PPC: What It Is | How It Works | How We Manage It

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an paid advertising model used on the internet to drive targeted online traffic to websites. A fee is paid when an online advertisement is clicked.

The process involves advertisers (typically website owners or agencies) bidding on particular keywords and phrases relevant to their target audience. An advertisers text ad (or image or display ad) may be displayed when an online search is performed for their bid upon certain keywords. The placement of the ad is determined by multiple factors including bid amount, ad relevance and landing page content — high relevance between the keywords, ads and landing page are crucial to the placement and performance of an advertisement.

PPC For Generating Leads

Desktop and Mobile ad spend varies with more and more people using mobile ads to find what they search for – presently Mobile search has nearly 60-70% of the search market — and will only increase.

State of Paid Search report reveals that 88% of respondents feel successful in the PPC market. Further, 72% of respondents say their overall PPC budget will be higher than last year.

The numbers above are a clear indication that plenty companies/websites are greatly benefiting from the leads their PPC campaigns are generating. In fact, the demand for SEO Digital Solutions pay-per-click management services has increased dramatically in just the last few years.

How The PPC Machine Works

As many small business owners (and enthusiastic marketers) have discovered, the pay-per-click machine is far more complex than they originally anticipated. Gone are the days of: write an ad, bid on a keyword, and the leads will come.

Today in Google AdWords (or Bing) PPC campaign can involve in-depth discovery and competitive analysis, thousands of keywords, hundreds of ads, complex bid strategies, ad scheduling, automated rules, an ever growing list of ad extensions, mobile bid adjustments, and much, much more. To top it off, the pay-per-click landscape has become fiercely competitive in the last few years.

PPC Management Is Not A Side Project Or Part Time Job

To ensure your PPC campaign’s success, it is important that you or your PPC campaign manager, understand exactly how the search advertising platform works and how to get the most from the system, and be dedicated to the hours required for achieving results.

TOP KEYWORD RESEARCH

All PPC campaigns begin with keyword research. Utilising tools like AdWords Keyword Planner (and others) helps you find keyword ideas which will give you an estimate how the keywords might perform and at what cost.

Other tools, like SEMrush or Ahrefs and give you insight to the competitive landscape. Approximate cost-per-click, top advertisers for a particular keyword, and organic search results are the data provided here.

CAMPAIGN SETTINGS

The PPC campaign settings tab (see AdWords campaign settings below) is where you set foundational elements of your pay-per-click campaign. Here are some typical elements to manage on a Google AdWords campaign settings tab:

• Type – The campaign type determines the places where your ads can appear on Google (Search Network, Display Network), and the different settings and options available (bidding, location targeting, ad scheduling, etc.)
• Locations – Campaign locations allow you to target your ads to customers in a geographic location. Alternately, geographic locations can be excluded from your campaign as well. For instance, you can include the United States as a targeted location for your ads, then refine the target by excluding a particular city and/or state.
• Languages – Campaign languages is where you set the language of the sites that your ads can appear on.
• Bid Strategy – The bid type determines whether you pay for ad clicks (CPC), impressions (CPM), or conversions (CPA). The bid amount ($) is the most you want to pay. Also, it influences how your ad is ranked.
• Budget – The daily budget is the average amount you are willing to spend each day on this particular campaign.
• Ad Scheduling – Scheduling lets you set the days and hours that your campaign ads will appear on the Google advertising networks.

PROFFESIONAL PPC MANAGEMENT

Nearly 95 percent of SEO Digital Solutions PPC clients are business owners, CEOs and marketing managers for businesses that were once performing pay-per-click management duties in house.

The fact is, pay-per-click advertising has become very competitive and the PPC platforms have become very complex. Simply, it has become imperative that a business PPC campaign has a dedicated and well qualified manager in order to achieve maximum return on investment.

SEO Digital Solutions team are a conversion focused PPC agency. We believe in tracking hard leads and sales as true indicators of a PPC campaign’s performance. We continually strive to improve ROI for our clients.

If you choose to keep PPC in-house, we understand. But, if your PPC campaigns are not producing the kind of results you had hoped for why not get in touch — we’ll be happy to answer any questions, offer advice, or get you started with a our PPC campaign management solution.