Semalt About PPC And What It Means For Your Website


Although PPC is a hot topic when considering your website's marketing strategy. Whether or not you know a lot about PPC marketing strategy, if you're here, you're willing to learn more. If you do not know where to start, Semalt is the right place to get all the information you need to run an effective PPC campaign. 

Before setting off, we need to learn the basics of PPC. Let's start by defining PPC.

Semalt Team

What is PPC?

PPC means pay-per-click, which is a model of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee for each time their ass gets a click. Simply put, it is a way of buying traffic to your site where you only pay if your link gets clicked. If you plan on getting the highest traffic as soon as possible, this is one way to achieve that, rather than putting in the effort to "earn" those clicks organically.

Search engine advertising can be considered the most popular form of PPC. This is because is allows website advertisers to bid for ad placement in a search engine's sponsored links. This shows up when a user searches on a keyword related to their business offering, and rather than fighting for an organic position on SERP; you buy your place at the top. 

Learning the basics of PPC marketing

Every time a PPC ad is clicked, it sends visitors to a website. This website is the owner of the ad and PPC campaign you have clicked on. Unlike other forms of advertisement, with PPC, you pay for every click you get regardless of whether or not they get converted into customers. PPC is arguably one of the best advertisement "plans" because you do not get to pay for an ad and end up with no clicks. However, if done right, you can make far more than you spend on sponsoring those ads. If you're lucky to spend $10 paying for ad placements but get a conversion of $1,000, you have made a hefty profit. 

However, building a winning PPC campaign may not be as easy as it sounds. It takes a lot of research and planning to get the right keywords, organizing these keywords into a well-structured campaign and ad group before setting up a PPC landing page optimized for conversions.
Search engines make a ton of money from running these advertisement schemes and encourage website advertisers that create relevant, intelligently targeted pay-per-click campaigns. They do this by reducing the cost of their ad clicks. This means the better your ad campaign, the less you spend and the more conversions you get. This is the ultimate prize for any search engine advertiser. If your ads and landing pages are considered very useful and satisfactory to users by Google, the search engine lets you have these clicks at a discounted rate leading to more profits. So if you want to try out PPC, you must get it done the right way. 

What are Google Ads?

Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is the single most popular PPC advertising system globally. This Ads platform enables online businesses to create ads that show on Google search engine and other properties affiliated with Google.
When using Google's ad, users bid on keywords for the position of advert placements. That makes it possible for Google to offer priority to the different types of ads several advertisers are willing to place. This bidding process makes it possible for Google to set priority to some highly paying adverts and little attention to low-paying ones. Whenever a search is initiated, Google's search algorithm dives into a busy hive of ads and chooses a set of winners considering several factors that help it determine the most suitable ads to fill the limited space made available for advertisements. To select the "winners," Google has to consider factors such as the quality and relevance of their keywords and the size of their keyword bids, to name a few. 

Google also keeps an eye out for the advertisers Ad Rank. This is a metric calculated by multiplying two key factors such as the CPC Bid (where the highest paying advertiser wins the first position) and Quality Score (where Google crawler finds out which ad campaigns are the best with the most efficient use of keywords alongside the click-through rate, relevance, and landing page quality). 
This system allows the ad winners to reach potential customers at a cost that isn't too costly. By having an excellent ad campaign and a suitable ads bid, you significantly increase your ad's chances of getting featured. 

Using Google for your PPC marketing is probably the best decision you could make for your website. This is because Google is the most visited and used website on the planet. Google gets massive amounts of traffic, so having your ad featured on their website means you get to enjoy the most impressive clicks on your ad, which translates to more traffic to your website and hopefully, more conversions of visitors to customers. 

However, the frequency or the number of times your ads appear depends on which keywords and match types you select when setting up your ad. There are several factors that will determine how successful your PPC advertising campaign will be. Still, you can improve your chances of success by focusing on:
  • Keyword Relevance: from SEO, we've seen how relevant keywords can be when getting your target audience's attention. By crafting relevant PPC keyword lists, creating tight keyword groups, and by developing the proper ad text, you have paved the way to put your ad at the very top of the food chain.
  • Landing Page Quality: your ad will be of no use if a visitor clicks on it only to be discouraged when the link has opened completely. Create persuasive landing pages that carry relevant content, and have a clear call-to-action tailored to fit specific audience and search queries. 
  • Quality Score: you shouldn't go for low-quality keywords, but instead, the best quality keywords bound to get searched. The quality of your landing page and PPC campaigns also influences your placement amongst other ads in your niche. Advertisers who have better Quality Scores will end up with highly placed ads, more ad clicks, and cheaper rates.
  • Creative: how engaging and appealing is your ad? If your ad is unable to command users' attention, Google won't bother using up the ad placement position, showing an advertisement that is likely never to get any clicks. It would help if you created designer-quality ads that will be attractive enough to demand clicks. 

PPC Keyword Research

Keyword research can be the most time-consuming aspect of PPC research. However, the success of your entire PPC campaign is built on how effective the keywords you use are in generating traffic. This is why the most successful Google Ads advertisers continuously expand and grow and refine their PPC keyword list. 

If your one of those advertisers that did keyword research only once at the beginning of their first campaign, you are most likely missing out on hundreds of thousands of valuable, long-tail, low-cost, and highly relevant keywords that could make your ad campaign a great success. 

Areas to look out for when selecting PPC keywords:

  • Relevance: your keywords would be completely useless if they are not related to your business and the services you offer. You wouldn't want to be paying for keywords that attract web traffic that wants nothing to do with your business, would you? When selecting keywords, you must go for keywords or phrases that will lead to a higher PPC click-through rate, effective cost per click, and increased profits. That means the keywords you use should closely reflect your businesses and the services you're trying to sell.
  • Exhaustive: Your keyword research should include only the frequently searched words in your niche but also long-tail keywords. Although long-tail keywords are more specific and less common, they account for the majority of search-driven traffic flows into sites. They are also less competitive and less expensive.
  • Expansive: also seek to improve. Create an environment in which your keyword list can continuously grow and adapt to your target audience's changing demands. 

Managing Your PPC Campaigns

After creating your PPC campaign, you need to manage it to ensure you get profits. If you wish to succeed, you need to continuously monitor the performance of your campaign and make necessary changes when the situations call for that to have a successful campaign. Here are some things you can do while managing your campaign:
  • Add PPC Keywords: you should always add, remove, and modify the keywords and key phrases you use in your campaign. However, it would be best if you took care to remove keywords and replace them with other keywords that will increase traffic and not reduce the number of clicks on your ad.
  • Include Negative Keywords: Add non-converting terms as negative keywords. This is to improve campaign relevancy and reduce wasted spend.
  • Split Ad Groups: when you split up your ad groups, you can Improve click-through rate (CTR) and Quality Score. This can help you create more targeted ad text and landing pages.
  • Review Costly PPC Keywords: Review keywords that are expensive and under-performing and shut them off if necessary.