for clicks to their website. Every time a keyword is searched, Google will dig through their bag of ads which advertisers and choses a set of “winners” to become visible in the advertisement spot on the top results page. Through many different factors, which include the quality and relevance to the keyword, as well as the size of their bid. Also, you must have a great quality score and landing page score to maximize your potential.

• Keyword Relevance – Crafting a list of relevant PPC keywords, very tight keyword groups, and excellent ad text are the keys to having proper keyword relevance due to the strength of the combined groupings.
• Landing Page Quality –  Crafting an optimized landing page with persuasive, relevant  and completely clear call-to-actions which are tailored to your specific keywords.
• Quality Score – So, this is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of all your keywords, your strong landing pages, and your PPC campaigns. As a result, advertisers with better quality scores get more clicks at a lower cost. Therefore, a higher quality score equals cheaper click, which increases the amount of clicks you are able to receive.

Keyword research for your PPC campaigns can be incredibly time consuming and that is unavoidable.. However, it is very important to understand that your entire campaign is built around the keywords you choose. As a result, the most successful Google Ads advertisers will be growing and refining their PPC keyword lists. By only doing one round of research, you are missing out on hundreds of thousands of possible keywords. Also, using long-tail keywords, low-cost keywords, and highly relevant keywords that you might not think of the first time. So, never forget that a missed keyword is a missed opportunity. An effective PPC keyword list should include:

• Relevance – First of all, you do not want to be paying traffic to keywords which have nothing to do with your business. You want those keywords which will increase your PPC click-through rate. Also, ones that have an effective cost per click and will ultimately increase your ROI. This allows your keywords to be targeted to the products or services which your are directly selling.
• Exhaustive – Your keywords shouldn’t just contain the most popular keywords and the most searched keywords in your niche, but also a combination of long-tail keywords as well. Long-tail keywords are much more specific and less commonly searched and will add up to a large portion of your search driven traffic. Also, they are much less competitive, and therefore much less expensive.
• Expansive –  PPC will always be changing. You need to constantly be refining and expanding your campaigns so you can create an environment where you keywords are constantly growing and adapting.

Now that you’ve answered “What is pay per click” and developed your first campaign, you must manage it regularly. This way, you can ensure its effectiveness. It is well known that consistent account activity isn the best predictor of success. You should be continuously analyzing your performance. Also, you should be making adjustment to the following areas to ensure optimization throughout your campaign:

• Expand PPC Keywords – Through adding relevant keywords regularly you are expanding the reach of your PPC campaign.
• Expand Negative Keywords – By adding keywords that do not convert to your negative list, you are improving campaign relevancy. Also, eliminates the cost of the keywords which are irrelevant.
• Better Target Ad Groups – By splitting your keywords onto more targeted groups, you are improving you click-through-rate (CTR) and quality score. This also helps you create better targeted ad text and landing pages.
• Eliminate Unnecessary PPC Keywords – You must be regularly analyzing the performance of your keywords so you are able to eliminate the ones that aren’t working. Saving cost on wasted keywords.
• Optimize Your Landing Page – Modifying the content and CTAs on your landing pages to better align with your keywords will boost conversion rates. Do not send all of your traffic to one page… Make sure you have 8-10 keywords assigned to each landing page to help you target better.

You started on this page with the question “What is Pay Per Click”. But by the end you not only have an understanding of PPC, but also an understanding of the many hours needed to properly run a PPC campaign. However, you also understand its importance and why it needs to be done.