Pay Per Click Advertising
Google a particular product or service, and you’ll notice two types of search results. The first one has the term “Ad” on its upper left corner preceding the website’s link, while the other type doesn’t. You may also notice a group of product listings dangling below one or more of the Ad-tagged search results and sometimes on the page’s upper right corner.
Ad-tagged search results and product listings are all paid ads, and Google posts them at the top portion of search results. Business owners who have long been advertising through search engines know how big of a deal it is to appear at the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP) for a particular keyword. After all, the first three links usually garner 75% of the clicks, which means you get more traffic to your website.
How PPC Advertising Works ?
How exactly do you get a spot on Google’s paid results section? The answer is through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which is a search engine marketing method where you pay for every click your ad gets.
Getting on Top
Securing the top spots in the paid results section is not about paying Google more for the privilege. Google uses a bidding system called Ad Auction that considers the (1) bid amount of both you and your competitors, (2) the relationship relevancy from your keyword to the ad, and the (3) relationship relevancy of your ad to the landing page. Google calls this their “quality score.” So, instead of directly selling positions, Google factors in your bid amount and benefits the advertiser with the highest relevancy or quality score to determine your page position.
Keyword Bidding Process
The key is to bid on keywords that are relevant to your product or service. But, keep in mind that your competitors will also bid on those keywords. The more people bidding on the keyword, the more expensive it becomes. This is usually the case for keywords that indicate “purchase intent,” which means that the person is already deciding which product to buy or professional to hire.
PPC vs. SEO
Apart from paid results, you’ll also find organic search results on a SERP. These are called organic because advertisers don’t have to bid on keywords or pay to rank. Instead, they optimize their website for search engines–or what people usually call search engine optimization (SEO).
PPC and SEO have their fair share of pros and cons. While PPC advertising can drive qualified leads to your website almost immediately, it can get quite expensive rather quickly. If you’re bidding on a competitive keyword with a poorly-designed ad, you can quickly burn through your advertising budget without the sales to show for it.
SEO is supposedly less costly than PPC, but keep in mind that it is a long-term strategy. If you’re optimizing for a competitive keyword, for instance, it can take three to six months before you start seeing results.
Work with Us
Grow your business with the help of TRD Digital Marketing. We understand the intricacies of both SEO and PPC, which means we can most likely offer a solution that combines the best of both worlds. We’ll fit your website out for SEO so you can benefit from organic traffic, while setting a budget for PPC ads so sales start rolling in. Get in touch with us today and let’s get started.