PPC is not a strange world for webmasters concerned about digital marketing. Small businesses have deployed some form of PPC in their online advertising and campaigns. However, understanding how it works is crucial to successful and seamless marketing campaigns.
Pay per click can be an interesting way to reach new customers and drive more traffic to your website, resulting in more sales, subscriptions, and an improved bottom line. At face value, pay per click advertising is more effective compared to organic SEO.
This complete guide will explore all you need to know about the PPC SEO definition and how it can benefit your brand. Read more to find out.
What Does PPC Mean?
PPC (pay-per-click) is a digital marketing strategy where webmasters or SEM specialists pay for ads on search engines on Google. PPC meaning aims to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) when people search for specific keywords. You only get to pay a fee when people click on the URL to your web pages.
It typically looks like this:
Webmasters have used PPC to place these products when users click on ‘best hiking sneakers for men’. The major aim of PPC campaigns is to generate leads and increase sales and brand presence online.
When people need a product or service, search engines are the first place they go to find answers. Thus, brands must take advantage of PPC to plug their services in front of users with precision.
According to pay per click statistics, Google reportedly makes $162 billion yearly from its ads platform.
What Is Pay-Per-Click Advertising?
Pay-per-click advertising is the umbrella name for the different forms of PPC available across other platforms. Have you ever searched for something on Google, only to see it again on Facebook or Instagram? That’s PPC at work.
Some of the common formats of pay per click services include:
- Search Advertising
These PPC digital marketing ads are the most common. You can find them at the top or right corners of search engines like Google and Bing. These ads are shown to users who search for specific keywords.
- Display Advertising
Display advertising is ads that appear on various websites targeted to attract a specific audience. These ads are usually in images, texts, banners, or short clips. These ads aren’t as effective as search advertising. But they are quite useful for building a brand presence online.
- Social Media Advertising
Pay per click services also extend to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to your potential customers. Social media advertising has higher click-through rates directed to your web pages.
You can use this form of marketing to generate more leads while promoting your online presence from your social media pages. PPC campaigns of this nature specifically target people of different demographics and interests. You can decide to send your audience to your landing pages, fill out online forms, or reveal content you want them to see.
But it has to be done right. You need to use the proper visuals and social media copy to attract your audience and get them to click on it.
- Retargeting PPC Advertising
Retargeting PPC advertising uses browser cookies to reveal specific ads to users based on their online behavior.
Let’s say you pore through an e-commerce website that sells fishing nets and fail to checkout. Sometime later, you could be on another website and see ads on fishing nets that will redirect you to the website you visited earlier.
Retargeting or remarketing ads aim to entice you to complete a sale. It can also be incorporated into display advertising, email marketing, search ads, and social media campaigns.
- Price Comparison Website Advertising
Price comparison website advertising gathers prices of similar goods from different webmasters. When users click on these links, it redirects them to the merchants, and they can buy their products and services instantly.
Price comparison website advertising allows merchants to reach their customers and make more sales.
- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is yet another form of pay per click management option where a performance-based payment model is utilized. In this setup, different products of different brands are reviewed with a link to buy those products. When users click on such links, the merchant pays a fee.
Other ads include Google shopping ads, in-stream ads, Amazon PPC ads, and email marketing ads.
These types of paid search campaigns give your website and brand more visibility.
How Does Pay-Per-Click Work?
Pay per click advertising works differently compared to organic search. If you want people to locate your products and service when searching specific keywords, you need to take the following steps.
- Set your brand parameters. You need to decide who you want to target and other metrics such as leads, sales, traffic, subscriptions, and brand awareness.
- Decide the type of PPC campaign. You can choose to deploy one or more of the PPC mentioned above campaigns for your website.
- Perform keyword research. You need to decide the keywords you want to promote your business when people search for it. The best way to choose keywords for PPC is to use keyword research tools. These tools include Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, SECockpit, Moz, KWFinder, and KeywordTool.
- Bid for the keywords. Many brands battle to rank higher in SERPs when they use PPC for specific keywords. Thus, you’d need to bid for the keywords. Some factors affect your PPC costs. These factors include the quality of your ads, landing pages, and keywords.
After these steps have been established, your ads will appear on specific platforms.
Benefits of PPC Advertising
There are several benefits of PPC advertising for digital marketing. These benefits include:
- Quicker to set up. PPC is quicker to set up compared to organic searches.
- Receive clicks immediately. Once it meets all requirements and is live, your ads will begin to show up on those platforms, and you can start generating leads.
- It is measurable. You can easily track the conversions of leads with PPC advertising. You can monitor your ROI for specific keywords and ad groups. With this insight, you can redefine your digital marketing strategy.
- Flexibility. There are several PPC campaigns available to choose from. All you need to do is select the suitable ones for your overall brand objectives.
- More control. PPC advertising puts you in the driver’s seat, as you control which ads to run and how much to spend.
These benefits of PPC marketing makes it suitable for immediate results.
PPC vs SEO
It is totally natural to compare the differences between PPC and SEO campaigns. We use a tabular format to explore them below.
| PPC Campaigns | SEO Campaign |
| During SERPs, PPC ads appear at the top of the page. | SEO and organic search appear in the middle of the page. |
| Easier to set up. | Takes some time to set up |
| You can start receiving clicks and leads almost immediately | Takes some time to start receiving and generating leads. |
| It is not free | It is free and organic |
| Use Google Ads to rank higher in SERPs | Make use of on-page SEO optimization |
| PPC ends when the budget has been exhausted. | It is long lasting. |
PPC and SEO campaigns aren’t competing against each other. Implementing any of them lies on your brand objectives and budget.
Best Way to Choose Keywords for PPC
For PPC campaigns to be effective, you must choose the right keywords to explore. Try out the following steps.
- Explore your search terms as discussed in previous sections
- Consider the relevance of your keywords
- Choose long-tail keywords
- Aim for keywords with low competition.
- Use keyword research tools to aid you in your PPC digital marketing.
These are foolproof ways to choose keywords for your pay per click services.
What Is the Best PPC Platform?
There are several PPC platforms available for your campaigns. However, not all of them are effective. Below are the best and most efficient PPC platforms:
You can run your ads on any of these platforms and have a successful campaign.
How to Run a Successful PPC Campaign
For your PPC campaigns to succeed, you need to deploy the following steps.
- Optimize your website by writing clear copies, engaging headlines, excellent web design, call-to-action, and seamless checkout.
- Choose a PPC campaign.
- Set a budget for the campaign.
- Choose your keywords.
- Write an interesting ad.
- Test and monitor your web analytics for performance.
PPC isn’t difficult as people make it out to be. You need to understand how it works from what we’ve explored so far.
Pay-Per-Click Services
There are several marketing brands involved in Pay per click services. You can search and hire a specialist to handle your PPC campaigns. You can also ask your friends to recommend one to work with.
Conclusion
PPC is an excellent digital marketing campaign if you know just what to do. We believe if you follow these simple strategies, you can set up a PPC campaign and start receiving great results.