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You will find a range of online advertising options that charge you per click to your website.

Paid search marketing

Paid search marketing is one of the most common types of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Providers such as Google AdWords and Bing Ads show your ad to users who search for certain keywords. You set up campaigns by writing ad copy, selecting relevant keywords and choosing a suitable landing page on your site.

Display advertising

Display ads are banner, image or text ads that appear on different websites, selected to target particular audiences. These ads will link to your website. They generally return a lower click-through rate than search ads but can be useful for building brand awareness.

See advantages and disadvantages of display advertising.

Social media advertising

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, have high numbers of users who could be your potential customers. PPC advertising on these platforms can help you achieve higher click-through rates to your website. Campaigns can help increase awareness of your product or services. The channels can be used to target specific demographics and interests.

Retargeting PPC advertising

Retargeting uses cookies on a user's browser to show them specific ads based on their previous online actions. It is also called remarketing. For example, a user who searches for holidays could see display ads for a travel agent's latest deals. Retargeting can be used as part of:

• display advertising campaigns
• search advertising campaigns
• social media advertising campaigns
• email marketing

Price comparison website advertising

Price comparison or aggregator websites gather and display prices and special offers from various providers. This includes comparison websites for hotels or insurance. Users click through on the offers of interest and buy directly from the merchant or from the price comparison portal itself.

This can be useful for spending your PPC budget in a targeted way. Price comparison websites offer you access to qualified leads - ie customers who are actively looking for a product or service like yours. The downside of these websites is that you will be up against competitors.

Price comparison websites offer different PPC options. You should check your conversion rate against the click-through rate if you use them.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketers create PPC adverts promoting your products or services and place these on:

• search engines
• price comparison websites
• targeted content sites
• heavily-trafficked websites

Affiliate marketing uses a performance-based payment model, eg Cost per Action. Payment is closely aligned with results. You can set up and manage affiliate marketing programmes in house. You could also outsource to a third party provider, eg affiliate networks.

Successful affiliate marketing requires ongoing management and can be quite time intensive. There are also certain risks such as including poor ad placement - which can result in poor response or reputational damage - and competitive keyword bidding on your brand terms by affiliate networks.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can be a cost effective way to drive traffic to your website. There are a number of benefits and challenges to consider.

Advantages of pay-per-click advertising

The benefits of running PPC advertising include:

• Cost effective - because you only pay when a user reaches your website, it can be good value for money. You can choose to spend as much or as little as you like.
• Targeted - you can choose your audience according to demographics like location, language and device.
• Measurable - PPC campaigns can be set up to measure effectiveness carefully. You can determine exactly how much your return on investment is.
• Customisable - as you run your campaigns, you can make many small adjustments to improve based on what works best.
• Training resources - there are many (often free) online courses and training materials to help you develop your skills.
• Fast - you will see the impact of your PPC efforts almost immediately. Organic search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics can take months to make a difference.

Disadvantages of pay-per-click advertising

Some of the challenges of PPC advertising include:

• Time investment - you can't just set up and leave your PPC campaigns. You need to invest time into optimising and improving to get the best results.
• Skills required - it can take some practise to set up effective campaigns. Many businesses choose to use a specialist agency.
• Costs can quickly add up - if you aren't monitoring and optimising your campaigns to ensure you get a return on investment, money could be wasted. You will need to allocate budget for PPC campaigns, unlike SEO tactics where the investment is time and skills.
• Clicks and visits don't always lead to sales- you will need to convince the user to 'convert' once they reach your website.

With search engine pay-per-click (PPC), you want people searching for your product or service to find you, click through to your website and buy.

With PPC, you can:

• choose one or more PPC providers according to your business model
• target particular demographics according to your marketing strategy
• define keywords that best describe your product or service
• bid an amount per click on each keyword that you feel will give your ad an advantage over your competitors - this is known as the cost per click or simply CPC
• create small ads to specification and submit these to your PPC provider
• pay your PPC provider your bid price for that keyword each time an internet user clicks on your ad

The usual way businesses use PPC advertising is through sponsored match. When users search for information, the search engine returns a search engine result page (SERP). The SERP presents the most relevant organic and sponsored links to the queried keywords.

Where will your ad appear?

Sponsored links - ie ads placed via PPC that match the search term - normally appear above the natural or organic listings. There is usually a subtle indicator that the listing has been paid for.

Even if the search engine displays your ad, its position is not guaranteed, nor will it be the only one. Other adverts may top the list or be more relevant than yours.

To help your website get a higher search engine ranking you should:

• make the right bid for your keywords
• use search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics to boost the visibility of your website in search engines
• use well written and effective copy for your adverts and website - see how to write effective copy for PPC ads
• ensure your keywords, ad copy and landing pages are closely linked and relevant

You need to start your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign by considering your business objectives. These could include converting website visitors into buyers or generating sales leads. You should consider:

• the visitors you want to attract - ie your target audiences
• your budget
• when to activate your ads and for how long
• how to structure your account - ie how you will divide ads into groups and campaigns according to product, location etc
• the ultimate goal of your ads - eg purchase a product, complete an enquiry form
• how to monitor the success of your ads and adjust them to make continuous improvements
• whether you want to create and manage the campaign in-house or use a specialist search marketing agency

Setting a PPC campaign

You will need to consider and create the following elements in a paid search campaign:

• Campaign name - make it descriptive.
• Demographic targeting - the locations, languages, devices etc, that your campaign will target.
• Budget and bidding - how much you will spend and how.
• Ad group - an ad group shares one set of keywords, and can contain several ad variations. There can be several ad groups within a campaign
• Keywords - a collection of words that will display your ad when someone searches for the specific words. Try to make keywords targeted and relevant to the landing page that you link to. Read how to choose the right keywords for your PPC campaign.
• Ad - this is what the customer sees when they search. An ad includes a headline, ad copy, a display URL and a link to a specific landing page. See how to write effective copy for PPC ads.

Account structure

Part of setting your campaigns includes getting your account structure right. It is important to group similar products together in a meaningful way. See the diagram below for an example of how an account might be structured:

Once you have set up your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, it's important to benchmark and continually measure campaign performance. By assessing and adapting your tactics, you can ensure that your campaign is optimised - maximising your return on investment.

Some factors to consider include:

• Re-analyse your keywords - check the keywords used are delivering the right kind of traffic and adjust your bids if necessary. Check these 'search terms' and bounce rate for an indicator of how relevant your keywords are.
• Choose the right keyword matching option. A broad match, for instance, will trigger your ad more frequently but could mean your ad is less targeted resulting in a lower click-through rate (CTR). Using phrase match or exact match keywords should improve your CTR. Using negative keywords prevents wasting budget with irrelevant clicks.
• Prepare your ads, taking into account that each ad group can link to several ad copy versions, so you can test which ads are working best. Remove the least effective versions and take notes on what works for future campaigns.
• Check your keyword quality score. A low quality score indicates that your keywords, ad and landing page aren't as relevant to each other as they should be. This can have a negative impact on clicks and cost per click.
• Check the advice from the major search engines on setting up campaigns and any extra tools they offer to 91Ï㽶»ÆÉ«ÊÓƵ you in managing your campaigns.
• Set up campaign landing pages so the destination URL in your ad takes users directly to the product that they want to buy. Make sure the landing pages are well designed and closely aligned to the advert. This will maximise your conversion rate - ie the percentage of people who buy the product. It will also help you reduce cost per click (CPC) because search engines reward the most relevant ads. See choose the right landing page for your PPC campaign.

A/B testing

Controlled A/B testing - also known as 'split testing' - involves varying a single element in your PPC adverts or landing pages, and analysing which gets the best response rate.

Variables could include the:

• ad headline
• ad copy
• call to action
• landing page design

You should take care to only test one variable at a time, to avoid confusing results. The right web analytics tool is crucial.

Benchmarking

Once you have analysed which approaches get the best click-through rates and conversions, you can use these measures as a benchmark to analyse the success of future PPC campaigns. You can also compare your campaign's performance to that of your competitors - helping you to identify areas for future improvement.

To create a successful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, each ad group needs a unique set of keywords that aligns with the ad copy and landing page. These three elements need to relate closely to each other in order to deliver what the user is looking for. Getting it right will improve your conversion rate and help to lower your cost-per-click.

Choosing keywords

It is important to conduct keyword research for each PPC ad group. Start by looking at your landing page and deciding what the main keywords are. Think about the search terms your customers might use. Try using tools such as and .

Use a mix of short and long-tail keywords (eg 'men's shoes' and 'Men's brown suede shoes'). Include synonyms and variations of words (eg shoe, shoes, footwear).

You should also consider setting keyword matching options:

• Broad match: If your keyword is 'school bags' and you use broad match, a user who types in either 'school' or 'bags' in any order, with any other words may see your ad, eg 'discount bags for school'. It will include searches for misspellings, synonyms, related words and close variations, eg your ad could appear in a search for 'student rucksack'. This match type will deliver high impressions but it may be less targeted and result in a lower click-through-rate (CTR) and fewer sales. Broad match modifier allows you to specify that particular words within the keyword phrase must be included in the search term.
• Phrase match: If you use phrase match, your ad will only show if the search term contains the exact keyword - 'school bags'. It may be surrounded by other words, eg 'blue school bags for girls'. This match type is more targeted and should result in a higher CTR and more sales.
• Exact match: If you use exact match, your ad will only show if the user searches that exact term and no other words - 'school bags'. This match type is very targeted but could result in less people seeing your ad.

Using negative keywords can help improve relevancy by preventing your ad from showing up to people who aren't looking for what you offer. For example, if you are selling school bags, you don't want your ad to appear on search for 'school bag repair'. In this case, you would add 'repair' as a negative keyword.

Writing good ad copy is critical to the success of your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. You need to attract targeted leads and you have limited space to do this. Your copy must be compelling and attract buyers who want your product or service.

Your ad copy must align with your keywords and landing page. Following this approach will make your ad relevant, which can reduce your costs and increase your conversions (eg sales or registrations).

You can improve your conversion rate by including a strong call-to-action in your ad copy, eg 'download for free' or 'order now'. Make your ad copy compelling by including your unique benefits, eg free delivery.

You can create a few variations of your ad copy and monitor to check which versions are working best.

Text ad structure

A PPC text ad includes the following:

1. headline

2. display URL - your website address

3. description - a few lines of text

Each of these elements must be within a certain word limit.

You can also include 'ad extensions' based on your marketing goals. Ad extensions may include; a phone number or call button, extra links to pages on your site and information about your location or unique benefits.

An example ad might be:

Driving Lessons - Intensive Courses Available
www.mydrivinglessonwebsite.com/book
Learn with a friendly, experienced instructor. Book online today.
Block booking discount. Lessons from £15.

Write effective ad copy

Key points to consider when writing your ads are to:

• include your keywords
• use phrases that relate to your keywords
• be specific and descriptive
• offer benefits - if you have a time-limited offer, say so
• include a call-to-action like 'find out more' or 'buy now'
• make your keywords part of your display URL
• keep your copy simple

Using dynamic keywords

An effective way to improve your click-through-rate (CTR) is using 'dynamic keyword insertion'. This displays the keyword the user searched for in your ad copy. You can do this by including a simple code in the ad copy:

{KeyWord: Driving Lessons}

You can use this code for either the ad headline or its description. Google will try to replace the code in the ad copy with the user's exact search term. If the search term is too long to fit the character limit, a replacement phrase will appear - 'Driving Lessons' in this example.

Landing pages are a key element of your pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Each ad group should lead to its own landing page, which should be tailored to match the ad copy and keywords. Using your home page or a busy page may lose the buyer and mean you have paid for a wasted click.

Using the keywords you have chosen for your ad group in both the ad copy and on the landing page is an effective way of making your ads relevant. Search advertising providers give ads a 'relevancy score' based on how closely related their keywords, ad copy and landing page are. Having a good relevancy score will reduce the cost of your advertising and improve how highly you rank on the search engine results page.

Conversion

Aim for a high conversion rate. A conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action, such as download a brochure or make a purchase. If the quality of your page or a poorly targeted ad lets you down, the user is less likely to convert. Make sure the page has a clear call-to-action, eg 'sign up for the newsletter' or 'buy now'.

E-commerce landing pages

If you are selling online, your landing pages will often be pages for particular products or closely related groups of products. Use keywords on the landing page to explain what the product is, how it works and how to order it. You need to keep the user's attention so they don't follow any links away from the page. Your provider will give you the tools to monitor and evaluate your results. If your ads are getting good click-through rates, but you're not converting potential customers (eg generating sales), you can quickly cancel the bid for that ad and set up a new landing page or revamp the existing one. You can then re-bid and monitor results until you reach your optimum conversion rate.

Display ads are online advertisements that appear on websites other than your own. They can take the form of a banner, an image or even a video. Using cookies, these ads can be tailored for an individual user based on their demographics, interests and behaviour. This allows advertisers to reach targeted audiences.

Like search ads, display ads can be charged by cost-per-click (CPC). They can also be charged at cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM).

Both main search advertising providers (Google and Bing) offer a network of websites that can show your display ads. Depending on your campaign's goals you may choose to advertise through search, display or both.

What are the differences between search and display advertising?

While search and display both offer and a targeted, measurable online advertising that can be charged per click or impression, there are a number of key differences:

• Push vs pull - with search advertising, the user is actively searching for products or services and may even be ready to make a purchase. However, display advertising pushes your message to users when they may not be thinking about your product. This means that the search may be able to deliver more qualified leads. Display may be more effective for promoting an innovative product.
• Branding - search ads are usually text-based and don't offer much opportunity to communicate your brand. Display advertising is more visual - you can use videos and images that include your logo and brand identity. Display advertising works well for brand awareness campaigns.

Display and search advertising each help to achieve different marketing goals. If your goals are to increase brand awareness or promote a new product - display advertising will be more effective. For a campaign that aims to generate conversions (eg sales, enquiries) - search advertising will work best.

The type of online advertising you choose will also be based on what you are offering. Display advertising may be more effective for promoting luxury items such as a cruise or high-end car. Search can work very well for selling products online and promoting urgent services such as a locksmith or plumber.

Online display ads can appear on select websites across the internet. They can be more useful for certain marketing goals than others, eg brand awareness. Evaluate their strengths and weaknesses before deciding whether to create your own display campaign.

Advantages of display advertising

There are a number of benefits of using display advertising:

• Visual - you can use eye-catching imagery or rich media to get your audience's attention.
• Awareness - you can build brand awareness and promote your products and services. While search advertising reaches an audience intending to purchase, display can create an initial interest. Display ads have a high reach and can be seen by large numbers of people.
• Targeted - certain targeting options aren't available through search marketing. These include topic and interest targeting and remarketing. You can also reach specific demographics, such as gender and age.

Disadvantages of display advertising

There are some downsides to display advertising:

• Lower click-through rate (CTR) - display ads typically have a lower CTR than search ads.
• Lower conversions - a lower CTR also means lower conversions, such as sales and registrations. When users see your ad they aren't actively looking for your products or services, so they may not be ready to buy. Display ads are more suitable for long sales processes than for selling high volumes.
• Ad avoidance - while your impressions may be high, you can't guarantee that users paid attention to your ad. Ad blocking tools can also stop users from seeing your ads.

When setting a budget for a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you're in control of the cost of your advertising. But how you set your budget will depend on the PPC provider you choose. This is because each provider offers a slightly different proposition. Yet all of them offer tools to help you calculate and set your budget.

Pay-per-click glossary

Common terms used in setting budgets include:

• Daily budget - the total amount you're willing to spend per day on a specific campaign. There's no minimum, but if you set the budget significantly below your PPC provider's recommendation, your ads will have fewer displays.
• Cost-per-click (CPC) bid - the maximum amount you're willing to pay for each click. You may pay less than your CPC bid as your ranking will determine the actual cost, but you'll never pay more than the maximum you set.
• Click-through rate (CTR)- the percentage of clicks out of the total number of times your advert is displayed, which counts towards your quality score. The more compelling your ad, the higher CTR you can expect and the lower your advertising cost will be.
• Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) - a pre-determined charge for every thousand times your ad is seen. This is common for display advertising where the campaign goal is awareness.
• Cost-per-action (CPA) - the charge when you only pay for clicks that lead to a user taking a specific action, such as a sale or registration.
• Conversion rate - the percentage of people who buy out of those who click your advert. The quality of your landing page and how targeted your advert is will play a role in whether you close a sale.
• Quality score - assigned by search engines according to their calculation. Typically, it will include an ad's CTR, the relevance of the keyword and landing page and the website's quality. As a high score improves your ranking, you could benefit from a CPC that is below your maximum bid and/or a better position on the search page, which may in turn increase your CTR.

Monitoring and adjusting your budget

You'll need to constantly monitor your keyword bids in light of your ad's performance. You may be able to link your online analytics tool with your PPC platform to see how many conversations (eg sales, registrations, enquires) each keyword and ad delivers. You can even assign an exact monetary value to your conversions. This is particularly effective for e-commerce campaigns.

Consider the return-on-investment you are getting from your keyword bids and adjust them regularly as part of your ongoing optimisation. See optimising PPC campaigns.

Decide if the budget you have allocated to a campaign is delivering on your marketing goals. See measuring your online marketing.

If your budget allows, you may prefer to use the services of a search marketing agency to carry out these tasks for you. Read more about choosing a search marketing agency.

In order to get the most from your search marketing, you should align your pay-per-click (PPC) activities with search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO promotes websites in the natural listings of search engines so that users can find your website when they do a keyword search.

An effective search marketing campaign should include elements of both SEO and PPC to boost your website's visibility in search rankings. This will ensure you are taking advantage of the way search engines work. The general principles of SEO are to:

• submit your new site to search engines to make sure that it is indexed
• increase the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site
• design your site to be usable, accessible and easy to navigate

Ultimately, having high-quality content on your site will aid all aspects of your search marketing - by attracting visitors and encouraging third parties to link through to your website.

See content marketing.

Keyword strategy

Keyword research is central to any PPC campaign. In order to succeed at PPC - and to improve your organic search ranking - you need to find out which words and phrases your potential customers use when they search online for products or services like yours.

Search engines evaluate keyword bids and website rankings. To reach a good ranking, you'll need to make the right bid and:

• Get a good click-through rate (CTR) for your ads. CTR is the percentage of people who click through on your ads against the number of times the search engine displays them. You can achieve this by using compelling ad copy that closely relates to chosen keywords.
• Include your keywords throughout your website. Keep your keywords up to date by adding variations to match changing search terms. It is important that keywords only appear in a natural way within your content. Overloading your content with keywords is known as 'keyword stuffing' and can cause your site to be penalised by search engines.
• Enter your website address into the free search engine tools to have them analyse whether your content includes keywords you haven't previously identified and add them to your lists.
• Use SEO tactics so your website benefits from the way in which search engines work.
• Add value to your website through useful, relevant content that is regularly updated.

It is important to find the best keywords for your business. You can buy software or use providers who will analyse keywords for you and there are things you can do for yourself such as using free keyword checking from major search engines, research keywords on other relevant websites. Also consider negative keywords - the words you need to disallow to prevent your advert appearing in unrelated searches.

Keyword strategy should sit at the centre of your search marketing strategy, as it is vital to both SEO and PPC.

Pay-per-click search (PPC) is a form of online advertising. It allows you to display an ad on a search engine results page. PPC can be a cost-effective way of reaching your online audience. Bidding for the right keywords, which are search words that customers are likely to use when looking for your product or service, can help to drive customers to your website.

Using the right ad copy to sell your product or service will also help. It is also important to have a well optimised landing page, so that customers will find what they expect once they have clicked on your ad and arrived on your website. You will only be charged for your ad when someone clicks on it and makes a visit to your website.

Follow these tips to make PPC work for your business:

1. Relevancy: Ensure that your keywords, ad copy and landing page all closely match each other. This will increase your chances of online conversions - eg new sales. Having an ad that matches your landing page will also drive down the cost-per-click (CPC).

2. Account structure: Structure your account so that similar keywords are placed together within the same ad group. This will help you to line-up the most relevant keywords, ad copy and landing page. Download a PPC account structure example (PDF, 272KB).

3. Negative keywords: Check the actual search terms that customers use to find your ad. You may find that certain terms are not relevant to what you offer. For example, a shop selling 'drinking glasses' would not want their ad to show to users searching for 'reading glasses'. Use such information to add negative keywords. This will prevent your ad from displaying to people searching for things that you don't offer. In turn, you won't waste your budget on clicks that will never result in a conversion.

4. Dynamic keyword insertion: Consider dynamic keyword insertion, which will update your ad copy to match the customer's exact search terms. This can help to increase your click-through rate (CTR).

5. Call to action: Increase your click-through-rate by including a strong call to action in the ad copy - eg 'Download now' or 'Register today'.

6. Match types: Choose the right keyword matching option. Using the default 'broad match' will display your ad more frequently, but his could mean your ad is less targeted and result in wasted budget from irrelevant clicks. Using 'phrase match' or 'exact match' keywords will offer more control over the search terms that will result in your ad being shown. This should improve your click-through-rate. See choose the right keywords for your PPC campaign.

7. Optimisation: Once your campaigns have been running for a while, check what has been working and what has not. Adjust your bids if they are too low to reach the first search engine results page (and will still deliver a return on investment). Use several ad copy versions and see which is most effective. If an ad results in a high bounce rate or low conversion rate, consider how the landing page could be improved. See optimising PPC campaigns.