What Is Pay Per Click or PPC and Why Should You Care?
If your company has been having great success with organic search engine optimization, you may start wondering how to take your search engine marketing to the next level. The answer is pay per click or Google AdWords.
Pay per click is a form of search engine advertising that can bring target audience to your website. With a pay per click or PPC campaign, your website ad is listed at the top of search results when a user conducts a keyword search. You can instruct search engines to display your website ad only when certain keywords or keyword phrases relevant to your business are searched. Search engines only charge you a fee when a user clicks on your ad and come to your website.
Google, Yahoo and MSN are the three main provider of pay per click service. As a business owner, the only PPC service that truly matters is Google AdWords. As nearly 70% of all searches are conducted at Google, AdWords has become the most important player in the PPC market. Therefore, your PPC campaign should focus on maximizing your exposure and your return on investment at AdWords.
Why Should PPC and SEO Work Together?
No matter how well your website is optimized, it is very difficult or impossible for a single website to rank at the top for all the desired keywords. It is especially true for companies that offer a long list of products or services and for companies that want to have high exposure nationwide. In such cases, running an effective PPC campaign can add to your SEO success and bring more target traffic to your site.
Many business owners make the wrong assumption that search engine users don’t pay attention to the pay-per-click ads. Some even consider the websites listed in pay-per-click advertisements not as legitimate as those in the organic search results. As pay-per-click technology evolves, search engines are able to deliver more accurate listings to users and more and more users are finding the PPC listings useful. Up to 30% of search engine users do click on the pay-per-click listings. Given the fact that tens of billions of searches are conducted at Google alone each month, ignoring 30% of search engine traffic can negatively impact your bottom line and give your competitors a strong edge.
When a PPC campaign is well-managed, pay per click can be just as cost-effective as search engine optimization. Base on our experience, our clients that have uses both SEO and PPC receive comparable returns for their investment.
Google AdWords' Pay Per Click Gives You More Controls Than Organic SEO
- You control the timing of your pay-per-click campaign. For many businesses, timing is a critical factor of their marketing. For example, a law firm that specializes in drug recall lawsuits needs immediate exposure at Google as soon as FDA recalls a drug. Such a time-sensitive nature can make it impossible for SEO to works its magic. However, using PPC can yield instant results. Pay-per-click advertisements can start bringing visitors to your website in 10 minutes.
- You control which regions to run your campaign. AdWords allows you to specify which regions in the US or the world to display your advertisement. If you have been having great success with your products in Minnesota, you may want to test if your products can sell in other states or cities. With AdWords, you can set up a campaign that targets another state or city.
- You control your budget. Whether you can afford $10 a day or $10,000 a day, AdWords lets you decide how much you would like to spend. If your business is seasonal, you can increase your spending at your peak season, and lower your budget when things slow down.
- You can control the exact keyword phrases that trigger the display of your ads. For organic SEO, what keywords phrases that your website is ranked at the top is controlled solely by search engines. However, with PPC, you decide what keywords you want your ads seen by users.
- You can specify the exact message in your advertisement. In your PPC listings, you can choose to communicate with your prospect through your own messages. With AdWords, you have total control of these messages. If one message works better than others in convincing your prospective customers, you can pick out the winner and drop the low-performing ones.
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