PPC Search Engine Marketing

A PPC search engine marketing strategy is one of the things you can do to drive traffic to your website. However, paid search engine marketing is more than just getting clicks to your site.

Clicks are only part of the equation and you need to know how to convert those clicks into conversions at the lowest possible cost.

In other words you need to develop an effective PPC search engine internet marketing strategy. Otherwise, paying for clicks can become an expensive process

PPC search engine marketing: How do I know if I’m overpaying for clicks?

Your Quality Score (QS) is an indication of how relevant Google thinks your keywords, ads and landing pages are to a specific search query. If you have a low Quality Score your clicks will be more expensive where a higher QS gets you a lower minimum bid.

Quality Score plays an important role in paid search engine marketing and you have to get it right from the word go.

With Adwords PPC keywords are rated on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the highest. Keywords with a QS of between 1-3 are considered poor and those with a QS of 4-7 as “OK”, while a QS of 8-10 are considered “Great”

QS will determine how much you end up paying for clicks and if you have a great QS you can get a higher position on Google without paying more.

You can see your QS by hovering your mouse over the speech bubble next to your keyword:

You can also see your QS by going to your Adwords interface:

Select your campaign & click the keywords tab

- Just underneath the keywords tab you must click on “Columns”
- Check the “Qual. Score” box and click save when you’re finished

To read more about the QS checklist for Pay Per Click search engine advertising, please refer to our pay per click management checklist

Need More PPC search engine management Help? PPC  Search Overview

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PPC Search Engine Marketing: How does Google determine how much I pay per click?

Your bid price and your quality score (QS) will determine the position of your ad. Simplified it’s:

AdRank = CPC Bid x Quality Score

To illustrate:

To determine click cost you must divide the Adrank of the ad showing beneath you with your Quality Score plus $0.01. Simplified it’s

Actual CPC = (AdRank to beat /Quality Score of Advertiser) + $.01

To illustrate:

This way Google ensures that each advertiser only pays the minimum amount required to maintain his or her ad position. The ad with the lowest position will only have to pay the minimum bid to show on the page.

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PPC search engine marketing: What influence Quality Score?

Google is all about relevance and if your keywords, ad and landing page are relevant to a search query then Google will reward you by giving you a higher QS. Most importantly get a high CTR as soon as your possible and you will be on the right track to boost your QS.

Other factors that influence your QS includes your account history, the historical CTR of the keyword/ad, the historical CTR of the display URL’s in the ad group, your accounts performance in the geographical region where your ads will be shown and the quality of your landing page.

A high QS will reduce your cost per click costs significantly and it will help your ad to get more clicks since it will be more relevant and therefore your ad will have higher relative position.

PPC search engine marketing: What can you do if your QS is low?

If your keyword QS is low then you need to work on increasing clickthrough rates by targeting more targeted keywords and ads. Do not make use of a 1-page website and aim for good keyword density of 3%-5% on your pages.

If your QS is very low (QS1) then you might have a website issue and you should try to improve your site by adding more relevant content. To get a high QS there should be a high level of relevancy from the users query to your ad and to the content on your website.

Limit the use of large images since Google takes the loading time of a landing page into account nowadays and faster loading times are preferred.

Constantly monitoring your bid prices and split testing ads is essential if you want to make sure that you maintain an acceptable overall QS.

All of these activities can take up immense amounts of time and if you would like to streamline the  PPC search marketing process you can make use of the services of a pay per click manager.

Notice if you apply SEO principles to your Adwords landing pages then you probably won’t have a problem with poor QS based upon landing page quality.

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