Common PPC Questions Answered
What is PPC?
PPC stands for pay-per-click. You pay each time a user clicks your ad and visits your site. You bid for ad space and keywords, so that your ads show when a user is searching for your product or service. Google Ads is the most popular PPC advertising system in the world.
What is the Google auction and how does it work?
The Google auction occurs every time a user searches. Google then looks at keywords that are appropriate to the search term, and these are entered into the auction. The two key factors Google looks at are the CPC bid and the quality score you have for that keyword. These are multiplied to generate an ad rank score. The advertiser with the highest ad rank will get the top position.
What metrics are most important?
This mostly depends on a businesses KPIs and the type of adverts we’re running. Generally we track impressions, clicks, click-through rate, cost, conversions, average cost per click and cost per conversion. But if you were running video ads, you would also want to be looking at video views or viewable impressions.
What is a quality score and is it important?
Google’s quality score determines the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. This is largely based on the relevance of your content to the keyword you’re targeting. For example, you could target a keyword relevant to your business, with a well worded ad, but if your landing page is generic or doesn’t link to the keyword, Google would lower the quality score.
How much will PPC cost?
This is another factor which entirely depends on your business goals, whether or not you use an agency and the contract you have with an agency. Firstly, the higher the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages, the less you’re going to have to pay for ad space. The type of business you’re in can also affect your costs, the most expensive category to advertise in is insurance. Keywords in this category have an average cpc of $54.91. Similarly, loans, mortgages, attorney’s etc. are all expensive to appear in. On top of this, if you have an agency running your PPC, there will be fees for them. Although some agencies offer differing contract types, such as commission payment, which could work best for your business.
Can I see my performance against competitors?
Google does have an Auction Insights report. This shows the websites that are bidding for the same ad space. It shows the impression share, average position, top of page rate and outranking share.
How much involvement will I have in my PPC advertising?
If you choose to do it yourself, then it will all be your responsibility. If you work with an agency it depends how that agency works. You should have a say in what your company defines as good traffic and what kind of keywords you think best describe your services/products. But the general running, maintenance and improvements to your advertising would be down to your agency.
Will PPC grow my business?
Most likely, yes. PPC can work to your budget, this means it can cost as much as you’re willing to spend, there’s no set price. It’s a fast way to setup advertising, getting you results from your first campaign. You choose your audience and showing up when they’re searching for you.