Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click or PPC for short is the process of placing paid ads on networks such as Google Adwords. As opposed to organic listing PPC has the advantage of being almost instantaneous and offers a rapid feedback loop for testing and optimizing ads. This gives advertisers an immediate traffic source that can practicably be turned on and off at will without the problems inherent in the volatile nature of search engine rankings. Just as SEO, PPC can be very competitive and it certainly pays to do rigorous split testing with your copy-writing efforts.

In the case of Google’s Adwords the advertiser has access to a wide range of measuring tools in order to create metrics for the purpose of fine tuning campaigns for the highest ROI. CTR or click through rate defines percentage of clicks for the total of impressions during a particular ad showing. CPC or cost per click is the amount paid per each of these clicks. Increasing CTR can help reduce CPC as for instance Google gives a quality score bonus for higher performing ads.

Ultimately the above two metrics can be used along with the known visitor value to determine overall ROI. If a visitor is worth your company £100 and it takes you £50 in advertising spend to reach each customer then you have a healthy ROI of 100%. In this sense knowing the worth of your visitors can greatly increase your ability to keep ad spend profitable.

Researching your completions ads can be a very worthwhile endeavor as it is often the case that an advertiser will lose money when testing a new ad. By looking at your competition you can see what is working and what is not. The general rule is if an ad is being displayed for some time, say over the course of a few weeks at least, then there is a good chance that this is making a profit for the advertiser, unless they just like throwing money away. Some advertisers will pay a premium simply for branding purposes but in most cases, depending on the market, if an ad is displayed consistently then it’s most likely a good money earner.

One of the advantages of using PPC over SEO initially is that due to it being much more instantaneous it can be useful for testing keywords and markets before spending the time necessary for a solid SEO plan. SEO results can take weeks if not months to years to full materialize, at that point one might find the market or phrases chosen aren’t as profitable as initially thought. By testing first with PPC this mistake can be avoided. Another trick is to use Adwords to find the actual search volume of a keyword phrase. By setting an ad to run for a full 24 hour period one can check the amount of impressions recorded and get an more exact look at the amount of search volume. This requires the ad to have enough of a bid to be shown on every impression.