The ABC’s of PPC – Basic PPC Terms You Should Know
Do you wish you had a better understanding of popular Paid Search Marketing and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) terms such as Bounce Rate, Click-through-Rate, Bid Price, Landing Page, Quality Score and Relevancy?
The truth is that all of these terms have a big impact on how much your advertising campaign costs and how successful it will be in terms of brand awareness and ROI.
Take five minutes to scan our list of PPC definitions to make sure you understand the meaning and the role each plays in your PPC AdWords Campaign.
PPC Terms
Ad Copy or Ad Text – the 3 or 4 lines of the PPC advertisement displayed in Search Results which typically includes a title, the website URL and a descriptive call to action.
Impact: The copy is the first thing searchers see. Is it enough to convince them to click to your website instead of the other sites they see?
Ad Scheduling – the ability to decide when Ad Text will be shown which includes time of the day and days of the week.
Impact: Your target market has “peak times” when they are actively searching. Save money and stop running your PPC ads when your target market isn’t looking.
Bid Price – the set amount you are willing to pay in order to be shown for a specific keyword search result; because your Quality Rating also helps determine the Cost per Click this is not always the actual price you will end up paying
Impact: Don’t bid on keyword phrases where the return is minimal. Search for relevant phrases with acceptable search volumes and lower CPC.
Bounce Rate – the fraction of visitors who enter your site and leave before visiting another page. Because PPC Advertising pays for each click it is important to maximize the number of visitors performing an action on your website (reading more pages, providing contact information or making a purchase).
Impact: Stop bidding of keyword phrases or using Ad Copy that has high bounce rates. When these visitors bounce and don’t end up doing anything on your site, your ad dollar is being “wasted”.
Click through Rate (CTR) –the number of people who actually click on your Ad Text and proceed to your website divided by the total number of people who see your Ad Text (Clicks/ Impressions).
Impact: Rethink the ad copy or keyword phrase relevancy if searchers aren’t clicking on your ad.
Clicks – the number of searchers clicking on your listing on the Search Results.
Impact: Again, give more attention to the ads attracting more clicks, relative to impressions.
Conversion Rate – the percentage of people who complete a specific action on your website such as fill out a quote request or make a purchase.
Impact: Use keyword phrases, ad copy and landing pages that have the highest conversion rates to your fullest advantage. Consider putting more of your PPC spend into these areas or trying to replicate the success factors of high conversion ad campaigns to under performing ad campaigns.
Cost per Acquisition – also known as the Cost per Conversion (CPC).
Impact: Does the cost you pay to acquire a customer profitable in the end?
Cost per click (CPC) – the price paid for each click from the results page for a specific keyword phrase which depends on your bid, your site’s quality score and other competitors’ bids.
Impact: At the end of the day does your total Cost-per-Click justify the return of new customers, branding, sales etc?
Cost per Conversion – the price paid for each conversion made. If you pay 50 cents for each click (CPC) but only 1 in 10 clicks results in a sale, your Cost per Conversion is $5.00.
Impact: At the end of the day does your total Cost-per-Click justify the return of the conversion?
Daily Budget – the set amount of money to be spent on PPC each day; your Ad Text will stop being displayed once this limit is reached.
Impact: Make sure you don’t spend your entire month’s budget in one day because you get more clicks that you expected.
Geographical or Location Targeting – the ability to choose specific areas for your Ad Placement, such as only in Los Angeles, California or only in Toronto, Canada.
Impact: Are your customers in one area or do you only service a specific city? Make sure your ads are only shown in your local area to save on costs and prevent advertising to customers you can’t service.
Google AdCenter – the platform developed by Google to create, bid and place PPC Ads.
Impact: Log in to your Google AdCenter or Adwords account on a regular basis to monitor your campaign and set up new campaigns.
Impressions – the number of times your Ad Text is shown to searchers.
Impact: A good metric for PPC Campaigns designed to increase brand exposure.
Keyword or Keyword Phrase – phrase assigned to a PPC Campaign that will ideally be used by searchers looking for the products or services on your website.
Impact: Make sure your ad copy and landing page is very relevant to the keyword phrase used by searchers to increase likelihood that they will click on your ad.
Landing Page – the page on your website the searcher is brought to when they click on your advertisement. Often custom landing pages are developed in order to satisfy the specific needs of the person searching.
Impact: Make sure the landing page is extremely relevant to the search term and the ad copy. You want your visitors to find what they are looking for right away and know the ‘next step’ to take whether it be order, buy, contact or call. A well developed landing page can decrease you bounce bounce rate.
Match – the options for keyword phrases that will trigger your Ad Text, which include:
Broad – ad text is shown for other similar or relevant variations of your keyword phrases.
Exact – ad text is shown for your keyword phrase exclusively.
Phrase – ad text is shown for your keyword phrase plus any additional words.
Negative – ad text is NOT shown for excluded words, such as free or cheap or expensive, in order to help attract the best searchers and to increase quality scores.
Impact: Qualifying search terms with Google’s match options will help qualify the searchers who see your ad.
Quality Score – a value assigned by Google to your website that determines your actual CPC, the eligibility of your Ad Text to be shown as well as your ad position (#1,2 or 3 etc)
Impact: Developing highly relevant ad copy and website content will likely improve your Quality Score so that you will appear in higher positions, while paying a lower CPC.
Relevancy – also known as Quality – the correlation between your Ad Text and the content on your website which is used to calculate the Quality Score.
Impact: Focus on improving relevance to increase your Quality Score, frequency of ad appearance and the CPC.
Return on Investment – a ratio of the amount of money spent on the campaign to the amount of revenue generated from the campaign.
Impact: Measuring the effect of your PPC Campaign is extremely important. For the most part the ROI you measure is the minimum value as you can only measure the direct return but not brand value or attribution over the long term.
Visitor – a search engine user who clicks on your Ad Text shown for their search query.
Impact: Visitor experience should be your number one priority when developing your CPC Campaign. Google places a high value on “User Happiness”.
Would you like more information about starting or optimizing your Google Pay Per Click Campaign? Want to find out how to improve ROI with PPC Account Audit Services?
Please contact us directly at 1st on the List by calling 1-888-262-6687 or by emailing our Pay Per Click Marketing Managers.
