Pay Per Click also know as Google adwords, paid search and sponsored links is a strategy that marketers use to expose and generate traffic to their websites. The process is a simple one to understand but as one uncovers the theory, paid search becomes quite complicated and methodical. Two different companies, who have a sound understanding of how to run paid search campaigns, can produce contrasting results on an identical campaign.
PPC or paid search has 2 main forms on Google:
- The Search Network
- The Content Network
PPC on The Search Network
Essentially, the advertiser will choose a set of keywords that relates to their product or service offering. The next step would be to purchase these keywords from Google. Now once a user searches for one of the keywords on Google, e.g. “car insurance”, the advert displaying the advertisers business will be displayed.
One of the main benefits of paid search is that the only time the advertiser will pay is when the advert is “clicked on”. This is far more advanced than almost any other form of advertising. Most above the line advertising implies paying a set fee irrespective of the results. For example a company would pay a set fee for advertising in star newspaper or on TV. Upon paying the set fee there is never a guarantee of how many people will read and action the advert.
In other words paid search is a dramatic advance in advertising, in that the advertiser only pays once the advert has been clicked on. In fact simple logic says the only people that will click on the advert will be those that are interested in the product or service.
Try this analogy – a company is selling DVD’s and gets a shop in Sandton City. Now the only time the company would pay rent is when someone interested walks into their store looking for a DVD. This is precisely the logic of paid search. For this reason paid search is a far less risky option that most the above the line channels such as TV, radio, print, billboards etc.
Many search engines offer paid search. However Google is by far the biggest player, since almost 90% of South African users, will use Google to search. The numbers are similar worldwide making Google the most used search engine globally. The reason why Google is used by most, is because the results on their SERP’s(Search Engine Results Pages) are based on relevance. Google prides itself at giving users the best results first.
This applies to natural (organic) and paid search. In order to get to the top of Google on both natural and paid search, relevance is a key factor. In fact many advertisers get it wrong as they assume for paid search, the position on Google is solely dependent on how much the bid is for a particular keyword. This is not the case. As discussed previously, Google rankings largely dependent on relevance. The following factors will influence the position your paid search advert will display on Google :
- The amount you bid for the keyword
- The relevance of your ad title in relation to the keyword that has been searched
- The relevance of your ad copy and ad title in relation to the keyword that has been searched
- The relevance of your landing page relative to the keyword that has been searched
- The click through ratio (CTR) – which is the number of impressions/the number of clicks
- Geographic location
All of the above factors are what Google takes into account when applying a quality score to an ad campaign. The quality score is a score out of 10. The higher the quality score, the less an advertiser will pay for each click. This is known as the (CPC) Cost per Click.
Advertisers and agencies who understand these metrics will be able to generate clicks and leads at a far lower cost than those who assume the position of the advert is solely dependent on the bidding price. This makes it important to design websites that are relevant and based on keyword research. Typically the first step of any paid search campaign will begin with an analysis of the demand for certain keywords surrounding a particular product. For example, when 3Way Marketing South Africa gets approached to do a paid search campaign for an insurance company, the process would begin with a keyword analysis that looks something like this:
| Keyword |
Demand |
# Competition |
# Competiotion
with quotes |
Competing sites quality |
| insurance |
300 000 |
3.8M |
3.8M |
Moderate. Most of the sites are related to short term insurance and not life insurance though. This keyword is also untargeted therefore since it is not specified what type of insurance was the focus of the search. |
| Life insurance |
22 000 |
530 000 |
303 000 |
Moderate. The profiles of sites on the first page show some low competitive sites. |
| Insurance quotes |
8 000 |
880 000 |
97 000 |
Low to moderate competition – most of these sites are focused on short term insurance |
| Insurance quote |
4 000 |
131 000 |
65 000 |
Low to moderate |
| Insurance online |
2900 |
756 000 |
13 600 |
Low to moderate. Most sites are sub pages of larger domains and the number of competing sites are low. |
Now that we have identified, that insurance is the keyword with the highest volumes, this keyword will become a pivotal part of the campaign. From this point it will be important to design a landing page that focuses the keyword “insurance”. The landing page design would be aimed at improving the CTR (Click through ratio) and overall quality score. Remember the higher the quality score, the less you will pay for each click. 3Way Marketing South Africa specialises in driving the cost of clicks down and therefore almost immediately improving on our clients’ return on investment.
The content Network
The Google content network is the world’s largest ad network .Thousands of advertisers use Google to reach users on hundreds of thousands of web sites across all industries, from large, well-known sites to niche sites and audiences. With an audience larger than any other ad network or single web property (even Google.com), on the Google content network your message will reach more of your target audience, in more places, more often.
This network can be tailored to country, region, product, demographics etc. It works much the same as the search network but instead of the adverts being displayed on Google SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) the adverts are displayed across relevant sites. In this model the advertiser chooses which websites they would like their adverts to appear. Example if a company wishes to sell tennis rackets, they might want to advertise on sports websites such as www.supersport.com/tennis. Once the network of sites have been chosen, the adverts will display on the various sites and again the advertiser would only pay once the advert has been clicked on.
It is often a good idea to run paid search on both the search and content networks and then compare the results.
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