If you want your business to show up on the top of search engine results without competing for them organically using SEO, begin your search engine marketing strategy with a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. PPC strategies can help you give your site a competitive boost by quickly generating traffic for your site and raising awareness for your business.
What is PPC?
Simply put, PPC strategies buy you a higher spot in search engine results. That way, your site will have a higher search engine ranking and you’ll be “buying” visits instead of getting them naturally. On Google, PPC ads are the links you see at the top of search results, usually highlighted with a yellow box that says “ad” next to or under the title that says “Ads related to .”
Bidding Wars
So, how do you get a PPC ad for your business? You have to bid for it.
PPC ads are sold at auction. You bid for how much you want to pay when someone clicks on your ad. The more competition there is for a keyword, the more you’ll have to bid when someone clicks on your ad.
For example, if you own a business that sells crockery called Sunset Crockery, you could bid on the keyword “crockery.” On the other hand, specific niche keywords like “Sunset Crockery” won’t cost as much to bid if fewer people are using it.
Your PPC Budget
When you have a PPC strategy, you must have a budget for not only the bidding for the keyword itself, but making sure that the ad is going to an optimized page that is geared towards that ad. Some businesses that buy ads will send users to their homepage instead of the product page. This poor tactic will give your site a high bounce rate, but a poor conversion rate—the money you’re spending on the campaign will be more than what you’re getting back in profits.
In addition, you must also budget for managing that campaign. Once you’ve spent the money in your budget, your ad won’t appear in search engine results and you won’t be charged any more money.
It’s a Good Idea to Have Help
The downside to a PPC strategy is that you are directly paying search engines to display your ad. Therefore, don’t begin a PPC strategy if you cannot afford it or don’t know what you’re doing.
Before you begin a PPC strategy, it’s a good idea to hire a professional agency to help you decide if it is right for you. They will help:
- Keep you from going over your budget
- Spending more than what you will get back
- Manage your PPC bids