Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay per click, or PPC for short, is an advertising model used by Google, delivered via its platform Google Ads, formerly Google AdWords.
It is the main way Google makes its money, and has evolved from simple text adverts that appear in search results to include image, display, app, video and shopping adverts. Which of these is right for you will depend on your sector and business model.
The good thing about PPC
The good thing about PPC is that you can get instant results for your money. As long as you have the budget and are willing to pay enough for each click, you can appear on page 1 of Google’s search results, in Maps and on YouTube instantly. You will also get more detailed keyword data than you do with organic search, which has been the case since Google decided to encrypt organic search terms since 2011.
The bad thing about PPC
The bad thing is that, the traffic can be very expensive and once the budget has been spent, there’s no more traffic. With good SEO, you can drive traffic for long tail keywords and even more popular terms within your industry years after the campaign has been finished.
It is also worth nothing that strategies to improve your SEO also help your PPC. Very simplified, Google will use the same criteria for SEO to see if your landing pages are of high quality for PPC. If your landing pages are of high quality, you pay less per individual click and thus can get more clicks for the same budget. So, while it may seem tempting to just use money to drive paid traffic to your site instead of improving the content, that would be a bad idea. The choice isn’t SEO vs. PPC, most of the time I recommend both together.
Beyond the last click
You may also find that using PPC to drive traffic can seem like it’s not giving you a good ROI if looked at on a last-click basis. Let me explain.
Let’s say you run a law firm in Glasgow. You set up PPC to target “law firm in Glasgow”. Potential clients do a search and find your advert. They have a browser around, leave your site and interact with other competitors. Eventually they search for your business, click on an organic search result and fill in an enquiry form.
If looking at last-click attribution, organic search was what drove this conversion and the PPC advert didn’t. However, this new potential client would never have heard of your business without PPC. Therefore, in order to accurately calculate your ROI, you need to look at attribution modelling to find one that suits you.
A final word
PPC is a discipline in its own right and constantly changing. As this site is focused on search, this section will include information for how to get started with text adverts appearing in search result, including account set up, keyword matching and some basic attribution modelling.