One of the most popular ways to get visitors to a website is through pay per click (PPC) advertising. However, understanding and utilizing PPC advertising can sometimes be a bit tricky.

What is Pay Per Click Advertising?

Pay per click advertising is an online advertising model that lets advertisers pay each time an online user clicks on their advertisement. It is a way of essentially buying visitors to the website since getting visitors to your specific website can be highly competitive sometimes.

There are different types of PPC with the most common being paid search advertising. This is when an advertisement appears to the side when someone searches for something online. Other PPC advertising includes display advertising and remarketing.

Ad Auction

Advertisements are subjected to an ad auction. This is an automated process that search engines, like Google and Bing, use to determine how relevant and valid an advertisement is.

Ad auctions are where advertisers bid on the terms they want to display in the advertisement. These terms, or keywords, have different values, depending on the keyword’s popularity. Sometimes it is best to avoid the most popular keyword because it will cost more money to bid on it than a lesser-known keyword.

Once an online user searches that keyword, the search engine performs an algorithmic calculation and determines which advertisements are displayed in what order by which advertiser.

Bidding

Advertisers should ask themselves two questions when it comes to the ad auction: How much can the advertiser afford to spend on a single campaign, and how much can the advertiser afford to spend for individual results?

The first question will determine the total ad budget, and the second will determine the actual bid.

Advertisers should only bid on keywords relevant to the advertisement they are trying to push since they have to pay for each click.

The advertiser’s end goal is for an online user to spend more money on the website than what the advertiser paid to get the visitor to the website. It is a gamble, and it doesn’t always work out in the advertiser’s favor.

Running an effective pay per click campaign means tons of research on selecting the right keywords and organizing those keywords into ad groups. Some PPC platforms to assist advertisers are Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads and YouTube Ads.