PPC For Dummies
PPC stands for “Pay per Click”. PPC is when businesses pay an agreed amount each time their ad is clicked by a user. They are not charged when the advertisement is displayed, simply when it is clicked. Advertisers set up how much they wish to spend per click in advance, although this can be topped up over time should they wish to do so.
When setting up their advertisement, advertisers select keywords, keyword phrases, groups or categories in which their advertisements will appear. The best keywords etc are selected by those people who do the best keyword analysis, there are many free tools available online for this. Advertisers who spend more money for an advertisement generally appear first when their search terms etc are used.
What are the benefits to PPC? Well, with PPC, you control the volume of traffic that your advertisement receives based on your budget etc. Due to the fact that it is paid, not organic, you do not have to wait for your advertisement to rank well over time. You can control the information that appears with your link such as the description and where the user is brought to on your site when they click through the link from the search engine. As well as this, PPC means you can get more of an international audience, organic searches can be very much based on geographical areas but with PPC you can choose whether you want it to be localised or reach a larger area.
One of the great things about PPC, is that it can be tracked which helps you to see how well your campaign is performing. This is very important as it helps you to see which search terms are not as useful as others and make changes to your campaign should the need arise. Having a high number of click throughs alone does not make an advertisement useful, this is where tracking helps as it measures bounce rates and many other factors.
In simple terms, the ultimate end goal of PPC is to use the best keywords that you can, and direct the user to the most relevant page that you can to the terms they have searched. Being aware of what your user is looking for and sending them to the page that will help the most is key as it will result in return users and, hopefully, the success of your PPC campaign.
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