PPC (Pay Per Click)

Introduction to PPC:

PPC (Pay Per Click) means paid listing of web site in search engine results pages (SERPs). PPC is also called sponsored sites. PPC services will rank your site on the top in search engine results and you have to pay for that to search engine. It is simply called one type of an advertisement but not perfectly because PPC is very large field.

You can see in the above image that left side is the natural or organic (SEO) results and right side is paid results or sponsored sites (PPC). This is called the paid results because when the user will come and search any keyword in the search engine than search engine will display two results. One is natural results at left side and paid results on right side. So when user click on any site on the right side from the paid listing than that site will have to pay defined cost to search engine per click that’s why it is called Pay Per Click.

There are mainly three major PPC Services that is Google Adwords, MSN Ad center and Yahoo Search Marketing (Overture). We will more emphasis on Google PPC Services because it covers great market of PPC in the search engine paid services.

Google is displaying 8 paid results at the right side on one page and next 8 results on second page and so on. All the results are displayed on the results pages based on site quality factors, bidding price and many other factors.

Generally the history is saying that when visitor wants to buy any product from Internet, 80 to 90% visitors are using search engine to buy any product. User will search keyword in the search engine and go for top displayed sites and if user will satisfy with that site and product than user will buy products from that site otherwise user will come back to search engine and go for other site. So staying at top in search engine with high quality site features can make your online business successful.

Components of PPC Campaign :

How can you create a PPC campaign for your web site? There are some components you need to create a PPC campaign.

• Keywords :
  

You can make the keyword research for your site. (Same as keyword research in SEO). You can select the best keywords for your PPC campaign from the keyword research. You will have to select the high ROI keywords because it is a matter of money so you will have to select such a keywords that should be searched by the visitors to find your site. So first you should have the list of keywords for your site.

• Ad Format and text :
  

When the search engine will display the paid results ad, it will show the title, short description and url in the ad format. There is a very limited space in the ad format. So you will have to create an ad format that includes all the requirements of the visitor. Because when visitor will search for any keyword and if your ad will match the visitor’s search than only visitor will click on your site.

• Landing Page of the site :

When the potential visitor will search for any keyword and if your site’s ad is satisfying the visitor’s requirements than visitor will click on your site ad and come to your site. That page is called the landing page of the site. Your landing page should provide all the details about the product for which visitor came to your site.

• Conversion :

The main purpose of landing page is to convert the visitor into the customer. That means your landing page should satisfy all the requirements of visitor.

If you have web site with high quality, relevant ad of your site and the excellent landing page than you can get high ROI (Return on Investment) from PPC Services.

Steps to create PPC Campaign for your site in Google Adwords:

There are basically steps through which you can create PPC campaign for your site.

• You have to sign up for a Google Adwords account.
• You have to create Ad for your site with title, short description of 2 lines and url of the site.
• You have to add a list of best keywords related to your site. Those keywords you can get from the keyword research.
• You have to bid for the keywords and also you can set the maximum budget per day for your campaign. For ex. If you bid $ 1 for “web site development” keyword and your competitor will bid $ 2 for that keyword than you will be at 2# position and your competitor will be on 1st position in the paid results. You can increase your bid to get the top position. If you have set maximum budget $ 20 for the day than Google will display your site ad on that keyword until your clicks reach at $ 20. When your budget is over per day google will not display your ad for that keyword.
• When the user will search keyword, google will display your ad in the paid results. when the user will click on your site than you have to pay defined amount per click to google. When your site ad reaches at the budget, google will not show your site ad in the results.
• Your adwords account is linked to your credit card. So total amount will be deducted directly from your credit card at the end of the month.
• You can see the reports of the campaign in the Google Adwords Reports. You can see the clicks on the ad per day, avg. position of your ad in the search paid results, cost per click (CPC), goal conversion that means how many visitors are converting to customers and other information.

Your Site’s Ad display in Paid Results:

When you create a PPC campaign for your site, your site ad will display in the paid results according to the Google Algorithm. There are some factors of algorithm based on which google gives the rankings to the Site Ad in the paid results.

• Your site ad should be related to the keyword searched by the user.
• Your site’s ad display position will depend on the bid of your keyword. If you bid high for the keyword than you may get the top in the paid results. Also it will depend on your competitors bid. Your bid should be high compare to that to stay on the top. You should have to bid minimum amount otherwise your site ad may not display in the paid results.
  
• Your landing page should have some quality factors to get the ranking in paid results.
  

Selection of bid for the keywords:

When you want to start the PPC campaign, you will make the keyword research and based on that you will select the best keywords for your campaign. You can bid high for your best keywords and low bid for your other keywords. Based on ROI, you can bid for the keywords. You can bid high for high ROI keywords.

Landing Page Qualities:

There are some landing page qualities based on that your site’s ad will display in the paid results. Here there are some landing page qualities:

• Landing page should be highly related to the user’s search.
• User will come to find the solution of his problem so landing page should provide the solution for the user’s questions.
• Landing page should convert the visitor into the customer.
• You can create a specific Ad for particular product and according to that your ad title, description and url should contain that product related keyword. That Ad should point to that products related landing page.
  
• When the visitor will come on the landing page, visitor can complete the buying process within few steps. Landing page should be very clear and user friendly to the visitors.
  
• The transaction should be simple on the landing page otherwise visitors will left your site and go back to other site.
  
• Landing page should provide all the information related to the product to the visitors like product features, product photo, product price, product reviews, and discount on the product, shipping process, and some other benefits.
• The layout of the landing page should be professional like if you are promoting one product page in PPC ad than it should contain that product information only. The design of that page should not attract the visitors and also there should not be link of other products or pages on that page because visitor is at the purchase step.
• There should be always the thank you page when the customer will purchase the product and also there should be a feedback form and other products promotion.

Keywords Selection:

When you start the PPC campaign, the first step to select the proper keywords. You can select the keywords for your site from keyword research. You can select the keywords according to your site. You can test all keywords by starting the campaign by all the keywords and after that you can continue with the best keywords.

You can choose 4 types of matching type of keywords that means on what keywords you want to show your ad in google paid results.

• Broad Match:

You can use the broad match by simply typing your keyword. For ex. If you type the keyword computer parts than google will show your ad even if any user will search computer parts in any order and also for the related keywords.

• Phrase Match:

You can use the phrase match by typing the keyword in “ “. For ex. If you will type the keyword “computer parts” than google will show your ad only when computer parts is searched by the user in exact order in other search terms also. Your ad will show for computer parts price but not for parts of computer

• Exact Match:

You can use the exact match by placing the brackets around the keywords. For ex. If you will type the keyword “computer parts” than google will show your ad only if some user will search the keyword computer parts exactly.

• Negative keyword:

You can use the negative keywords by placing the – sign before the keyword. For ex. If some user will search the keyword like free computer parts now when the user wants the products in free than user will never pay for that so that type of users should not come on your site. You can make such keywords negative by placing –free computer parts. So when the user will search for such a keywords than google will not show your ad for that keyword.

You can select the geographical location in the Google Adwords like if you want to show your site ad in particular geographical location than google will show your ad only in particular location defined by you not in other locations. If you select the USA region than your ad will be displayed only when that keyword will be searched in USA. You can also customize your ad state and city wise also.

Actual cost per click (CPC):

• When you bid for the keyword, you will have to pay to google decided cost per click but in most cases, the cost per click is not same as the bid for the keyword. The cost per click will be dependent on the advertiser’s competition and their bidding for that keyword. Actual cost per click will be different from the bid of the keyword.
• For ex. There are three advertisers for one keyword. A is bidding $ 15 for that keyword, B is bidding $ 10 and C is bidding $ 5 for the keyword. Now A pays next lowest bid + 0.01 $ so A pays $ 10.01 per click to google. Now B pays next lowest bid + 0.01 $ so B pays $ 05.01 $ per click to google. Now C pays $ 5 per click as the bidding because nobody is next lowest bidder.

Conclusion:

If you have just started new business and if you have some budget than you can hire the PPC professional who can manage your campaigns regularly. They have good experience in the PPC services and also they can manage the PPC campaign by advanced keyword research tools, web analytics reports, bid management, checking the ROI (Return On Investment) on the keywords regularly. It is better to hire the professionals for the PPC campaign because google is changing their algorithm at every 3 or 4 months and usually google doesn’t explain changes. Professional people may get the ideas on the changed algorithm based on experience.