PPC/AdWords

PPC (pay-per-click) is a pricing model for targeted Internet advertising. Targeting millions of potential customers is the key concept here. Your ad copy may be the best in the world, but if you show it to people who are not interested you will get zero results.

With PPC you find your customers by keywords they are searching for (search network) or by articles they are reading (content network). Both ways are equally important. People performing the search know what they want and are more likely to turn into buyers. People reading articles are a wider audience but content network will get more clicks than search network. You need to target both groups, but in a different way.

The three most popular PPC networks are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) and Microsoft adCenter. All have search and content network, but they are not equally important. Google network has much more traffic than both Yahoo! and Microsoft networks combined. Furthermore, Google users are often more computer savvy (and therefore better buyers for some product groups). For example, many people use Yahoo! for free services like web mail and MSN Search because it is default search in Windows. Google search and content network reaches over 80% of Internet Users worldwide (Source: comScore Media Metrix), so that should be your primary advertising focus when building a new campaign. We suggest that new PPC campaigns are first optimized for Google AdWords system (as more statistics is available) and then later copied to YSM and adCenter, but with different bids. After enough statistics is gathered, YSM and adCenter are micromanaged individually.

Businesses love PPC advertising because they pay only for people who are interested in their product or service. If you click on the ad, you are obviously interested in it. If you are not interested you will not click on it and there will be no charge. Unfortunately, this is a common misconception. Contrary to what the name says (pay-per-click) you also need to pay for ad impressions that didn't get any clicks – but in an indirect way. Today all major PPC systems calculate CTR (Click-through rate), the ratio of clicks to impressions. They also analyze relevance of your ads and landing pages. If you have low CTR (many impressions but few clicks) and low relevance of ads or landing pages, PPC system will increase your required bid for the same position. On the other side, advertisers with highly relevant ads and high CTR will pay less to be in a higher position than you. So, every impression that doesn't lead to a click costs you indirectly because it decreases your CTR and increases your bids.

Another common misconception is that SEO (Search engine optimization) is a replacement for paid advertising. This is plain wrong! Even if you have your web site listed on the first page of Google organic (natural) search results for a certain set of keywords, you still need paid advertising because of:

1. Content network. SEO doesn't help you to show on content network; only paid advertising is displayed there. Many people underestimate this, but usually more clicks are generated from content network than from search network.
2. Targeting. You can't choose how the search engine displays your natural search link for a certain keyword. With PPC you can serve different and most relevant ad for every keyword, language or geographical location. Better targeting means better CTR, conversions and ROI.
3. Testing and statistics. With PPC you can split test ads and landing pages and find what the targeted group really wants. For organic search clicks you don't even know the basic statistic as CTR.
4. Time It takes months to get your web in organic search results for just a dozen of keywords. With AdWords you can be on the first page for thousands of keywords in less than one week.
5. Unpredictability. If you use cheap SEO and buy thousands of incoming links for a few hundred dollars, your competitors can do the same. If only a few of your competitors do it, you are off the first page. And when Google detects such link farms they set all link value to zero – and both you and other companies using the same strategy will be off the first page. With PPC you will be on the first page as long as you are willing to pay for it.

Search engine optimization should be used in addition to PPC/AdWords advertising, not as a replacement.

Take a look at some reasons for hiring our PPC/AdWords specialists We also offer professional SEO services.

Feel free to contact us about any questions regarding creation of a new PPC campaign or optimizing existing ones. We try to answer every e-mail and the first advice is free.