What if I told you there is an easy way to get yourself at the top of the search engines, even if your competitors have better content, design, and SEO strategy.
More so, this trick is perfectly legal. It is basically the act of using what you have to get what you want. Is that not a good idea?
If you’re still wondering what this trick is, it is simple. It’s what marketers know as PPC.
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What is PPC?
PPC is simply pay-per-click marketing. It is the act of paying search engines to place you in favorable SEO positions.
As simple as it sounds, PPC is not actually that simple. It is very complex, almost as complex as SEO.
When doing PPC, you have to make bids, and the best bidder makes the front page. Note I said the best bidder and not the highest bidder. This implies that PPC is much more than just throwing hundreds of dollars at Google and shouting orders stating where, how, and when you want to be placed.
It involves the development of several metrics to ensure the overall success of your ads.
Popular PPC Platforms
Search engines are incredibly popular platforms to place your PPC adverts. They offer spaces in between the search results which houses your ads. Your ads are shown when a user searches for something related to what the ad is all about.
The most popular PPC platforms include
- Google AdWords
- Bing Ads
- YouTube Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Content Networks
These platforms all work similarly, you pay for the slot. What’s different is how your ads are placed.
Google AdWords is straightforward. We already know what services they offer. What they do is place ads within the search results and get paid for every single click. You can pay Google to put you in a good position if your SEO has not been good enough to guarantee you a spot there.
Bing Ads works similarly as they both offer a similar service (Bing and Google). They also accept paid listings, thereby putting you over the hard workers, who call themselves SEO.
YouTube is perfect for video ads that are inserted into video content to irritate viewers (kind of). It works extremely well, although it is also relatively expensive.
Facebook Ads are common. They are the pages, links, and posts you see marked as sponsored when you browse Facebook. Funnily, Facebook Ads aren’t paid per click. You pay according to the estimated number of the eye that view your content.
Content Networks are a group of websites registered under an ads network. The ads network takes adverts from paying advertisers and places them on the websites, while they pay the website owners based on the clicks received from the ads, –or impressions.
Examples include Google AdSense, Media.net and Infolinks.
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Why use PPC?
Even if you already rank for many SEO keywords, you may still need to employ some PPC for extra conversions and better targeting.
Convincing your CEO who is SEO-obsessed to let you incorporate PPC into your marketing strategy mightn’t be easy. Well, here are some points you could table to convince your boss to allow you to try some pay-per-click advertising as well.
- It’s easy to get started
Do you still remember pretty much everything you did while setting out SEO for your website? I’m sure you’re still on some of that now.
From buying Yoast SEO premium to hiring well-known freelance writers. Later on, you still had to employ an SEO before you started seeing any results.
PPC, on the other hand, contrasts this. You don’t need any special PPC plugins for exceptional performance and with a few hours of training, you can get started on PPC and start driving traffic immediately.
- It converts faster and better
Sometimes, you may want a specific audience for your product. For example, you may want all users searching for “cheap laptops in Ohio” to be directed to your website.
Unfortunately, Google refuses to listen to that and they keep ranking you for “laptop chargers in Ohio”, just because that was your focus earlier on. Can you tell Google you no longer sell only the charger, but the laptop itself? Can you tell Google to start ranking your laptops page too?
Nope, Google will tell you that you did nothing to deserve the chargers’ spot. However, with PPC you can. This time, you’re paying Google to notice your page and place it in top spots that have taken tens of months to get to if you’re to play it fair.
Thus, you can indicate what keywords you want to rank with PPC, and Google indicates how much you’re to pay.
- You control the results
This should be obvious by now. You control what happens, how it happens and when it happens.
You have the opportunity to choose what keywords to start with, how much you want to spend, and when to stop the campaign. There are no unnecessary delays and any action you take is immediately effective.
You can also edit and make changes to your ads while it runs. This can enable you to understand what ads work and what doesn’t.
Though you have the say over many things, you can’t say where you want your ads to be placed and what you pay per click. Google evaluates the relevance of your ads with a metric known as “Quality Score” to determine that.
PPC experts can improve the Quality Score by editing the ad copy and landing page to align with the keywords. This can subsequently reduce spend per click and elevate ads position.
Conclusion
The importance of PPC doesn’t end there. In fact, the list goes on and on.
I want you to understand that you can get traffic from Google and other online media by paying too, and this traffic works best when it comes to driving conversions.
In subsequent posts, I’ll be expatiating on PPC and I’ll also give some tips which can help improve quality scores and get quality results from PPC.
