Understanding Pay-Per-Click

Our business is growing your business, and that includes expanding your online audience. While search engine optimization strategies will help you gain organic clicks in the long run, sometimes it’s helpful to give your website a more immediate boost using PPC advertising, also known as Paid Search.

What is PPC?

Pay-per-click, or PPC, is a valuable internet marketing tool because it boosts visitor engagement on your website through targeted ads. Bidding on ad space can improve the likelihood a user will visit your site. For a small fee, or bid, per visitor click, your website can move from second-page search results to the second listing on the first page. Bidding greatly depends on how competitive the keyword is and other modifying factors, such as the time of day, day of week, device and location.

PPC ads are most frequently part of Paid Search campaigns, which target existing user intent. For example, if you search for a blue sweater online, a PPC ad for blue sweaters at Macy’s or Nordstrom may come up. Paid Search campaigns are ideal for capturing conversions, or actions you want a user to take, from existing user intent. If you’re searching for sweaters, it’s probably because you want to buy one. Strategically placing a Macy’s ad to return for this query increases the chance of Macy’s making the sale.

Regular maintenance of PPC campaigns is key to ensure an effective bidding strategy. To ensure your Paid Search ads are the most strategic, you should carefully consider which platform to place your ad on, what keywords target existing user intent, and regularly test and adjust your campaign based on results.

Who Manages PPC Campaigns?

Anyone with a credit card can begin running a PPC campaign online, but that doesn’t mean they should. Campaign execution and regular maintenance can be tricky. Luckily, digital marketing professionals — either from your internal marketing department or an external marketing agency — understand the ins and outs of how to manage PPC campaigns, budgets and platforms, and they can do all the heavy lifting for you.

How Do You Monitor a PPC Account?

Effectively monitoring your PPC campaign is all about having data at your fingertips. They offer real-time data an account manager should monitor and analyze frequently. This analysis enables an iterative bid adjustment strategy, allowing you to attain higher levels of user engagement for less money.

Keyword research tools like Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Planner can help you refine a search from popular niche words to more specific, long-tail keywords that truly target your audience. The Search Term Report can also provide insight into actual user searches, which inform new keyword opportunities, user intent and matchtype variations. Monitoring this report, and others, can help to better target audiences and identify negative search terms to avoid.

You’ll also bid on these keywords so search engines know when to display your ad. Monitoring your campaigns daily allows for manual bidding that results in maximum ad exposure at the lowest budget possible.