With the recent big change that Google has made to AdWords, now is a good time to look into PPC advertising in more detail. If you have only focused on SEO up until now (optimizing your website to show up in organic search), you may be surprised to learn that PPC can provide you with numerous benefits.
Here is an overview of PPC to help you decide whether it is something that you can take advantage of for your business.
What Is PPC?
PPC has been a popular form of online advertising for many years. It stands for pay per click advertising, and one of the most common types of PPC is in the search engines. When you search for a keyword, you will usually see a selection of paid results displayed next to the organic results.
If one of these paid ads is for your company, you will pay a certain amount whenever someone clicks on your ad (hence the name pay per click). If no one clicks on your ad, you don’t pay anything.
Anyone who clicks on your ads will be directed to a landing page on your website, where your goal will be to convert them (perhaps to sell them your products and services, or to encourage them to sign up to your email list).
For this article, we’ll be focusing on AdWords. However, this is just Google’s own PPC ad platform. PPC advertising is also possible on other platforms like Bing search and on Facebook.
Benefits of PPC for Your Business
Many businesses automatically start off with SEO over PPC because they want to rank highly in organic search. However, PPC has many benefits:
- It enables you to get a presence in the SERPs almost immediately
- You can target people specifically looking for your products and services
- You can set a maximum limit for your advertising costs each month
- You have full control over when your ads display and to whom
The great thing about PPC in search is that you are only paying for targeted leads. You don’t pay based on the amount of people who see your ad, but rather when someone clicks on your ad.
How to Get Started
To start off with AdWords, you will first need to create an account, which is free to do. Once you have your account, you can set up a few ads and get them displaying in a very short time.
However, there is a bit of a learning curve involved. You have to choose your targeted keywords and bid how much you want to spend when someone clicks on them (the cost per click, or CPC).
There is also something called Quality Score that Google gives you. This is based on a number of factors including the landing page your ads lead to, and a good Quality Score can help you to cut your costs of advertising.
It is for this reason that many advertisers choose to use the services of a PPC management company. Such companies will have strategies in place to lower the cost of advertising and improve results over time.
How to Take Your PPC Further
There are various ways to get more from your PPC advertising. The first thing to remember is that long-term success comes down to testing. By constantly making adjustments to your ads and testing them, you can improve their performance over time.
You should also ensure you direct your PPC ads to a dedicated landing page. This is a page that has one specific purpose, often to collect an email address or to sell a product. You should also make changes to your landing page and test it to increase conversions over time.
You may also want to make use of AdWords Extensions. These are ways to add more information to your ads to make them stand out. Some of the ad extensions you can use include site links extensions, callout extensions, review extensions, but there are many more. You can find out all about these here.
Give PPC a Go
There is a lot more to know about PPC, and this guide just covers the basics. Many companies are enjoying great success from PPC, both in the search engines and in social networks, so try it out for yourself. You may want to experiment on your own, or you may want to hire a specialist to get you off to a winning start.
Whatever you choose to do, this type of advertising can have enormous benefits for your business, so give it a go and see if you can grow your business with PPC.
Author
Having been involved in Internet Marketing and Online Business for over 17-years, Terra Andersen utilizes her many years of experience to consult the PPC Marketing Expert company on its enterprise-level client goals as well as its Conversion Optimization strategies & technology implementations.
