What Is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising And How Does It Work?

Pay Per Click (PPC) is paid advertising on search engines where you can get your website (or landing page) to the top of the search engines.

When a searcher types a keyword into the Search Engine that’s relevant to your business, your PPC Ad appears.

If the searcher clicks on the Ad, you get charged for that click, hence the term Pay Per Click.

PPC advertising is a great way to get instant traffic to your website that is targeted to your product or service by the keyword typed into Google.

Unlike other methods of marketing in the search engines, such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that can take 6 to 8 months for your website to get any visibility.

Getting a searcher to your website (or landing page) for a keyword that is relevant to your product or service, because the keyword, the ad in the search engine and your website are all relevant and congruent, typically results in a high amount of conversions through your website.

Pay Per Click advertising can be extremely competitive for some industries and niches. Therefore it’s crucial that the PPC campaigns are extremely relevant, targeted and optimised to get the lowest ‘Cost Per Click’ (CPC) and the most website enquiries, to give you the best Return on Investment (ROI).

How Does Pay Per Click Advertising Work?

As part of setting up a PPC campaign, keywords that are relevant to your product or service need to be researched and added.

Ads shown in the search engines need must be written relevant to the keywords typed into the search engines, with benefit-driven headlines and descriptions that are relevant and congruent to your product and service that’s details on your website.

Add some basic parameters, such as the geographic location where your Ads show and the maximum amount you are prepared to pay for your clicked Ads, your ads are then enabled and start showing in the search engines.

Tracking Is Critical For Success

With all online marketing, especially paid advertising, it’s essential to add tracking to your website (or landing page) for when people enquire through your website.

The mains ways of enquiring are through a contact form, calling you by phone or emailing you.

With tracking in place, you can see your actual return on investment from the PPC advertising, such as how many conversions (enquiries) you receive over a given period and the advertising cost per enquiry.

Tracking also allows you to optimise your campaigns to improve your return on investment further.

You can see what areas of your campaign are not working, such as keywords that don’t result in enquiries but just cost you money, and then turn these areas off.

You then focus on spending more money on the areas that bring enquiries, with improved conversion rates and low cost per enquiries.

PPC advertising typically works like an auction, where the more you’re prepared to pay per click (Max CPC), the higher position your Ads shows in the search engine.

Such as, if you’re prepared to pay a maximum of £3 per click, and somebody else is prepared to pay a maximum of £4 per click, then their Ad typically is shown higher in the search engines.

With tracking in place and you find a keyword that provides a low cost per enquiry, then you may be able to afford to pay more per click to be higher in the search engines and get more visitors to your website.

Use The Quality Score To Pay Less Per Click

To set up PPC advertising in the Google search engine, you use the Google Ads network.

Google Ads works on an auction as mentioned above, but also Google wants to ensure that the ads shown in their search engine are relevant to the keyword that is typed in by the searcher.

To ensure the ads are relevant to the keyword, Google Ads uses a quality score that helps to determine how much you pay per click and the position of your ads in the search engine. Typically, the more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the keyword, the less you pay per click.

Google Ads Quality Score is used as part of its Ad Rank that determines the ad position and the cost per click. The higher your Ad Rank, the higher your ad shows up in the Google search engine.

In Very Simplistic Terms, How The Quality Score Works:

If you have a high-Quality Score, of say 10, and you set a maximum cost per click of £2 (the maximum you’re prepared to pay), then your Ad Rank is (10×2) 20.

If another advertiser has a low-Quality Score, of say 4, and you set a maximum cost per click of £4, then your Ad Rank is (4×4) 16.

As you have a higher Ad Rank, Google sees your ads and landing page are more relevant to the keyword. Therefore you only pay £2 per click, and your ad appears higher in the Google search engine than the other advertiser that is paying £4 per click.

The Google Ads Advertising Platform

The Search Network – allows you to set up and show ads at the top of the Google search engine, as we have explained above.

Google’s Search Network is very popular and provides very targeted traffic to your website. Also, your Ads only appear when keywords relevant to your product or service are typed into Google.

Google’s Display Network (GDN) – is an extremely large network of websites across the Internet that allow you to add different sizes of banner Ads onto those websites.

Google’s Display Network is not as targeted as the Search Network and therefore, the amount you pay per click is significantly less.

How Can Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Benefit You?

PPC advertising can provide so many benefits for your company, we have listed just a few:

Only Pay When Someone Clicks On Your Ad

The benefit of PPC over other forms of advertising is that you only pay when your Ad gets shown and clicked on when somebody types in the relevant keyword to your product or service.

You Control The Budget

You have instant control over how much you want to spend on your advertising. You determine the maximum you want to pay per click on your Ad and the maximum you want to spend during the day.

Targeted Visitors To Your Website

As you determine the keywords that you want your ad to appear in Google, then you have total control over how targeted the visitors are to your website.

The more targeted your visitors are, the more likely they are to take action and enquire through your website, providing a higher Return on Investment.

Get Instant And Faster Results

PPC advertising provides fast results over other advertising, and certainly over search engine optimisation (SEO) where it can take several months to get any results.

You can be up and running advertising on the Google search engine on the same day as you set up your Google Ads campaign.

Constant And Consistent Visitors To Your Website

With the number of daily searches people carry out in the search engines, there’s an excellent opportunity for your website to get in front of your potential buyers at the exact time they are looking to buy your products or services.

Return on Investment (ROI)

With a highly targeted campaign, only showing your ads for keywords relevant to your product or service, being in control of the advertising budgets and spend, only sending targeted traffic to your website, tracking all conversions (enquiries), all this provides good consistent Return on Investment (ROI).