Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising, The Foundation Knowledge

Develop Foundational Knowledge of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

You've found the right place if you've heard about PPC marketing and are interested in finding out more, or if you know you want to use PPC to market your business but aren't sure how to get started. The purpose of PPC University, a series of tutorials, is to provide you with all the information you need to successfully implement PPC.

What is PPC?

Pay-per-click (PPC) refers to an online advertising model in which the advertiser forks over cash every time one of their ads is clicked. Simply stated, you are purchasing highly-qualified traffic to your website (or landing page or app). If pay-per-click advertising is doing its job, the cost per click should be minimal. If you spend $3 on a click and make a $300 sale as a result of that click, you've made a nice profit.

Ads on pay-per-click platforms can take many forms, from simple text to elaborate multimedia presentations. They can show up anywhere online, from search results to websites to social media.

One of the most common kinds of PPC is search engine advertising, which goes by a few different names in different contexts. Advertisers can compete for clicks on their ads in the sponsored links section of a search engine when a user conducts a search that is relevant to their product or service. By placing a bid on the keyword "google ads audit," for instance, our ad for the Google Ads Performance Grader, a free tool, may show up on the search engine results page (SERP) for that query or one like it.

The way pay-per-click (PPC) marketing operates.

Although the specifics of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will vary depending on the medium, the procedure typically entails the following steps:

• Choose your campaign type based on your objective.
• Refine your settings and targeting (audiences, devices, locations, schedule, etc.).
• Provide your budget and bidding strategy.
• Input your destination URL (landing page).
• Build your ad.

                An example of the budget step looks like in Google Ads.

After an ad goes live, its placement, frequency of appearance, and cost per click are all determined algorithmically based on the advertiser's budget, bid, campaign settings, and ad quality and relevance.

Because every PPC advertising platform values its users' happiness above all else, it provides preferential treatment to advertisers who develop credible and useful PPC campaigns by increasing their visibility and decreasing costs per click.

Therefore, if you want to make the most money possible with PPC, you need to master the technique.

What is Google Ads?

As far as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms go, Google Ads is without a peer. Advertising on Google's search engine and other Google properties is made possible through the Google Ads platform.

With each new query, Google sifts through its inventory of advertisements and selects a few top performers to feature on the resulting search page.

Winners are determined by several factors, including the quality and relevance of their keywords and ad campaigns and the size of their keyword bids. In the following section, we'll explain why.

How PPC works in Google Ads

If you're an advertiser, you know that when you create an ad, you have to decide which keywords you want to use and then bid on those keywords. If you tell Google that you want your ad to appear next to searches that contain the term "pet adoption" or words closely related to it, then Google will prioritize your ad over others.

To determine which advertisements are displayed in response to a given search, Google employs a set of formulas and an auction-style process. Before entering your ad into the auction, you'll be given a Quality Score from one to ten that considers how well it matches the keyword, how likely it is to attract a click, and how high-quality your landing page is.

Following that, it will calculate your Ad Rank by multiplying your Quality Score by your maximum bid (the most you are willing to pay for a click on that ad). Those advertisements with the highest Ad Rank scores will be displayed.

In this system, successful advertisers can reach target audiences at reasonable prices. It functions as a form of auction, essentially. See how the Google Ads auction functions in the graphic below!

How to do PPC with Google Ads

Using Google Ads for pay-per-click advertising is highly effective because Google is the most widely used search engine and receives a correspondingly large volume of traffic, which in turn results in more exposure for your ads and more clicks on them. The frequency of your PPC ads is determined by the keywords and match types you choose. While many factors contribute to the overall success of a pay-per-click advertising campaign, you can make significant progress by focusing on the following:

• Bid on relevant keywords. Building effective PPC campaigns requires careful attention to keyword research, grouping, and ad text.
• Focus on landing page quality. Create optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content, and a clear call to action tailored to specific search queries.
• Improve your Quality Score. Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. Advertisers with better Quality Scores get more ad clicks at lower costs.
• Capture attention. Enticing ad copy is vital; and if you’re running display or social ads, so is eye-catching ad creative.

How to do effective PPC keyword research

PPC keyword research is time-consuming and can yield significant rewards. Your entire pay-per-click campaign hinges on your keyword selection, and the best Google Ads marketers are always working to improve and expand their keyword pool. You may be missing out on hundreds of thousands of valuable, long-tail, low-cost, and highly relevant keywords if you only do keyword research once when you create your first campaign.

Our comprehensive keyword research guide is available here, but to summarise what should go into a PPC keyword list:

• Relevant: Of course, you don’t want to be paying for clicks that aren’t going to convert. That means the keywords you bid on should be closely related to the offerings you sell.
• Exhaustive: Your keyword research should include not only the most popular and frequently searched terms in your niche but long-tail keywords. These are more specific and less common, but they add up to account for the majority of search-driven traffic. In addition, they are less competitive and therefore less expensive.
• Expansive: PPC is iterative. You want to constantly refine and expand your campaigns and create an environment in which your keyword list is constantly growing and adapting.
  
   

Managing your PPC campaigns

To ensure the continued success of the new campaigns you've created, they must be actively managed. In fact, consistent account usage is a strong indicator of future success. You should routinely review your account stats and make the following tweaks for optimal campaign performance:

Continuously add PPC Keywords: Expand the reach of your PPC campaigns by adding keywords that are relevant to your business.

Add negative keywords: Add non-converting terms as negative keywords to improve campaign relevancy and reduce wasted spend.

Review costly PPC keywords: Review expensive, under-performing keywords and shut them off if necessary.

Refine landing pages: Modify the content and CTAs of your landing pages to align with individual search queries to boost conversion rates. Don’t send all your traffic to the same page.

Split ad groups: Improve click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score by splitting up your ad groups into smaller, more relevant ad groups, which help you create more targeted ad text and landing pages. More on account structure here.