Pay Per Click

Google has successfully adopted the PPC model, which has led to the development of the AdWords platform. AdWords is now available in 38 different languages and 250 countries.

On search engines, adverts appear at the top and beside search results. The main advantage of such adverts is that they are highly relevant to what the user is already searching for. Advertising on Google works by targeting specific keywords that are relevant to your products and services. This means that users seeing the adverts are already searching and interested in the contents of the advert. The advertisers pay only if the advert grabs the attention of the user, and if the user in turn clicks the advert. The advert of course will lead to a website or, even better, to a specific webpage that further describes the contents of the advert.

Keywords on AdWords are the basis of the platform with different match types which makes your adverts visible to specific phrases (word order), exact keywords, or for broader terms. The importance of targeting correct keywords will benefit the advertiser from wasting the PPC budget by accumulating irrelevant clicks and impressions.

The advertiser only pays when the advert is clicked upon. However, it is very important to note that the formula that decides the actual cost per click (CPC) takes into consideration several factors including relevancy of the advert, landing page and the amount of clicks. Google AdWords platform is very complex and irrelevant traffic can lead to wasting the advertiser's budget. The platform has an important metric referred to as Quality Score which is on a scale from 1 to 10. A particular Quality Score is attributed for each targeted keyword and varies depending on how relevant the advert, keyword and amount of clicks are. The higher the Quality Score, the lower will the cost per click be. Therefore if the advert gets irrelevant impressions and does not get enough clicks, this will result in wasting the advertiser's budget by an increase in the costs for every click. On Google Search, the better the overall relevancy the less the CPC will be. Hence, this demonstrates the necessity of careful targeting and optimisation.

Besides targeting specific keywords, Google AdWords also has a very useful feature of targeting specific languages and locations. In certain countries, one can even target specific areas such as cities, metros, and regions. These two features combined with keyword targeting makes AdWords an efficient tool to target your audience. AdWords allows you to reach your audience effectively and to market your product or services even in competitive industries. The budget required to advertise on AdWords depends highly on the industry involved. The advertisers' budget depends on the costs per click, competition, reach, objectives and aggressiveness of the PPC campaigns. However, AdWords allows the advertiser to set a daily budget and there is no minimum.

Google AdWords gives the opportunity to reach hundreds of customers worldwide and is cheaper than any other form of advertising. The reach of the Google AdWords platform including Google Search and Google Network (sites that show Google ads) is impressive. Google Search usage and its dominance over other search engines speaks for itself.

Conrad Bugeja is an SEO Consultant and AdWords Certified Professional at Alert eBusiness Internet Marketing team.

www.alertemarketing.com