We have been offering Pay Per Click Manchester Management services for many years now, and it is something that we really believe in helping businesses to achieve their personal objectives – but we know that for many people it is an area that they don’t know a lot about. So, here is our essential guide to Pay Per Click (PPC) just for you:
What is PPC?
PPC is a way of advertising your business where you are charged when a user clicks on your advert. You (or your chosen PPC agency manchester) will make bids on what you perceive the value of a click is, based on your chosen keywords, your target audience and the platform you wish to use.
PPC advertising works well for many different types of business objectives, such as brand awareness, lead generation, and increasing sales. The main thrust of a successful PPC campaign, therefore, is relevance. Search engine users are searching for specific information, services, and products at a specific time, and PPC allows you to show them a targeted ad at the exact moment they are searching. So, if the searcher is looking for ‘red running shoes’ and you are a retailer of running shoes, you can show them an Ad which features red running shoes.
Main Platforms for PPC
There are two main platforms that PPC advertising is run on: Google Ads and Bing Ads.
Google Ads (previously known as Google Adwords) is the largest pay per click platform and was launched back in the year 2000. It is geared towards companies of all sizes. All ads on AdWords are eligible to be shown on Google’s search engine. Advertisers also have the option of enabling their ads to show on Google’s partner networks. This “search network” includes AOL search, Ask.com, and Netscape. The new Ads platform also now offers Smart Campaigns for small businesses who don’t have the time or resources to manage complex digital advertising campaigns.
The other platform that PPC advertising is run on is Bing Ads which is similar to Google Ads only it shows the ads on the Bing and Yahoo networks only. It is also primarily based on keywords.
Structure of PPC Accounts
The way that PPC Accounts are structured will vary depending on the way your chosen agency works but in general, they are structured in the following way:
Campaign and Ad Group – Once you have decided what keywords you want to focus on in your PPC Ad Campaign, you will break them down into themes. For example, if you are a furniture retailer you may choose the theme ‘Dining Tables’ which will be the campaign group. Within this campaign, you will then set up ad groups, which are themed subcategories, in this case, they may be ‘rectangular dining table’, ‘round dining table’ and ‘extending dining table’. Within each ad group, there will then be keyword variations such as ‘rectangular dining tables, dining tables rectangular’ and ‘rectangular dining tables for sale’.
Keywords – When you are setting up keywords in PPC campaigns you need to remember that match types are very important for relevancy. There are seven keyword match types you need to be aware of:
- Exact – search term is typed in exactly
- Exact (Close Variant) – search term is typed in exactly but may include spelling mistakes or other variations
- Phrase – search phrase must be typed in in the correct order, even if there are other words before or after the phrase
- Phrase (Close Variant) – search phrase must be typed in in the correct order, even if there are other words before or after the phrase, it can include spelling mistakes and other variations as well
- Broad – keywords can be typed in any order by the searcher and will show ads for similar searches
- Modified Broad – keywords can be typed in any order but must include terms contained in the plus signs
– Broad (Session-Based) – Similar to broad match but also takes into account other things that the user has searched for during the same session
Negative Keywords – these are keywords that you may want to include in your PPC campaign as a way of helping you remove traffic that is unqualified. For example, if we carry on with the example of dining tables that we used above, someone who is searching for ‘free dining tables’ isn’t someone who is looking to buy, so if you add ‘free’ as a negative keyword then your PPC ad for dining tables will not show up when searchers type this query in.
Audiences – Usually used in remarketing campaigns, audiences are classified as a group of users who have been segmented in some way. Segmentation can be based on time spent on site, pages visited, and specific page views for example. In a similar way to keyword-based campaigns, audiences are bid on in relation to how relevant you think they are, so for example, you may bid more to remarket to customers who have been on your site and abandoned their shopping basket to those who are just viewing your home page.
This is a brief introduction to PPC, and in our next blog post, we will look at Ad Copy and Campaign Settings. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about PPC manchester services, then please get in touch with the team by telephone on 0161 730 0530 or by email at hello@seomcr.com
