Pay-Per-Click

Utilizing a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign is one of the simplest and most targeted methods for reaching potential customers. Let’s say, for example, you own a dog grooming business. When people look up ‘dog grooming’ the results page that comes up will have two different sections. In the picture to the right you can see the PPC area, on the top and right side highlighted in red, and the organic, non-paid results in their normal spot. If you were running a PPC campaign that targeted the phrase ‘dog grooming’, your website would show up at the top of all the other results!

Unfortunately it can be extremely time consuming and labor intensive to properly set up, and maintain the PPC campaign. Keywords (what people search for) are constantly changing and competition for those keywords is also constantly shifting. In order to get the best return on investment it is often necessary to have someone work full time on keeping your campaign relevant. Sunleaf Web can be that person for your company.

If running a PPC campaign sounds like something you would be interested in doing, or if you are not sure it’s for you and would like more information, continue reading to learn more!

More Information

A broader term for PPC is Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and the two largest search engines and search engine marketing vendors are Google and Bing. These two companies control the vast majority of all internet searches and almost all search engine marketing. What does that mean for you? Google and Bing are the places to run your PPC campaign!

Our Search Engine Marketing and PPC team is Google AdWords and Bing Ads certified. This means that we can create a dedicated and tailored campaign that targets the audience and market that you are looking for. With a track record of success with client campaigns, and with our own marketing, we can help you expand your business.

The Ads

How do the search engines decide whose ads gets placed? This works off of a bidding system. Some search terms are highly competitive and will cost more to have your ad get seen, while others are not as competitive and won’t cost as much money to run. The cost of the bid is changing daily, depending on the number of bids and the budget of those bidding on the search term. This is where having someone focused on your campaign can pay dividends to the success of the campaign, which is where we come in. However, when you put a bid in on the advertisement it does not mean you’ll lose that money. You only have to pay for the clicks that your ad generates. Hence the name Pay-Per-Click. The bid cost is generally the cost you have to pay per click. The bid cost also puts your ad into a queue that determines whose ads get shown first. The person/company that has the biggest bid get their ad seen first, but it cost them the most money.

Controlling the Campaign

Both Bing and Google provide tools and methods to narrow or broaden your marketing efforts. You can also dictate what time of day your ads run, what area geographically they appear in and many more options. In addition, and perhaps most important for those with Google AdWords, mobile PPC adoptions are available and growing quickly. You can read more about what Google is doing with local and mobile SEO on our SEO page.

SEO OR SEM?

How is this different than SEO? Results from SEO can be considered organic, passive, and relatively uncontrolled. That means that you plan out your content and target terms, but the results are dictated by our understanding of the current search engine algorithms. With SEM and PPC, you are able to pay for results. Neither is better or worse than the other, in fact doing both in tandem is seen as standard practice. This is because the search terms used to focus your SEO could also be the same terms you use for you campaigns. Of course, you could also spread out your targeted terms in order to try and get more results. That is something that our team would work together with you to figure out.

Google or Bing?

What is the benefit of using Bing or Google? How about both at once? Simply put, using both is best. Google AdWords only put the ads on Google and its affiliates, and Bing only puts its ads on its Affiliate sites. So, in order to cover the widest range of potential customers, using both will yield the highest results. You can even use the same methodology as SEO and SEM mentioned before, where you target different search terms on each search engine.