PPC or Pay-per-Click is a mechanism by which internet advertisers pay a small fee for every click on their posted link. PPC is a part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) where typically a company buys traffic to their webpage than earning them.

Picture this- You open Google to search something and enter the search word. Generally the first couple of search results that is displayed (distinguished by special fonts and colours) are part of PPC. Each time you click on those links, the owner pays a small share to Google.

PPC exists on the foundation of SEO and bidding.

The process of PPC Services works like this :

• Promoters bid for the best spot in a search engine site.
• The highest bid link is then posted in the best spot which garners the maximum views it can get based on the keywords, relevance, quality of the landing page etc. These are displayed across Google’s pages.
• As the number of clicks gets higher and higher, the fees payable to the intermediary (Google, Amazon etc) becomes lower and lower.

Keywords selection is of utmost importance because that is what is targeted by the algorithms and consequently drives the campaign and the traffic to the webpage.

Some important concepts when planning to opt PPC campaigns are :

• Click-through rate
• Impression share
• Keywords and Negative keywords
• Quality Score
• Bids

PPC campaigns can be daunting for enterprises starting out on the digital marketing stream.

Some tips that might help them tackle the complex web that is the internet are :

• Optimise and review the keywords constantly. PPC campaigns are extremely shortlived and time-bound. Hence there is a need to monitor the traffic flow and keep tweaking the keywords and add to the negative keyword database. This will help in preventing wastage of money.
• Review the keywords that cost more. Some keywords cost more to be tagged. Analyse their results carefully and check if they fetch returns more than what is being spent on them. If the returns are less than their cost, it makes sense to change the keywords.
• Cleanup the landing pages. The better the quality of landing pages is, the better your quality score would be. This will help in bringing more traffic and gradually paying lesser per click.
• Avoid broken/missing pagelinks. Make sure to fix the broken links that arise out of changed permalinks. Every broken link that is inaccessible to the viewer will cost more to the company.
• Most popular of the PPC service providers is Google Adwords. Since Google is present pretty much everywhere on the internet, most promoters prefer to have their campaign listed through Adwords.
• Bing Ads is another similar service provider that lists ads on its search website- Bing

Some advantages of switching to PPC advertising than follow the conventional advertising are :

• Targeted advertising. Since PPC operates based on search algorithms, it displays ads based on what the user is looking for.
• Since it is targeted at specific users, the conversion rate is higher. You do not waste displaying the ad to people who do not need them. Money spent on advertising is efficiently used.
• Measurability of effectiveness. Since there is a trail for the results of a campaign, one can see the success rate of their ads. This helps in bettering the strategy and you can tweak the campaign accordingly.
• Some PPC service providers offer attractive rates for placing ads. Better negotiation and better quality of ads go a long way in reducing the cost of advertising.