With every passing day, the internet becomes more and more crowded, and increasingly more competitive. According to Moz, there are 169 billion URLs, 23 billion subdomains, and over 1 trillion links on the internet as of May 2017. So no matter what industry you are in, or how niche it may be, there are other websites out there competing for the same keywords as you.
In a recent post, we discussed the importance of SEO for your website. But SEO takes time to get going, and if you’re in a competitive industry (you are, because what industry isn’t nowadays?) it can be even tougher to get your business noticed in the search results. I recently attended a conference where the keynote made the joke, “where is the best place to hide a body? The second page of Google!” While everyone laughed, the reality set in that people aren’t often going to search past page 1 before making a decision. A dedicated SEO strategy is not a “good idea” anymore, it is a “must” if you want to exist on the web, and not be stuck with the dead bodies on page 2 and beyond. But what if your business can’t survive while waiting for the SEO to take effect? How can you get customers to see your website now, while it slowly rises out of the Mariana Trench (Google, page 7)? Enter pay-per-click advertising or PPC.
PPC allows you to bid on your target keywords, and potentially be at the top of page 1 on day 1. Google runs their PPC platform (Google AdWords) as an auction, where competitors bid against each other for their target keywords every time a search query is performed. The amount of competition for a given keyword or keyphrase determines the cost-per-click or CPC. The more competitive your keywords are, the more expensive your clicks will be. If this seems unfair, I will direct you to the game of monopoly, where you can get an enjoyable and applicable introduction to Capitalism. The reason I make this point is to drive home the importance of partnering with an agency that understands how to get you the greatest ROI on your PPC investment. While your primary keywords may be expensive due to high competition levels, a good agency will find ways to get your ads seen at a lower CPC by leveraging things like ad extensions, long-tailed keywords, bid modifiers, and other cost-saving strategies.
If you’ve been considering using PPC as a way to grow your brand or business, but haven’t been quite sure of how to get started, check out our PPC services page and drop us a line! We’d love to discuss PPC with you, and see how we can improve your digital presence.