Pay-Per-Click Advertising Services Terms

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is one of the best ways to drive immediate traffic to specific pages on your website. So, what is pay-per-click advertising?

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a marketing service that allows you to run ads on websites and search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Youtube, etc. Advertisers only pay for clicks, so PPC ads are cost-effective for gaining exposure and earning new customers.

The digital marketing team at JTech Communications has created a list of essential terms you need to know before starting your paid search engine marketing (SEM) journey.

What are search ads? Search ads are a form of pay-per-click advertising that places your ad at the top of search engine results pages for specific keywords. Search ads often look similar to regular search results. They're great for converting large amounts of customers from a targeted base in a relatively short time.

What are display ads? Display ads are a form of paid search engine marketing that places images you upload on sites across the web. Display ads can appear as image banners on web pages, as thumbnails on websites like YouTube, etc. 

What are retargeting ads? Retargeting ads are similar to search and display ads. However, they primarily target audiences through the use of tracking data. 

Google shopping ads are PPC advertisements that give your product priority placement in Google's shopping tab.

The creation process for Google shopping ads is slightly more complex than the standard display and search ad creation process. In addition to setting up and optimizing a Google ads account, businesses must create and optimize a Google merchant center account. Merchant center accounts allow companies to add and edit products to Google's shopping tab.

Optimizing Google shopping ads is simple. Follow the on-screen prompts, upload high-quality images, write detailed descriptions, and add relevant keywords to each product.

Google ads are the industry standard for paid search engine advertising and PPC. Advertisers can use Google ads to run, manage, analyze, research, and optimize the ads they run on Google search.

Click-through-rate (CTR) is a term that refers to the number of clicks a paid advertisement receives vs. the number of times that ad appears in search.

A 'good click-through rate' is different for every business. So, depending on the industry and location, a 'good' click-through rate can be anything from 2% to 15%. The best way to determine a reasonable click-through rate is to gather historical data from campaigns that you have run and compare those against the results of local professionals in your industry.

Google's quality score determines how likely your ad will perform in search and the price each click will cost. In short, a Google ad's quality score is a combination of an ad's expected click-through rate, relevance to the website it links to, and the landing page experience the advertiser provides.

Anyad will perform well and cost less if it is optimized to meet Google's standards, points to a relevant website page, and if the linked page is well optimized.

Google offers a full suite of tools that allow users to optimize their advertisements and website. To improve an ad's quality score, log into Google ads and select the relevant ad campaign. Google will indicate the best ways to improve the quality of any currently created advertisements.

Next, evaluate the page linked to currently running campaigns. Is that page directly related to the ad? Is it optimized with keywords related to that ad? If the answer is no, tweak the linked page.

Finally, evaluate the core web vitals of the page the ad links to. Is the page accessible? How long does it take to load? Etc.

The more each aspect is improved, the more the quality score will increase.

What is a google ads conversion? Google ads conversions are any interactions a potential customer makes with a given ad. Google ad conversions can be defined as:

• Phone calls
  
• Website visits
  
• Specific website actions
  
• Form submissions
  
• Button clicks
  
• Conversions defined in a connected GA4 account
  
• Phone calls or store visits post ad view
  
• App downloads
  
• Direction requests
  

Ad extensions appear randomly below the main search ad link to give context and efficiently offer additional information. For example, a search ad that links to a 'special offer' page could benefit from extensions that link to an about page, contact page, or projects/portfolio page.

Search ad extensions can be manually added or set to generate automatically. Manually adding extensions is often the best move, but that can change in different circumstances.

Advertisers can create: 

Search ad extensions add context to search ads, improving the quality of leads a business receives from their advertising. Extensions lead to better search rankings and quality scores. They present potential customers with more options—potentially improving overall impact in any target market.