What Is PPC? 7 Things You Should Know

PPC stands for pay-per-click. One of the most popular forms of PPC is through search engine advertising. This allows you to create ads on a search engine, such as Google or Bing. This is a great way to advertise digitally. It’s highly effective and is guaranteed to bring in the right audience based on your account.

Anytime someone clicks on your ad, you will be charged for a click. These clicks usually fluctuate in price so every time someone clicks, you can expect a different rate. This is due to keywords. Your Boston PPC company will help with keyword research along the way.  As a proud partner of Google, GoingClear knows all the ins and outs of a flawless PPC account.

1. What A Google Ads Account Consists Of

To start off, you need keywords. These are inserted within ad groups, which are part of campaigns. The structure of your account can be big or small depending on your budget. For example, you can have 10 campaigns running, each with 5 ad groups. Or maybe you only have 2 campaigns running with a few ad groups within each. 

Campaigns are part of the bigger picture within your account. They can be based on your company’s goals. Within each campaign you have running will consist of ad groups. These break up the bigger picture. Let’s go back to our landscaping business example. One campaign can be based on lawn mowing services. Ad groups within that campaign can consist of lawn mowing pricing, lawn mowing for residential areas and lawn mowing for commercial property. Then you insert your keywords accordingly to match with each ad group topic. 

2. What Are Keywords?

Keywords are a big part of your PPC account and basically make up its foundation. 

Keywords are what a person types in a search engine that can trigger your ad. It is a word or set of words that helps people find your site.   Without keywords, you won’t be able to have a successful account, or an account at all.

For example, let’s say you run a landscaping business and want to create a PPC campaign. The first thing you have to consider is what are people most likely to search revolving around landscaping? You also have to consider your goals in this case, too. Some keywords you might use are “landscaping companies near me” or “landscaping services.” 

Price is another factor that comes with picking out keywords. Some keywords are more expensive than others because of the high competition on the search engine results page (SERP). Other companies or businesses might be bidding on the same keywords. Luckily, with PPC, you are able to have a lot of control over competition.

3. On A Budget?

No need to worry here because there is no minimum or maximum limit on spend. You can run an account at $10/day or $10,000/day. You might already be running an account and found that sweet spot for your costs. 

If you decide to change your budget, it’s as easy as a click of a button to change. You are allowed to change it at anytime. We usually recommend setting a monthly budget for easy management. 

4. Difference Between Search and Display Ads

At GoingClear, we specialize on the Google Ads platform. Within Google, you can have PPC ads focused just around text or ads focused around an image. Display ads are usually very cheap to run and can bring awareness to your brand very quickly. Display ads consist of an image, usually with a call to action on them. These are shown on the Google Display Network, which consists of millions of sites! On the other hand, search ads are more complex in terms of text content. Needless to say, your company can benefit from both.

You can also use Display ads interchangeably with remarketing. What is remarketing? This is basically just like Display ads, but these ads will target people who have already visited another ad to your site and didn’t take action. So now we are retargeting them. This will basically place your ad in front of their face when they are browsing another site, their Gmail account, or even an app on their cell phone. 

Search and Display usually run hand and hand together, but sometimes you might benefit more from Search compared to Display. In this case, you can just pause all your Display ads with the click of a button. 

There are endless ways you can target someone through PPC, and these are just a few. Depending on what type of industry you are in, different types of PPC ads can create a better outcome for you. 

5. Targeting

Whether you are an international, national, or local business, you are able to focus your reach on certain geographical locations. Although you don’t get charged to pick a location, you are able to set bid adjustments within your account. This just means that if you have a higher success rate in a certain location, you can bump up your bids so your ads are more likely to show in those specific locations.

PPC also allows you to target specific audiences. If you know what type of activities, hobbies, industries, or topics your typical customer might be into, you can target those demographics as well. Age ranges, genders, income, and other factors can also be taken into consideration when setting up a campaign. These are just a few more factors that can help boost performance. 

6. Extensions

These basically make your ad longer and take up more real estate on the SERP. Some examples of extensions are phone number extensions, callouts, snippets, site links, and application downloads. With all these in play, your ad can take up a lot more space on the results page, bumping your competition down even further. 

This all might sound confusing at first if you’re a newbie to PPC, but GoingClear can help you manage all of it. We can also familiarize you with your PPC account and anything you may not understand. At GoingClear, your Boston PPC company, we’re able to take over your existing PPC account or build a new account from scratch with a high success rate.

7. Auction Time

When your account is fully created and optimized for the time being, it’s time to set everything live and start showing your ads! This is where your ads will now go into auction. An auction is held every time someone types something into the search bar on a search engine. Depending on how relevant your content is and how competitive your bids are, you are more than likely to be part of the auction. There are usually 4 ads that show at the top of the search engine results page and 4 that appear on the bottom. What position of the 4 spots you’ll get all depends on your account and competition. That’s why at GoingClear we focus on getting you into a top position at every auction.