Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)-Search Engine Marketing

Google Adwords for Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) 

Google Adwords is the market leader for Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC). There dominant presence online has means that businesses who are committed to seriously grow their business online must engage in some form of online marketing with them. Adwords presents the modern day business a cost effective and measurable tool to market and promote its services and products.

Whilst managing your own PPC campaign can be done in house, getting the results you want requires the expertise of a qualified Adwords professional. We specialise in managing mid to large range advertising budgets. Our experience with pay per click management focuses on reducing your cost per click and increasing your click through rates to target pages on your website. 

What is Pay Per Click Advertising? 

On its face, pay per click advertising, or PPC, is pretty simple: Search engines and services, such as Google or Yahoo, provide listings on a per-bid basis. This is in addition to their 'natural' search results, which are still powered by a combination of keywords found on your site, link popularity and other formulae. If you place the highest bid for a specific keyword or set of keywords, then you rank number one in these paid listings. Every major search engine now displays these paid ads above and to the right side of their 'organic' rankings.

If someone clicks on your PPC listing, they arrive at your web site. And you are charged the amount you bid. So, if you bid $.15 per click on 'widgets', and that's the highest bid, you'll show up first in line. If 100 people click on your PPC listing, then the search engine or PPC service will charge you $15.00.

The Role of Pay Per Click Advertising

Most businesses can't afford to solely rely on PPC advertising. It's too expensive, and bid amounts inevitably climb. But pay per click can fill a few important roles:

• Campaign- and issue-based traffic: If you have a short-term campaign for a new product, service or special issue, pay per click can be a great way to generate buzz. You can start a pay per click campaign within, at most, 24-48 hours, and you can generally change the text of your ad in mid-campaign, so adjusting your message is easy. If you need to focus attention for a finite amount of time, PPC is perfect.

• Direct-response business: If you sell a product or offer a service that folks can purchase the moment they arrive at your web site, pay per click is a great tool. Online stores are a great example: You know that each click generated is a real potential customer, so spending money to increase the number of clicks makes sense.

• Niche terms: If you are trying to generate traffic for a highly specific keyphrase, PPC can often provide bargains. For example, you might not want to pay the top bid for 'bicycles', but 'Landshark Bicycles' is probably a lot less expensive ($.10 per click as of this writing, actually).

Why Pay Per Click Advertising is Good

Pay per click advertising can generate traffic right away. It's simple: If you spend enough, you can get top placement, and potential customers will see you first. If folks are searching for the keyphrases on which you bid and you've placed a well-written ad, you will get clicks the moment the ad is activated.

So PPC advertising is fast: With some systems, such as Google Adwords, you can generate targeted traffic within a few minutes of opening an account.

PPC advertising is also nimble: Where natural search engine marketing or other forms of advertising can lag weeks or months behind changing audience behavior, you can adjust most pay per click campaigns in hours or days. That provides unmatched ability to adjust to market conditions.

PPC can also be a bargain: Sometimes, you can find keyword 'niches' for which the top bid is around $.10 - in that case, PPC is a great option, because you can generate traffic to your site for a fraction of the cost of any other form of paid advertising.

So, balancing the good and the bad, where does PPC fit in? As a focused advertising tool. 

Why Pay Per Click Advertising is Bad

PPC advertising can cost a fortune. It's easy to get caught up in a bidding war over a particular keyphrase and end up spending far more than your potential return. Some PPC engines, such as Yahoo, offer management features such as 'autobid' that will automatically increase your bid amount to maintain a particular rank. That sounds great on its face, but it can get expensive in a big hurry.

Also, ROI can be very hard to measure. Some PPC engines (Adwords and Yahoo, specifically) provide conversion measurement tools, so that you can track whether your pay per click campaigns are generating the desired result. But these tracking tools aren't 100% accurate, and at the time of this writing the smaller PPC providers don't deliver any conversion tracking (you can use Google Analytics - more about that later).

And watch out for junk traffic. Most pay per click services distribute a segment of their results to several search engines. While you certainly want your listing displayed on Google and/or Yahoo, you may not want your listings showing up and generating clicks from some of the deeper, darker corners of the Internet. The resulting traffic may look good in statistics reports but is very unlikely to generate a return.

Finally, pay per click advertising does not scale. If you get more traffic, you pay more money in direct proportion to that traffic - your cost per click stays constant, and your overall cost increases. Compare that to natural search engine optimization, where you invest a fixed amount of time and/or money to achieve a better rank, and your cost per click goes down as you draw more traffic.

The overall rule of thumb? Focus, focus, focus. Natural search engine optimization is a PR-based, long-term attempt to grow your brand and image. pay per click advertising, however, should be handled like any other form of paid advertising: Gingerly, and with a clear, quantifiable short- or medium-term goal in mind. In other words, concentrate on conversions, not clicks.

To learn more about Pay Per Click Advertising or find out more about our Pay Per Click Advertising services. Call us on 1300 911 772 or click below