Meridian Internet Marketing for SEO, PPC and Internet Marketing

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Explained

When the Internet’s World Wide Web was first popularized in the mid 1990’s, the first widely adopted form of advertising was the banner ad. Banner advertising inherited many characteristics of traditional media (sold on a CPM basis, targeted demographically, etc.) Today banner ads (often called display ads) are still prominently used to promote brand awareness and brand image (see Internet Advertising).

By the late 1990’s “Pay-Per-Click” advertising began to alter the online marketing landscape. Essentially a pay-per click (PPC) ad is a small ad (often text only) that appears when someone does a keyword search on a search engine (though today pay-per-click has expanded beyond just search engine pages).

Pay-per-click offered advertisers two very attractive benefits. First, advertisers pay only when a user clicks on the advertiser’s ad and is linked to the advertiser’s website. Second, the user who clicks on the ad is considered to be highly qualified since he or she is searching for products or services that the advertiser is offering. It’s an extremely efficient way for advertisers to reach their target audience at the very moment they are shopping (researching or buying) for their product/service. Because of the ads are so well targeted and because advertisers pay only when the ad is clicked, PPC is generally considered to offer advertisers the best return on investment (ROI) among online advertising options.

The typical PPC ad is all text (though PPC ads with graphics or video are an option and are growing in popularity) with a short headline and very short descriptive copy. An advertiser’s ad appears when a user searches for a keyword phrase the advertiser has bid on. The ad generally appears among a group of “sponsored ads” comprised of a given advertiser and competing websites. The position of a given advertiser’s ad is based primarily on the price paid by the advertiser and the “relevancy” of the ad to the user’s keyword search.

Selecting the right set of keywords to represent an advertisers products or services is a critical aspect of PPC advertising. Though there are software tools available to aid in the selection process, an intuitive sense of what keyword terms a user might use is indispensable when selecting keywords. Similarly the bidding process that tells the search engine how much an advertiser wishes to pay for a keyword (per click and per day and per campaign) is supported by software tools, but is ultimately guided by a practitioner’s sound judgment.

Good judgment and strong communication skills also come into play when writing the short text ad used in PPC advertising. Economy of words, strong consumer appeal and a high degree of relevancy are the key ingredients of an effective text ad.

Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Pay Per Click advertising and search engine optimization are sometime confused with each other since they both deal with increasing traffic to websites from search engines and are both considered part of Search Engine Marketing. However, the two tactics are very different in how they’re implemented and the level of control they afford. The two are best viewed as being complementary – two different ways to use search engines to drive traffic.

SEO is a mostly technical set of steps taken to make a website appear as high as possible in the (natural or organic) search results for keywords that are relevant to a website. The effects of SEO occur weeks and months after the work is done. Ultimately, though SEO will likely improve a website’s position, there is no control over the ranking received. Of course because SEO deals with natural listings it will have greater appeal to those who prefer not to click on a paid ad (even if it is a highly relevant paid ad).

PPC is a paid ad that appears in close proximity to the natural search results. Because the ad only appears when a relevant keyword is search for, it can deliver highly qualified users to a website. PPC can start driving traffic to an advertiser’s site almost instantly. It offers complete control over which keywords are used and where in the group of sponsored ads they appear. PPC also allows advertisers to place limits on the amount spent per click, per day and per campaign.

Click Fraud
Click fraud occurs when someone clicks on a PPC ad without any intention to visit the advertiser’s site. It’s a malicious act – the purpose is to use up the money in an advertiser’s account. Unscrupulous competitors or other third parties in a position to profit from fraudulent clicks are usually behind it. The actual clicking many be done by automated software scripts or by people hired to sit and click. Click fraud is a serious issue and all of the major search engines have taken steps to diminish its impact. Advertisers are combating it using tracking tools to help identify fraud and report it to the search engines.