PPC Google AdWords - the questions you didn’t know you needed to ask

The basic idea of Pay-Per-Click is not actually that basic, in fact it often seems that the basic idea is very complicated indeed! Our guide to PPC Google AdWords is designed to answer the questions you’ve always wanted to ask, and even the ones you didn’t know you needed to ask, to give you all the information necessary to make the right decisions for your PPC strategy.

Pay Per Click marketing defined

Pay Per Click or PPC is one model of online marketing. Advertisers pay a fee whenever one of their advertisements is actioned or ‘clicked’. As far as the internet is concerned (and there are other forms of online marketing) the major system of PPC is search engine placement. Advertisers are invited to bid for the best location within each search engine’s ‘sponsored links’ - these are the links that appear above, and sometimes between, organically generated search results. A study conducted in 2012 revealed that over 64% of American people conducting a search will click on a Google Advert if they are searching for something they wish to buy online. This means that PPC offers a substantial benefit for those who are engaged in retail operations, whether of goods or services.

The nitty gritty of PPC Google Adwords

So Google Adwords is the behemoth of paid search advertising - more than any other PPC scheme, it provides opportunities for advertisers to bid strategically on key search terms that will give them high visibility placement on the Google results page. And the reason Google Adwords is the Daddy is that Google now handles over 40,000 search queries every second. That’s 3.5 billion searches daily, or a mind-boggling 1.2 trillion searches annually, around the world.

So although it is only a small fee that a business pays each time a visitor is directed to their website, given the scale of searches, it can (a) lead to a substantial number of visitors and (b) a significant expenditure for the business. This is why effective management of your PPC Google Adwords campaign is vital.

What makes a PPC Google Adwords campaign successful?

Well the simple answer is that if you make more on sales than you spent on fees, your campaign can be considered a success. But there’s a much higher degree of sophistication required to truly make a long-term success out of this complicated field.

Creating a powerful PPC campaign is actually less expensive than creating a weak one, because Google actually charges less if an advertisers campaign prices to be relevant, highly targeted and clever. In other words, advertisers are rewarded with lower fees if they research and choose the best keywords, build those keywords into well-structured campaigns and follow through with landing pages that are well-designed and optimized to create conversions. This means that smart Adwords campaigns cost less and convert higher, resulting in greater profits.

Every time a search is initiated, Google digs into the pool of AdWords advertisers and chooses a set of winners to appear in the valuable ad space on its search results page. The “winners” are chosen based on a combination of factors, including the quality and relevance of their keywords and ad campaigns, as well as the size of their keyword bids.

More specifically, who gets to appear on the page is based on and advertiser’s Ad Rank, a metric calculated by multiplying two key factors - CPC Bid (the highest amount an advertiser is willing to spend) and Quality Score (a value that takes into account your click-through rate, relevance, and landing page quality). This system allows winning advertisers to reach potential customers at a cost that fits their budget. It’s essentially a kind of auction. The below infographic illustrates how this auction system works.

How do I run a great Google AdWords campaign?

So, we understand that Google’s huge daily traffic has the potential to drive massive amounts of traffic to your site. We recognize that PPC adverts appear based on the keywords the advertiser selects. To aid your business there are three key areas in which to focus your attention:

• Keyword relevance - any PPC management company should be able to create relevant keywords lists, combine them into effective keyword groups and then link them to suitable advertising text.
• Landing page optimization - to succeed with click-throughs, landing pages have to be both persuasive and relevant and must also offer clear calls to acton that related to chosen search queries.
• Quality scores - often neglected as a metric of success, the quality score is Google’s own way of assessing both the quality and the relevance of chosen keywords, landing pages and overall PPC campaigns. Over time, advertisers who earn themselves better quality score will receive more ad clicks at a lower price than less effective advertisers.

How often do I need to adjust my PPC campaign?

A PPC Google Adwords campaign is not like a house - you don’t build it and stand back, content that it will remain sturdy and fit for purpose for decades. Regular management is vital to maintain the good effects of your original work. Analyzing the way your account performs gives you the chance to regularly optimize each campaign for maximum profitability. The key actions that need to be undertake on a more or less daily basis are:

• Finding and including negative keywords - non-converting terms are called negative keywords. Adding them to your campaigns both improves each campaign’s relevance and cuts back on spend that doesn’t convert.
• Finding and including PPC keywords - the opposite of a negative keyword, you can improve the scale of any PPC campaign by adding keywords that are relevant to that specific campaign.
• Splitting Ad Groups - one crucial way to to benefit your click through rate (CTR) and also to improve the quality score that, as described above, gives you cheaper clickthroughs, is to separate ad groups into smaller and more relevant collections that in turn allow you to design more tightly targeted advertising text and landing pages. This creates a virtuous circle: tighter ad text and better landing pages have higher conversions leading to more advantageously priced ad clicks which improve your quality score and so on.
• Reviewing landing pages - a continuous process of adjusting the narrative and calls to action on every landing page gives you closer congruence with the search queries that are leading to each page. Regularly dividing landing pages to match tightly with defined search terms will increase conversion rates. While your business may start with only one, or a few, landing pages, you will find you need to constantly tailor new landing paces to specific search queries to maximise conversions. If you page is too general, your conversions will be low.
• Revisit high cost PPC keywords - above all, it’s important to keep a constant eye on your most expensive keywords as they will not only be the biggest drain on your PPC budget but are also most likely to be the least effective because they will be highly sought after (which often means more general) but also more difficult to convert precisely because they are non-specific. It’s common for businesses to start with relatively general keywords and to be able to refine them, over time, to much more precise and often much more cost-effective key terms.

How long does it take to create a great PPC Google AdWords campaign?

There’s no instant result with PPC Google AdWords, but there are definitely quick wins. One reason you can’t get a campaign ‘right’ straight away is that there is, as we’ve already said, no such thing as a static PPC campaign. Channels, products, fads and fashions, prices, seasonality, competitors and innovation of all kinds will constantly impact the way a business runs its PPC activity. On the other hand, there’s no reason not to hit the ground run and to continue to pull away from the opposition month after month, and one way to do that is to use a PPC management company.

It’s vital to start with a list of solid keywords, to have highly effective conversion copy on your landing pages and to have a bid strategy that allows you to maximise the return on your advertising bid. Then you need to constantly revisit every aspect of your PPC, recalibrating each area and then measuring its performance to give you a 360 view of each change’s impact on the overall PPC campaign.

Well, while some advertisers manage this kind of multifaceted approach in-house, more and more understand that they need to work with a PPC management company that has a real understanding of the whole field of PPC. TEA software focuses on using a range of expertise, including AdWords Certified Experts, to create campaigns that not only optimize campaign spend to achieve conversions but also use proprietary software to find and eliminate click-fraud, a major contributor to wasted spend.