Pay Per Click « Digital Pacific Company Blog

What is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising?

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Attracting people to your web site gets harder every year as more sites pop up on the Internet, all biding for attention. So how do you compete? One way is to implement PPC advertising, also known as Pay-Per-Click advertising.

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?

The principle behind PPC advertising is that each time a customer clicks on the ad link, a small sum is paid by the ad owner to have the Internet surfer directed to a specific web site. As advertisers only pay the host when the ad is clicked, the idea is to carefully focus your advertisements to attract potential buyers from your target market. This should be a strong point of consideration when creating your ad as you will need to select the keywords relevant to your business. Generally, a web site owner looking into PPC will bid on these keywords and use them as the basis of the advertisement.

Note: The price of keywords and phrases can vary depending on the search engine used and the competition for the specific keyword and phrases that you are after. Since there are many companies offering the PPC service, including major players such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Facebook, you would be wise to do your homework before you commit to one.

While deciding on the wording and / or images for your ad, you’ll also need to consider geographic targeting, set a budget and cap, and decide on an ad format. As mentioned, you may prefer all-text ads or wish to include graphics to create a banner. Graphic ads can be quite popular as they benefit from the detail of text while also providing visual appeal. A number of banner formats exist. Would one of the following suit you?

Banners — Horizontal ads
Vertical banners — Vertical ads
Skyscrapers — Taller version of the vertical banner
Rectangle Ads — As it suggests
Buttons — Smaller than a banner ad
Custom fit – Ads tailored to your site’s look and feel

Depending on your site design, budget and specific advertising requirements, you’ll be able to hone in on an appropriate PPC ad format.

Once your PPC ad campaign is in operation (for instance, using Google AdWords), you will see it displayed as a ‘sponsored link’ at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Taking precedence over ‘organic’ search listings, they are more prominent to viewers.

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?

If looking into Google AdWords when doing your research, note that there are FREE online tools that are great for getting started. The Traffic Estimator in particular provides some very helpful information once you submit your keywords and phrases. A great resource, it allows you to select target locations and languages, and receive crucial search data including:

Global Monthly Searches
Local Monthly Searches
Estimated Avg. CPC (Cost-Per-Click)
Estimated Ad Position
Estimated Daily Clicks
Estimated Daily Cost

This core information better positions you to make decisions regarding keyword choice, approximate daily costs, budgeting and competition for your keywords and phrases.

The popularity of the PPC advertising method not only sits with search engines but extends to social media such as Facebook. Even when just considering the number of your current Facebook ‘friends’, the ease of networking and the already massive user-market of the platform, the potential and cost-effectiveness of Facebook Ads is quite appealing.

As Facebook Ads highlights, there are:

Over 500 potential customers
Tools to control the amount of money you commit to the ad
Options to target your market according to location, age and interests
Methods for testing both image and text-based advertisements

Another word of caution – ensure you plan well before starting with PPC advertising. If you choose to implement a number of ads that incorporate different keywords for instance, you run the risk of significant costs — not only for the various keywords themselves but due to the sheer number of click throughs that can potentially be generated.

Like any form of advertising, the more users that buy your services, the smaller your advertising outlay will be. PPC is no different. By finding a balance between the relevant keywords to your business and their associated CPC, you’ll experience superior results.

With a well thought out plan of attack, consisting of ad budgeting and monitoring, PPC can be a great way to attract new customers.

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?

What is Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising?

Tags: online marketing, Pay Per Click, PPC, Website Marketing
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Website Marketing With Google Adwords

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

In keeping with our Google related theme for this month, we would like to introduce Google Adwords, a method for advertising your website through paid search results. To read more on this theme, please see our other Google articles.

Understanding who your target market is online is one thing, but reaching them is another. Once you are able to identify who exactly would be interested in visiting your website, you simply have to get them there, and that is a task that takes a bit of work. This is where some good website marketing using Google Adwords might come in handy.

Advertising your website with Google Adwords allows for it to be listed in Google search results, either to the right or to the top of the content. The trigger for your ads to be displayed in a certain search result depends on the keywords you choose to advertise with. So, if you signed up to Google Adwords and chose “Australian rugby shirts” as your paid keywords, then your ads would have the chance of being shown when a Google user is looking for those specific terms.

Since the ads you run can show up at the top or right-hand side of Google search results, you can use your campaign to target keywords your website doesn’t pick up on in the organic search results. Alternatively, if your website is already listed in the organic search results, you can have even more exposure for that keyword.

To get started with Adwords, simply create a new account. The process involves submitting billing information and verifying the account. Once that’s done, the first campaign can be created, and that includes choosing your keywords and inserting ad content. To target your specific market better, you can also choose a language and a location that you would like the ads to appear in. So, if you’re a business that only sells in Australia, then you want to make sure that your ads only appear for Australia searches. Not only does it help you target your ads, but it also helps you spend your money only where it counts.

With Adwords, you get to choose how much you are willing to spend, both on a per day basis, and on a per click basis. The cost per click acts as a bid for that keyword, meaning it decides how often your ad displays as well as the position on the page. Some keywords can be very competitive, like “rugby shirts”, so good ad position might cost a bit more per click. Choosing a more targeted term, like “Australian rugby shirts”, can provide better returns for your expenditures. Note: you only pay when your ads actually get clicked, and only until you reach your daily limit.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to use Google Adwords, you just need to use it wisely. Here are some points to think about when getting started:

Think like your customer. What would someone be typing into a Google search to find your product or service?

Research keywords. When you know what they would be typing into a search engine, think about how saturated the market is for those terms. Is there something more specific that will allow your ads to show for someone looking for your offerings? In the example above, I pointed out the difference between “rugby shirts” and “Australian rugby shirts”.

Choose appropriate costs. You may have to do some testing to get your cost per click to your liking. As for your daily limit, choose an amount that fits your budget.

Create good ads. You have the ability to get very creative with your ad content, up to the word limit of course. Or, you might find that being direct with your listings is the way to go.

We will be talking a lot more about Google Adwords in the future on this blog, especially since it is a popular tool that our customers can gain from using. In the meantime, be sure to check out all of our other posts on website marketing to see if your website is doing all it can to succeed.