Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click is a web-based internet advertising tactic that is used to drive traffic to your company website based on specific search terms or keywords. Advertisers pay the hosting service (i.e. Google AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter) when their ad is clicked – hence, pay-per-click. As the advertiser, you typically bid on keywords or keyword phrases that are relevant to the content on your web pages, along with terms that your target market is searching for to find you.

When launching a pay-per-click campaign, BCG takes a number of steps to ensure that visitors will find exactly what they are looking for when they click through to your website.

Conduct extensive research to determine relevant keywords or phrases
Investigate the number of searches being done on a monthly basis for those keywords or phrases
Look into what your competition is doing with paid search
Add contact forms to your website, which will track conversions
Write "landing pages" for certain search terms, if needed
Make sure that your webpages contain calls to action

For example: If we are implementing a pay-per-click campaign for a chicago area plumbing contractor, we may bid on keywords including: "chicago plumber", "water heater installation" or "sump pump repair".

Paid Search Engine Results

Paid search engine results display the advertisers who are paying for the search engines to list their text ad when particular keywords are searched. In search results, they are clearly identified as “Sponsored Results” and appear either above or to the right of the free (organic) results (see image below). Advertisers compete by bidding on keywords, and depending on their bid and ad budget, the search engines determine the placement or ranking of their ads. Typically placement is based on how much an Advertiser is willing to pay for 1 click. In a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, the advertiser pays each time someone clicks on the link inside of their text advertisement. The price increases with the competitiveness of the keyword used.