How A Pay Per Click Campaign Can Drive Traffic To Your Website

So what is a pay per click campaign?

A Pay Per Click Campaign or PPC is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website. This highly targeted and specific approach utilises search engines to aim targeted adverts straight at your target audience.

As the name suggests, you pay for each click that you get on your advert. Which is usually at the top of the search results, above the organic results.

How much you pay however depends on how much you are willing to bid. As a business, you will need to choose highly specific keywords and search phrases that you want your advert to appear in a list of results. And, at the same time, if you have a competitor who has a higher bid, they will appear higher in the search results.

Bids are usually input in what is called an 'Ad Auction'. This is where you and your other competitors will bid on keywords. The more popular and more searched a keyword is, the more you will be expected to bit on it to achieve the desired results.

Pay-per-click advertising is, as we have mentioned already, a very lucrative and cost-effective way of marketing your business.

Things to keep in mind when formulating your PPC campaign, 

Setting up your pay per click campaign

First, think about what you're going to want from your campaign. Are you wanting to drive traffic to your website?

Are you wanting to generate phone calls for your business?

The latter means that you'll want to opt for a 'calls-only' campaign. If you want to drive traffic to your website, instead you will want to go for a search campaign.

If, however, you're simply wanting to generate awareness for a new product your business is launching you can also opt for a display campaign.

Next, you need to think about your budget. Bear in mind at the start there is going to be a lot of trial and error. Seeing what works and what doesn't work.

What keywords are worth bidding on and at what times. You then also need to weigh the cost per click against how much it could be worth as a conversion into a sale for your business

Choosing your ad group

When setting up your pay per click campaign, you will first need to select what is called an ad group. Typically all of the keywords in an ad group, which can be up to 4 or 5, will share the same theme.

For example, if you're an electrical goods provider, you may create one ad group for TV/Video and another for audio goods. You will also then also have a couple of associated adverts within this ad group.

The recommended guidelines for ad groups are as follows:-

• 7 to 10 ad groups per campaign you're running.
• Up to 20 keywords per ad group.
• Up to 2 to 3 adverts per ad group.

All about keyword match types

One of the last crucial bits of PPC you need to know about that we are going to cover today is 'match types'. This is essentially choosing how you want keywords to match up with what people are searching on Google for example.

There are a few different match types:-

Broad match - as the name suggests this will get your ad to match any generally related search.

Modified broach match - this again is a broad match but instead adds another bit of criteria that it has to include certain keywords that you specify usually indicated with a + sign.

Exact match - this is pretty self-explanatory, it aims for an exact match and can be effective but sometimes not as consistent.

Phrase match - initially this will include results including terms you're bidding on but afterwards may look to other terms.

In summary

A pay per click campaign can be an effective and lucrative part of any digital campaign and can be powerful in driving traffic to your website.

As we have covered today you will only reap the rewards if sufficient time and planning have gone into creating the foundations of your PPC campaign and also doing research to understand your market.

It also includes knowing consumer behaviour and what they generally search for.

If your interested in finding out more the best PPC providers check out this post from Search Engine Journal where they discuss they 8 Best PPC Ad Networks.

If you want to know more about how to drive more traffic to your website and to increase sales within your business, let's have a chat.

I've helped businesses across the country grow their sales and expose their brand to grow their business overall and achieve their goals.