Is Paid Search Worth the Investment?

Most companies, especially small businesses, focus mostly on SEO and social media as preferred methods of consumer outreach. Even with an excellent SEO campaign and marketing strategy in place, there is a lot of value that can be gained from paid search.

The term PPC refers to Pay-Per-Click and is the foundation of paid searches through Google, Bing and Yahoo. Businesses choose well-researched keywords that trigger the appearance of a paid ad when someone searches for those keywords. If a consumer clicks on your ad, you are charged a pre-set amount that you decide based on your budget.

How does a Googler know what is paid and what is an organic search result?

Page placement.

Paid search ads appear at the top of the search results page, and along the right column. They have the most visible positioning, and are labeled as “Ads.” Where among the ads you are placed is determined by a number of factors, including the amount you spend per click, the relevancy of your home page to the keyword, and the amount of time people then spend on your website once they click the ad.

Someone who is looking for a particular service won’t spend much time on your website if you don’t offer it, but paid to appear with the keyword. Google tracks these behaviors and deems how relevant your website is to the keyword. Sites that people spend a lot of time on, click though, and go back to later on are the ones who get the top spots among the paid results. This way, it isn’t necessarily the companies with the biggest budgets who get all the attention.

But what about the statistics that say only 15% of people searching for a business click on the paid ads?

This statistic is true. Most people gravitate toward the organic search results, wary of any paid advertisements that could be misleading. With search engines like Google, though, irrelevant sites are filtered out fairly quickly. However, it takes time to change people’s misconceptions about paid advertising.

So why would I spend money if only 15% of people would even click on it?

Let’s say a thousand people are searching for an electrician in Jacksonville, FL. You are an electrician and you’ve done your very best to boost your organic search results with some SEO, you are active on social media; you have local map listings and positive reviews. But for some reason, you are on page 2 on Google search results. Chances are, those thousand people will never see your company’s name. With the paid search, your company is guaranteed to appear on page one. And statistically speaking, up to 150 people could click on your ad and be directed to your website.

Furthermore, you only pay for the ones who click, and not for the ones who saw your name and may remember it in the future.

With PPC, it is also easy to track the habits of people who are entering your keywords. How many of them clicked on your ad? How long did they spend on your website? What other pages did they look at? Did it lead to a sale? Based on this information, you can weed out keywords that are not performing for you, add new ones people are searching for that you hadn’t thought of, and adjust your budget accordingly.

Google’s paid search setup allows you to also choose “negative” keywords to guarantee you won’t show up as a result if you don’t offer something. Say one of your keywords is “electrical consultation” but you charge for this service. You can make “free” a negative keyword so that people who search for free electrical consultations won’t see your ad and click on it, costing you money, for a service you don’t provide.

So PPC campaigns can be highly effective in the hands of people who understand the market, can do advanced keyword research, and negotiate click rates. Google also offers some great tools for the do-it-yourselfers, although it an all be very overwhelming to someone creating a campaign for the first time.

BreezeGo Internet Marketing offers a full spectrum of web design, SEO, PPC, social media and email marketing services for businesses large and small. For more information or for a free consultation, please visit www.breezego.com.