What is PPC and how it works?

While everyone wants their sites to be ranked at the very top of various search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, most find out that doing so organically takes effort, time and many years of hard work. It requires a person to be deeply knowledgeable on the technical aspects of SEO, which is what most of us lack in. The good news is that all hope is not lost as Pay Per Click advertising or Google ad words provide greenhorns and webmasters alike with an opportunity to attract a much-needed traffic to their website.

Having said that, what is PPC?

PPC is an acronym for Pay Per Click and is basically an internet marketing advertising model e.g. Google ad words used for various sites where advertisers pay a certain amount of money determined beforehand when their advertisements are clicked online. It works like an auction where advertisers make a bid on their target catch phrases with search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Every time a click is made on the advertisement, the sum of money that an advertiser pays to the various search engines is what is referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC). Once the budget limit you set is depleted, the search engine stops running your ads.

How does PPC work?

On the outside, PPC looks like a pretty simple aspect to implement as opposed to SEO. However, like anything else, not knowing the basics or how to go about it can be disastrous. In that wavelength, we are going to look at 3 essential tips that are instrumental in helping you run an effective PPC campaign.

Create an objective or goal you intend to achieve with your PPC campaign

When setting a goal for your campaign, you need to ask yourself a couple of important questions. Who is your target market? What is your expected outcome? How do you measure the success of your PPC campaign? Once you’ve determined who your target market is, what you expect from them when they click on your ad and finally how to measure the success of your campaign, the next thing is how to establish a simple PPC campaign structure.

Create a simple and relevant campaign structure

Relevance relates to the importance of the keywords you choose based on your target audience while simplicity is to ensure that your campaign structure is easily manageable on a day to day basis.

Understand your PPC settings and what they mean and work in Google ad words

You need to be smart and be conversant with how the Google Network works. By default, Google ad words opt all its ads into Google network sites and partners. Such sites include Google.com, Ask.com, Aol.com, etc. with all these network of sites, your ad will be posted in thousands of websites and this can deplete your budget within a short time. As such, the best course of action would be to opt out of the Google networks. To stem this from happening and having Google hamper your visibility when your budget is depleted, you need to carefully select ad text and keywords for your ad words.

Is there any risk involved with PPC?

The only risk involved with PPC has to be the amount of money you spend. Simply put, you don’t have to worry that your site will be penalized simply because you are using PPC services.