Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

With over 1 billion websites crawling over the web, it’s not easy to rank high in the SERPs but it is much needed, in fact, crucial for online business success. This can be supported by studies that show that search engine users only scroll through the first two SERPS before they finalise their purchase decision. This means if your website is not listed in the top search results, you may be losing big in terms of potential customers and sales to your competitors.

Though your struggle to rank high in organic searches may take months, however, by benefiting from digital marketing strategies like paid search ads, you can increase your business visibility for most searched industry relevant keywords in the shortest time. Unlike organic search, paid search ad focuses on increasing your search engine visibility for targeted keywords within the sponsored listings of any search engine or even partner website by paying either when the ad link is clicked or displayed. Paid search is a broad term better that includes a variety of search engine visibility improving strategies like CPM (Cost-Per-Impression) and PPC (Pay Per Click).

Pay Per Click Advertising or Cost Per Click is a type of paid search or sponsored internet marketing model used to attract and direct web traffic to advertiser’s websites, where the advertiser pays the publisher only when the ad is clicked, hence the name ‘Pay Per Click’. In PPC marketing, the advertiser only pays up to the bid amount for target keywords, not more.

As compared to other paid search strategies like CPM (Cost Per Impression) where the advertiser gets charged whenever the ad is displayed, PPC is more cost-effective and deliver measurable results as the advertiser pays per click.

PPC ads and sponsored links are displayed mostly on the right hand side and sometimes even at the top of the result page. Since these ads are separately and distinctly displayed from organic search results, they make your website more visible to potential customers.

When advertising on content sites, the website owners basically charge a fixed price/click instead of bidding. However, with search-engines, to secure the ad space in the top SERPs (search engine page results), the advertiser typically bids on targeted keyword phrases. This price varies depending on several factors like your advertising budget, competition and keyword popularity. In other words, the more popular the target keyword is, the higher the PPC bid will be to secure the ad space on search engine pages.

Over the years PPC advertising has grown significantly in popularity among both small and large businesses for numerous reasons. Here’s a look at some of the benefits PPC advertising offers to businesses:

1. Helps increase business exposure
2. Generate profits faster
3. Grows customer base
4. Generates targeted leads at low cost
5. Increases conversion rate
6. Results are measurable
7. PPC gives you the flexibility to choose when and where your ads appear, thus allowing you to segment your market and get found by the right audience at the right time
8. PPC has no dependency on SEO or Google algorithm changes
9. Increases brand recognition and helps your business establish as a leader and authority in the industry as your ad is continuously visible in the top searches
10. Eliminates the guesswork out of online marketing

When it comes to PPC advertising, the best way to get started is to set-up your PPC account with Google AdWords. Google AdWords, is the most popular PPC marketing platform that enables businesses across industries to create powerful ads optimised with targeted keywords popular on Google. It provides businesses a simple and fast way to expand your business outreach and get instant results. Additionally, it provides you adequate tools and features to monitor, manage and optimise your PPC ad campaign for improved results.

Each time a search is initiated on Google, the search engine digs into the large pool of AdWords advertisers and then selects a set of advertisers to appear in the ad space on the right hand side of the SERPS. The set of advertisers/ winners are selected on factors like relevance and quality of keyword and ad campaign and also, the size of the keyword bid.

To be precise, Ad Rank is a metric that is used to select the winners. It is calculated by basically multiplying 2 key factors. First is the CPC Bid which is the highest-amount you, the advertiser, is willing to pay and second is the Quality Score which is the value that takes into consideration your CTR, ad relevance and landing page quality. Through this system, PPC advertisers are selected and their ads are displayed to their potential customers. Simply put, the process is like a search engine auction.