What Is PPC? Mastering the Basics of Pay-Per-Click Marketing

PPC stands for pay-per-click, a type of online advertising where you pay a fee every time someone clicks on your ad. It’s like buying visits to your website (or landing page or app). If PPC is working well, the fee is small compared to what you earn from the click. For example, if you pay $3 for a click but make a $300 sale from it, you’ve made a good profit.

PPC ads can look different and use text, images, videos, or a mix of these. They can show up on search engines, websites, social media, and more.

One popular form of PPC is search engine advertising (also called paid search or search engine marketing). Here, advertisers bid for their ads to appear in a search engine’s sponsored links when someone searches for something related to their business. For example, if we bid on the keyword “Google Ads audit,” our ad for our free Google Ads Performance Grader might show up on the search results page for that or a related search.

How does PPC Advertising Work?

PPC advertising varies by platform, but the general steps are:

Choose your campaign type based on your goal.

Set your targeting options (audiences, devices, locations, schedule, etc.).

Set your budget and bidding strategy.

Enter your destination URL (landing page).

Create your ad.

Once your ad is live, when and where it appears, and how much you pay per click, are all decided by a system based on your budget, bid, settings, and the quality and relevance of your ad.

PPC platforms want to keep their users happy, so they reward advertisers who make relevant and trustworthy ads with better positions and lower costs.

To make the most money from PPC, you need to learn how to do it correctly.

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is the most popular PPC advertising system in the world. It allows businesses to create ads that show up on Google’s search engine and other Google sites.

Every time someone searches on Google, the system picks a set of winning ads to display on the search results page.

The "winners" are chosen based on a mix of factors, including how good and relevant their keywords and ads are, and how much they bid on those keywords. We’ll explain this more in the next section.

How PPC works in Google Ads

When advertisers create an ad, they pick keywords to target and set a bid for each one. For example, if you bid on the keyword “pet adoption,” you’re telling Google you want your ad to show up for searches related to pet adoption.

Google uses formulas and an auction process to decide which ads appear for a search. If your ad is in the auction, Google gives it a Quality Score from 1 to 10 based on its relevance to the keyword, expected click-through rate, and landing page quality.

Then, Google multiplies your Quality Score by your maximum bid (the most you’re willing to pay for a click) to get your Ad Rank. Ads with the highest Ad Rank scores are shown.

This system helps advertisers reach potential customers at a cost that fits their budget. It’s like an auction. The infographic below shows how the Google Ads auction works.

How to do PPC with Google Ads

Using Google Ads for PPC marketing is valuable because Google is the most popular search engine, so it gets a lot of traffic and delivers the most impressions and clicks to your ads. How often your PPC ads appear depends on the keywords and match types you choose. To make your PPC campaign successful, you should:

Bid on relevant keywords: Create relevant PPC keyword lists, tight keyword groups, and good ad text.

Focus on landing page quality: Make optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content, and a clear call to action tailored to specific search queries.

Improve your Quality Score: Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. Better Quality Scores lead to more ad clicks at lower costs.

Capture attention: Write enticing ad copy and, if you’re running display or social ads, use eye-catching visuals

How to do effective PPC keyword research

Keyword research for PPC takes a lot of time, but it’s very important. Your whole PPC campaign is built around keywords, and the best Google Ads advertisers keep growing and refining their keyword lists. If you only do keyword research once, when you start your first campaign, you might miss out on many valuable, low-cost, and relevant keywords that could bring traffic to your site.

Here’s a quick guide to creating an effective PPC keyword list:

Relevant: Make sure the keywords you bid on are closely related to what you’re selling. You don’t want to pay for clicks that don’t convert.

Exhaustive: Include not only the most popular terms in your niche but also long-tail keywords. These are more specific and less common, but they make up most of the search-driven traffic and are usually less competitive and cheaper.

Expansive: PPC is a process that keeps evolving. Keep refining and expanding your campaigns so your keyword list grows and adapts over time.

For more tips on finding high-volume, industry-specific keywords, check out Free Keyword Planner.

Managing your PPC campaigns

After creating your campaigns, you need to manage them regularly to keep them effective. Regular activity is key to success. Here’s how to optimize your campaigns:

Add PPC keywords: Keep adding new, relevant keywords to expand your campaign’s reach.

Add negative keywords: Add keywords that don’t convert as negative keywords to make your campaign more relevant and avoid wasting money.

Review costly keywords: Look at expensive keywords that aren’t performing well and turn them off if needed.

Refine landing pages: Update your landing pages to match specific search queries and improve conversion rates. Don’t send all traffic to the same page.

Split ad groups: Improve click-through rates and Quality Score by splitting your ad groups into smaller, more relevant groups. This helps create more targeted ads and landing pages

Get started with PPC

Ready to start with PPC? If you need help with your PPC ads, take a look at our digital marketing solutions.