If you’ve ever looked up a product/service on either Google Ads or Bing, chances are you’ve seen one of the top results have a little green square that says “AD” under it. These are Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements. PPC ads are a model of marketing where advertisers pay a certain amount of money every time their ads are clicked on. Basically, it’s a way for businesses to get someone to their site by paying for it, instead of earning visits organically.
Search engine advertising is one of the most popular ways to advertise over the internet. It allows advertisers to put up a “bid” for ad placement in a search engine’s top results spot.
For example, let’s say that we have a company called Tom’s Landscaping located in Nashville, TN. If our company bids on the keyword “Nashville Landscaper” there’s a chance that our ad may show up in one of the top three spots on Google’s results page.
Now let’s say that someone clicks on our PPC ad and they get sent to our website. Tom’s Landscaping now has to pay the search engine a small fee for showing their ads in a good location where they were clicked. In an ideal scenario, the fee is trivial. If we paid $2.00 for that click, and it results in a $600 profit, then that’s a huge return on investment from the $2.00 we paid to get that click.
Google Ads
Google Ads is the most common way for companies to run PPC ads. The Google Ads manager allows businesses to create ads that appear in the top three spots on Google’s results page.
Basically, every time a search is done, Google searches the pool of Google Ads and picks a group of 3-4 to display in the search. The ones that get to appear are chosen based on the size of their bid and Quality Score.
To be specific, appearing on the top page is based around a Google metric called “Ad Rank”. Your Ad Rank is calculated by multiplying two key traits. One is your Cost Per Click bid, which is the highest amount you’re willing to spend. Two is your Quality Score, which takes into account multiple factors: click-through rate, relevance, and the quality of your landing page. Essentially, this metric is in place to allow winning advertisers to reach their audience at a cost that is in line with their budget.
Doing PPC marketing through Google Ads is generally the best way to do PPC because Google is the world’s largest search engine. Google gets ridiculous amounts of traffic. In turn, they deliver the highest number of impressions and clicks on your ads compared to other search engines.
What to Focus On
Keywords- These are typically the most important part of any campaign. Google Ads uses keywords and their relevance to decide when to have your ad appear. The more relevant/specific your keywords are, the more likely it’ll be that Google will show your ads.
Landing Page- The quality of your landing page is a huge factor when Google decides whether to show your ad or not. You could have the perfect list of keywords, but if your landing page is a mess, or doesn’t have the appropriate content, your ad is less likely to appear under a search for your product/service.
Creativity- Having creative, eye-catching ad copy is also very important. Your ad is most likely going to appear next to two (2) or so other ads for the same thing. You’re definitely going to want to stand out from the competition as much as you can.
Quality Score- This is the overall score that Google Ads gives you based on the relevance of your keywords, landing page quality, and your click-through rate (CTR: the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it). This metric is very important to keep up with because this determines how likely your ad is to appear to potential customers.
Conclusion
Using Google to run PPC ads for your business will prove to be a huge asset in the long run. The most important part is making sure you set up all of the important metrics such as: keywords, bid amounts, and landing page quality. Once you have all your bases covered you’ll be well on your way to being a pro at PPC advertising.
-Written by Jonah Ericksen