Pay Per Click Ads

Pay per click ads are the cornerstones of your search engine marketing activities. Whilst you have limited control over organic search rankings, you can have plenty control when it comes to paid search. Organic search results consists of websites that search engines deem the most relevant to a user’s search query and it’s entirely up to the search engine’s secret algorithm what it determines to be relevant. You can enhance your ranking indirectly by search engine optimization but it is a medium to long-term process. Pay per click ads give you immediate results and visibility in search engines

Pay per click ads appear on the same search engine result page as the organic results, however they are separated visually. These sponsored links appear on the right side of the screen. The ads have strict limitations, lengthwise. Before and whilst creating a ppc advertisement on Google Adwords, for example, you will be notified of the rules and restrictions you must adhere to:

• Headline – catches the attention of users, can boost click through rate if the keyword is included in the headline – 25 characters
• First line of description – the body of the ad, it is advised to use a call-to-action or mention the price of the product to enhance the click through rate – 35 characters
• Second line of description – 35 characters
• Display URL – can differ from the Destination URL but must be part of the same domain – 25 characters
• Destination URL – up to 1024 characters, invisible, the destination of the Display URL

The logic behind the PPC ads is similar to logic of organic search: provide users the most relevant results – in this case: ads. Search engines consider two factors: how much are you willing to pay and how relevant is your ad. Google uses Ad Rank, for example, to determine in which order will ads appear. It takes into consideration your maximum CPC bid and the Quality Score of your ad. A high Quality Score score is  higly influenced by the maximum cost per click you set for each ad group and when achived can have a very positive effect on your ad campaign allowing you to pay less for a click and channel more traffic to your landing page for the same budget.

Testing is a key element of ppc advertising many marketers overlook. The instant nature of ppc ads, being able to pause and activate current ads at will enables acurate testing allowing you to uncover which of your ad text variations are performing best. By intergrating relevant keywords you have uncovered from keyword reserach into your ad text combined with a competitive bid strategy your ads will gain more immpressions and clicks. The rest is down to your sites conversion rate, basically how well your site performs at getting new visitors to sign up or purchase all which can be monitored with web analytics tools.