What is paid Search?
Paid Search is an inexpensive form of web marketing designed to connect your ads with searchers actively seeking what you provide. These are the ads that appear at the top and bottom of search results with the little yellow ad button beside the content. Advertisers bid on relevant keyword strings that are likely to produce a website visit. Paid search marketing campaigns are pay-per-click, or PPC campaigns.
What do you pay for Paid Search?
Advertisers only pay when someone clicks on their ad, not for how many times the ad may have been shown. The amount that they pay is derived from a complex algorithm that takes into account:
- Maximum bid amount,
- Competitors bids,
- Expected Click Through Rate,
- Landing Page Experience,
- Ad Relevance and
- Ad Formats/Extensions.
How does Paid Search work?
Google serves ads based on your Ad Rank, which is a formula that takes into account your maximum cost per click bid. This, along with the factors mentioned above, comprises:
- The Quality Score – expected CTR, Landing Page Experience (relevance and originality),
- Ad Relevance (the language you’ve used in your ad) and
- Ad Formats/Extensions.
It compares your Ad Rank to that of your nearest competitor and places the ads on the page accordingly.
Why use Paid Search?
Next to organic search and direct visits, visitors from paid search can have the highest engagement and conversion rates on your website. While somewhat labour intensive to set up, manage and optimize, Paid Search can provide advertisers with excellent results.