How it works

PPC or pay per click advertising is a powerful tool you can use when you need new visitors on your site. What it means for you, an owner of the website, is that you get to buy visits to your website, instead of waiting to earn them organically. PPCs popularity has been rising rapidly during the past few years. The most popular type of pay per click advertising would definitely be search engine advertising. Basically, advertisers get to bid for ad placement in search engine’s sponsored links which are the links that you see at the top of the results when searching for certain keywords. Once you get your site up there, the chances of people visiting your website, increase significantly.

Each time your ad is clicked, you pay the search engine a certain, usually not too high fee. What you earn from all the visits that come from search engine advertising is usually a lot more than what you’re paying the search engine making this a very effective and cheap way of advertising. Once the search engine sees that users find your website useful and consider it relevant, it’s going to start charging you less, awarding you for making an intelligent and useful website. Here we can introduce another important term – CPC, or cost per click. CPC is the fixed price you agreed on for each click.

However, it’s not just about paying more in order to keep your ads on top of the page. There is something called Ad Auction which is a completely automated process used to determine just how relevant your ad really is and it greatly affects the position and prominence of your ad.

The term PPC can also apply to paid ads on social media like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Advantages and disadvantages of PPC

Pay per click advertising generates traffic at any time. You simply set the relevant keywords within the ad and wait. By utilizing PPC advertising as a part of your marketing strategy, you can see results within hours or days, rather than waiting for months. This way, it helps you evolve faster and adapt to ever-changing market conditions. It is probably the best way to reach people who are searching for keywords that are related to your website. As already noted above, the price of this type of advertising can change with time depending on the relevance and usefulness of your website.

Still, there are some things to take into serious consideration before opting for this type of digital marketing. PPC advertising can run up costs rapidly since it’s truly easy to get stuck in a bidding war over a certain keyword. This can cause you to spend way more than you previously anticipated. Also, the per click costs for certain highly popular keywords are always rising. The truth is that the majority of businesses can’t afford to rely only on PPC advertising, but it stills serves a very important purpose. The thing to keep in mind is to always concentrate on conversions, rather than just clicks!