What is AdWords Pay-per-Click Advertising?

Phil Singleton

Phil Singleton

Phil Singleton is a Google Marketing and SEO expert in Kansas City. Contact Phil today for a free SEO strategy consultation.

AdWords

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Pay per click advertising harnesses the power of the search engines to make your site more visible. When you put your site up on the Internet, you may opt to participate in pay per click advertising. Google’s pay-per-click or PPC advertising program is called AdWords.With this, you place ads on sites like Google; they appear at the top of search engine listings and on the sides, so that they are instantly recognizable. You are instantly more visible through the ads you place, and every time a customer or prospective customer clicks on it to get to your site, you pay for that click. It is a cost-effective, efficient way for small businesses to get seen on the Internet, and bring more traffic to your site.

What are the benefits of pay per click advertising?

  • You can see results almost instantly

When you opt to participate in a pay per click advertising campaign, you increase targeted traffic to your site. All you must do is set your campaign up, and you should see traffic increase almost instantly. Because it’s targeted traffic going to your site, the people who visit your site are interested in your products or services. This can increase your visibility exponentially, with the boost in traffic.

  • It’s cost-effective

Because you only pay for actual customer or prospective customer click throughs, you don’t have to spend nearly as much on this type of advertising as you would on other traditional means like direct mail marketing; your advertising budget is much smaller and saves you money. In addition, because you are instantly more visible through the ads you place on search engines, you achieve greater visibility even if there are no click throughs. You don’t pay for the extra visibility unless a customer or prospective customer actually clicks on the ad, but this instantly gives you a higher profile so the customers can actually see what you have to offer.

  • You can run targeted, specialized ads

When you run targeted, specialized ads, you give yourself control and flexibility you don’t have through other means. You can start a pay per click advertising campaign immediately, and target it to a specific demographic of customer. For example, seasonal campaigns that take advantage of the holiday shopping season can be put up instantly, and just as quickly taken down when the time is past. Customers don’t have to deal with the frustration of out of date campaigns that they can no longer take advantage of, because you can take them down as soon as they are obsolete. Hardcopy or direct mail campaigns can’t promise the same return on investment, or flexibility.

  • You can fill in gaps of organic SEO

Organic search engine optimization is coveted my most business owners. These SEO results are harder to achieve but can deliver much more traffic and a higher ROI that pay-per-click advertising. Yet, a website cannot rank organically for every targeted keyword. So you can considering supplementing your organic SEO program with pay-per-click advertising to fill in these gaps.

It’s also easy to target customers geographically with pay per click campaigns. Set up campaigns that deal with specific areas of the country, specific demographic groups, and opt for the ultimate in specialization so that your customers really feel like they have been seen and heard. When you target your ads in this way, customers are much more likely to take advantage of them, and that can almost effortlessly boost sales.