Pay per click & Google shopping management

Pay-per-click (most commonly called PPC) is a form of online marketing that requires payment. Unlike organic SEO, advertisers must pay a cost whenever their PPC ad gets clicked on. While this might seem off-putting, bidding to rank for certain keywords helps to put your products/services at the top of search results almost immediately. You also have full control over the audience you pitch to.

Google AdWords is one of the most popular pay-per-click advertising platforms. It allows you to bid on keywords and display your ads at the top of Google’s search engine results page. The same process applies to Bing Ads, which display on Bing’s search engine results, instead.

Google Shopping used to be known as Product Listing Ads. It is another pay-per-click advertising platform provided by Google. Google Shopping Ads can appear in main search engine results or under the ‘shopping’ tab.

Instead of displaying text-based advertisements, Google Shopping allows you to use imagery when a user searches for your product. This allows them to easily view and compare their options, before making a purchase decision.

There are two parts of Google Adwords - the Search Network and the Display Network. Businesses advertising on the Search Network will have their text ads shown in search engine results. Businesses using the Display Network, on the other hand, will have visual ‘display’ ads across the whole internet. This tends to be in the form of an image banner - any website that supports advertisements can show it.

A lot of expertise and strategic planning has to happen for PPC to work effectively. You cannot just pay large sums of money and expect an instant return. Instead, your ads will be assessed by an automatic process known as the “Ad Auction”. The Ad Auction determines the relevance and validity of your ads, deciding where to place it in search engine results. This is why it's so important to optimise paid ads based on industry standards and best practices.

Both our PPC experts and SEO specialists agree that PPC and SEO go hand in hand. The more platforms you use to advertise online, the more traffic and conversions you’ll drive to your website.

The great thing about PPC is that it gives you access to a huge range of real keyword data. This is keyword data based on actual search habits and trends, rather than guesstimates in a tool. Having this extra reliable source of information allows for the SEO team to make organic optimisation decisions, based on paid keyword data. Ultimately, both forms of online marketing fuel each other.

As you probably know, ecommerce is incredibly data-driven. Numbers in a spreadsheet dictate the majority of your business model and performance. PPC supports this - progress can be tracked down, right to the last penny. It’s very much a data-driven strategy.

Of course, it’s not all about the numbers. PPC is also great for ecommerce as it's a very targeted way of marketing. You get to decide exactly what product to advertise and exactly who you’re advertising to. It’s fully customisable and avoids wasting money on disinterested searchers.