Articles >> An Introduction To PPC & Google Adwords

Introduction
Pay Per Click (PPC) is a very good way of driving traffic to a site in the short term. Google Adwords is one of the best PPC systems around, Overture (for the ads on Yahoo) is another.

See the sponsored links on the right of this page. The owners don't pay anything unless the visitor clicks through to their site.

Terms you need to know

• Pay Per Click - A term used to describe the type of online advertising where the advertiser pays only when the advert is clicked on.
• Cost Per Click - You choose the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) you are willing to pay. Our AdWords Discounter automatically reduces this amount so that the actual CPC you are charged is just one penny more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.
• Keywords - The keywords you choose for a given Ad Group are used to target your ads to potential customers.
• Impressions - The number of impressions is the number of times an ad is displayed on Google or the Google Network.
• Click Through Rate - Clicks/Impressions in percent. If 4 people click through after your ad has had 100 impressions, your click through rate is 4%. A high Click Through Rate implies a relevant ad. Low CTR (<0.5%) can result in those keywords being disabled.
• AdGroup - contains one or more ads targeting one set of keywords. You set a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) for an Ad Group keyword list or for individual keywords within the Ad Group.
• Campaign - A campaign consists of one or more Ad Groups. The ads in a given campaign share the same daily budget, language and country targeting, end dates, and distribution options.

Main Points

• Costs depend on you. Daily budgets start as low as UK£0.04 up to whatever limit you're comfortable spending.
• Rank (i.e. position) is determined by a combination of how much you bid (CPC) and click-through rate. If an ad is irrelevant to users, they won't click on it, its click-through rate goes down and it will move down the page. Relevant ads will gain higher positions on the page, at no extra cost.
• Your price is automatically lowered to one pence more than your closest competitor.
• No one can lock in the top position because user click-through rates and CPC determine where your ad is shown. The most relevant ads rise to the top. You can't be locked out of the top position as you would be in a ranking system based solely on price. Your ad can rise above someone paying more if it is highly relevant for a specific keyword.
• Google constantly monitors the click-through rates (CTR) of all keywords to ensure they're performing as well as they should. Keywords may be disabled if they don't perform well.
• You are allowed multiple ads. You can monitor which ones perform well.
• You choose who should see your ads from among 250+ countries. You can have them shown to a highly targeted audience.

Where the ads appear
Your ads will appear along side or above the results on Google search results pages. Additionally, your ads could appear on the search and content sites and products in the Google Network. The Google Network is the largest online advertising network available. Google also works with permission-based newsletter providers to place AdWords ads targeted to the subject matter of newsletters.

When do the ads appear?
They appear almost immediately on Google. All ads appearing on partner sites must be reviewed for compliance with Google's Editorial Guidelines before they can run so will take longer to appear.

Ad Length
Ads can contain 25 characters for the title, 70 characters for the ad text, and 35 characters for a display URL. On Google, this is displayed on four lines: a title, two lines of ad text, and a URL line. The ads need to be short but effective.


Pay-Per-Click is a good way to start driving traffic to your site, especially when the site is new and not performing on the natural search listings. With services such as Google Adwords it need not cost much as you are free to control your spend.



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