Google and Bing PPC & PPI

There are times and situations when SEO is just not going to get your website into the top ten of search engines. There are times when you need people to be aware "right now". There are times when advertising on other websites can be a far more effective in bringing in the right traffic.

These are the times when paying to get visitors needs to be considered.

When it comes to paying to advertise your website online - either beside the organic search results or on other people's websites - there are two ways to do it:

• PPC (Pay per click) - you pay only when an internet user clicks on your ad.
• PPI (Pay per impression) - you pay each time your advertisement in shown.

For most small and medium business PPC is the popular choice because the main aim is to bring in traffic that will then carry out a desired action, such as buy a product or fill out a lead form.

But for general brand awareness PPI is a better option as your advertisement will generally be shown more times per $1 than PPC. Companies like, for example, Coca Cola would not expect an internet user to see their ad and then purchase a coke online! These are PPI users.

Traditional PPC/PPI

In deciding which advertisement to show services such as Google Adsense would consider the following factors:

• If the advert is to be displayed on a website:
  • How relevant is the advertisers desires to the content of the page? - do the keywords the advertiser is targeting match the keywords of the page?
  • How relevant is the advert to the content of the page? - do the keywords in the advertisement itself match the keywords of the page?
  • How relevant is the adverts landing page to the content of the page? - do the keywords of the landing page match the keywords of the page the advert is to be displayed on?
  • How likely is the internet user to click the advert? - based on past performance do internet users find the advert attractive enough to react to it?
  • How well do internet users react to the landing page? - based on past performance, after the internet user has clicked the advert, do they then engage with the advertisers landing page or do they click the back button fast?
  • How much is the advertiser bidding? - note this is last for a reason. No matter how much the advertiser is bidding if no one clicks on the ad, no one makes money!
• If the advert is to be displayed above/beside/below search results:
  • How relevant is the advert to the keyword or phrase being searched? - do the keywords the advertiser is targeting and bidding for match the keyword or phrase being searched?
  • How relevant is the adverts landing page to keyword or phrase being searched? - do the keywords of the landing page match the keywords of the search?
  • How likely is the internet user to click the advert? - based on past performance do internet users find the advert attractive enough to react to it?
  • How well do internet users react to the landing page? - based on past performance, after the internet user has clicked the advert, do they then engage with the advertisers landing page or do they click the back button fast?
  • How positive are the reviews the advertiser has had? - based on reviews provided by third party services such as Bizrate Insights*.
  • How much is the advertiser bidding? - again this is low down the priority list because no matter how much the advertiser is bidding if no one clicks on the ad, no one makes money!

* note there is not universal agreement that this is a factor in where and when advertisements are shown but its a moot point as users are more likely to click adverts with 5 star reviews this affects the 'how likely users are to click an advert' measurement which is a defining factor.

Based on the above it is easy to see that the amount you offer to pay for each click or impression is actually a very small part of the equation. Even if you are to offer $100 for each click or impression this is pointless if no one ever clicks your ad as no one is going to make any money.

And even if people click your advert but then don't engage with your landing page and hit the back button this is also bad news for advertising services (such as Google Adwords) because it undermines the users confidence in other adverts and hence undermines the advertising service providers overall long term revenue and profit.

This is why you can actually pay less than your competitors and get your advert to show higher/more often if you ensure the following:

• Your advertisement is optimized for the keywords you are targeting - for text ads this means making sure the keyword is in the title and text of the advert.
• Your landing page has been optimized - for the keywords you are targeting.
• You study visitor reactions to your landing page and refine it to ensure visitors engage (e.g. through clear calls to action, attractive links that encourage the visitor to go deeper, etc.)

Remarketing

Remarketing has probably been one of the biggest game changers in PPC/PPI advertising since the start of the internet.

Remarketing adds one more factor as to whose advert should show:

• the past browsing history of the internet user.

This factor is given a very high weighting as research has shown internet users are more likely to click on an advertisement relevant to their recent activity than on an advertisement from a brand they do not recognise which is based on what they are looking at now.

For more information visit the Remarketing in PPC page.