Introduction to Paid Search Advertising
Paid Search advertising – sometimes referred to as Pay Per Click or PPC – refers to search engine advertising which appears in search results alongside (and sometimes above) organic results.
These PPC ads are paid for by businesses seeking to market their goods or services to individuals based on the topical relevance of the user’s search to the business’ niche. While paid search advertising can be extremely effective for some brands, they can also be difficult to set up for success without significant time, effort, and expertise.
How Does Paid Search Advertising Work?
The Basics of Keyword Auctions
At the heart of paid search advertising lies keyword auctions. When a user enters a search query into a search engine like Google, an auction takes place behind the scenes to determine which ads will appear on the search results page, and in what order.
That said, there are other considerations that can greatly affect the outcome of an ad campaign: Keyword Targeting, Ad Quality, Ad Placement, Bidding Strategy, Campaign Type, Landing Pages, Ad Extensions, Conversion Tracking, Platform Selection, and more.
Advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their business, with the highest bidder winning the top ad placement (with a few caveats and qualifiers).
Basic Ad Placements: Search, Display, Video
Depending on the type of paid search campaign you select for your marketing, your ads will show in different “locations” across the internet. The following section details the three common types of campaigns: Search, Display, and Video.
Paid Search Advertising Campaign Types
1. Search Ads: Top of Search Engine Results Pages
Search ads are text-based ads that appear at the top of search results pages in response to user queries. These ads allow advertisers to reach users who are actively searching for products or services related to their business. By leveraging the power of search ads, businesses can increase their visibility and drive qualified traffic to their website.
2. Display Ads: Capture Attention With Images
Display ads are visual ads that appear on websites across the internet. Unlike search ads, which are triggered by user search queries, display ads are targeted based on user demographics, interests, and browsing behavior. These ads can take the form of banners, images, or videos, allowing advertisers to capture the attention of potential customers as they browse the web, rather than on search engine results pages, exclusively.
3. Video Ads: Engage Audiences on YouTube
Whether it’s a short promotional video or a longer tutorial, video ads allow advertisers to showcase their products or services in action, helping to drive awareness and engagement among their target audience. With the rise of platforms like YouTube, video ads have become an interesting way to engage users.
Bidding Strategies & Algorithmic Learning
When you set up a paid search campaign, you will be prompted to choose a bidding strategy – this will be extremely important for PPC ads to be successful. The key here is knowing the goal of each paid search campaign, and selecting the bidding strategy that works best for the given goal.
Examples of bidding strategies from Google Ads include: Maximize Clicks, Manual Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Cost-Per-View (video ads), Target Cost-Per-Acquisition, Target Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS), and more!
Once you’ve selected a bidding strategy (and built a campaign with keywords, ads, and landing pages), the Google Ads auction algorithm will start to serve your ads to searchers whose search terms closely match with your ad messaging.
Over time (about 2 weeks minimum; up to 3 months), the algorithm will get smarter about bidding for searchers who are more likely to convert based on their search history and demographic information, and how well it aligns with past conversions!
5 Key Components for Paid Search Ads
There are far more complexities to paid search advertising than just “5 components”, but it would be a good idea to treat this list as the minimum that is necessary for success.
1. Effective Data Collection (GA4 or Similar)
In order to ensure that the bidding strategy you select is performing it’s role effectively, GA4 data collection should be configured on your website, and the GA4 Property should be linked to the Google Ads Account to measure and attribute goal completion (success).
If Target ROAS is selected as the campaign bidding strategy, it would be a good idea to ensure that revenue data is accurate, and linked to Google Ads in order to measure ROAS for the given campaign.
It is not a wise decision (99% of the time) to allow Google to use default conversion actions for Google Ads campaigns.
2. Keyword Research, Targeting, and Iteration
In order to provide Google Ads with some guidance, add keywords to paid search campaigns to help the bidding algorithm hone in on your target customers.
First, research keywords to find common searches that have a high degree of relevance to your business’ niche, and that have significant search volume per month (to cast a wide enough net).
Second, choose about 50-100 keywords that you think are relevant to your products, services, or industry niche (or all three). Ideally, at least 10 of these targeted keywords will have search volumes of 10k+ per month or higher (depending on the size of your niche).
Third, think about iterations of these keywords – add modifiers like “best”, “affordable”, or “near me” to keywords that are likely to convert, at least some of the time.
3. Write Relevant Paid Search Advertisements
This seems so obvious, but I suspect that everyone has read at least one paid search ad in their lifetime and thought to themselves “yeesh – that one missed the mark.”
Google Ads, as an example, provides 15 Headlines, and 4 Descriptions (with character limits) for each paid search ad. Fill all of them with relevant keywords that align with the advertised product or service, the language on the destination page if the user clicks, and the themes of your targeted keywords.
As a note – each Ad Group can have 3 dynamic ads running at once, which allows for 45 total headlines, and 12 descriptions for the same targeted keywords.
4. Optimize Your Landing Pages For Search
Again – this feels like a big “duh”. But there’s a lot that goes into this type of optimization!
Landing pages should provide users with clear and detailed information about the product or service and should include pricing (or a “starts at $x”), some form of social proof (reviews, business partnerships, etc.), and above all else – a clear “Call To Action” or “Next Step” in the process.
These are the basics, but then we can layer on fundamental aspects of SEO like: clear informational hierarchy and header structure, on-page SEO (page title and meta description), as well as a clear URL structure and links that provide additional value.
Then layer on more SEO – perhaps the location of the nearest retail store, or the hours of operation, or an FAQ section to help users with common questions, and then markup the page with Schema to provide search engines with bite sized information to display on search engine results pages (SERPs).
To be clear – the “right” way to do this is by doing everything I just mentioned (and more).
If you do the basics, it will help.
If you take a more comprehensive approach, it will help more.
5. Conversion / Key Event Linking & Attribution
Once you have data collection configured in Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and you have the standard event data being collected, you can designate “key events” (formerly “conversions”) which let you be a bit more specific about what actions you care about most on your website.
Once you have Key Events configured in GA4 – link the Google Ads account and import conversions from your Analytics property into your Google Ads campaign. This will allow you to “teach” your bidding algorithm (assuming you’re using Target CPA or something similar) to be more effective at driving those specific actions.
If you are using the default conversions in Google Ads – your ads will not perform as you might expect, and will likely fail to drive meaningful visitation to your website.
Once you have your specified key events imported into Google Ads – set them as “primary”, and watch your campaign “learn” how to fulfill your particular ad goals!
Advanced Features for Paid Search Ads
The following is a short list of some of the additional features in Google Ads’ paid search platform that can help to improve your ad quality and relevance:
Ad Assets (formerly “Extensions”): This includes a wide variety of bells and whistles for your paid search ads like; Images, Business Logo, Sitelinks, Promotions, Prices, Calls, Callouts, Structured Snippets, Lead Forms, and App links.
Location Targeting: This is fairly common for digital advertising, but it can be very powerful too – be sure to keep your campaigns focused on realistic geographical targets for your business – if the retail location is only in a particular region, that region should probably account for a majority of your ad clicks!
Advanced Bid Adjustments: Noticing a trend among specific age groups that tends to lead to higher conversion rates? Add a percentage modifier so that the campaign bidding strategy learns to appreciate those folks as much as your business does!
Audiences & Remarketing: This “unlocks” once you have attained a specific volume, but Audiences are powerful for targeting based on folks with compatible interests to your niche, and Remarketing allows your to follow up with users who clicked on an ad, but never made the final step to complete your business goal (whatever that may be). The combination of these two can be quite powerful.
Experiments: This feature is especially useful for businesses that embrace the “continuous learning” model of marketing (which I would recommend). This can allow businesses to test out different campaign settings and targeting combinations to gain insights faster!
Search Term Reports: This is a report that Google Ads provides for paid search advertisers that shows what searches your ads are showing up on – which is slightly different than your targeted keywords. Keywords are the ones you’ve known to target already. Search term reports include many, very similar keywords which you can add without much trouble to your keyword targeting to gain more impressions, clicks, and conversions.
Negative Keyword Lists: Have your ads been shown to searchers that are searching for a different business with a similar name? Exclude those searches based on particular words or phrases to ensure that your ads are finding the right folks!
Need Help With Paid Search Ads?
No matter the industry, Elucidate Marketing can get your paid search advertisements serving in the right place at the right time to entice prospective clientele.
Reach out via contact form and get your paid search advertising headed in the right direction from day one!