Pay-Per-Click or simply PPC is a marketing strategy that allows you to advertise your products or services directly on search engines, such as Google. Many people mistake PPC with SEO. Although they aim for the same thing, these two marketing strategies are fundamentally different.
SEO allows you to build exposure over time and generate more organic traffic while PPC produces results much faster and generates direct traffic.
That said, PPC requires an investment because you’re bidding for relevant keywords alongside many other companies. PPC can be a great advantage when you need to advertise something quickly and spread the word to as many people as possible in a relatively short time period. With that in mind, here are a few things every business should know about PPC.
Businesses usually opt for Google Ads, formerly known as Google Ad Words, when they’re in need of PPC. The name PPC (Pay-Per-Click) indicates that you pay Google a certain amount of money whenever someone clicks on your ad displayed at search results.
In return, Google displays your ad as a snippet in search results for the related keywords you’ve bided for. The good thing is that people who click on ads are usually interested in your offers, which means they’re likely to convert and you’ll gain a return on investment.
However, you cannot simply pay more to have your ad displayed before everyone else’s. Instead, Google relies on the so-called Ad Auction where they display ads based on relevance and validity. In other words, you simply cannot just pay for ads, you must optimize them as well.
If you have a budget for PPC, this advertising strategy can work wonders for your business. This is especially true when you want to boost exposure for limited time offers, such as seasonal sales or some similar event.
As mentioned before, unlike SEO that builds results over time and in an organic way, PPC does things much faster and can generate a lot of traffic for your website pretty quickly. Once people start landing on your pages, it’s up to you to seal the deal and ensure they will convert into customers.
PPC may seem like an easy strategy to rely on but it’s actually quite the opposite. If you want PPC to work in your favor, you’ll have to plan out your strategy, assign a budget, opt for relevant but not too competitive keywords and finally, optimize your ads well. That’s why it’s important to consider your options so you won’t end up losing money in the process.