For many businesses and marketers alike in South Carolina, it’s not enough to simply drive online traffic to their websites using search engine optimization or social media strategies. Indeed, paid online advertising, more commonly known as pay-per-click, is one of the most essential components of efficient Greenville, SC marketing. Here are some facts about how it works along with certain best practice examples:

Definition

Essentially, pay-per-click is a system whereby a client business or organization pays a pre-determined sum of money to an online marketing or ad company for each time a user clicks on an ad. Search engines usually set apart PPC ads from generic results whenever someone types in a query (in Google’s case, the ads are located at the top of the search results and on the right side as a column, all marked with a yellow “Ad” text).

The Call to Action

PPC campaigns couldn’t be much longer than typical SEO content blogs or articles, so you don’t really have much room for beating around the bush. This is why the call to action is the PPC ad’s greatest weapon—it gives the potential lead the main idea of what to expect when he clicks on the link. This can be something as simple as “Buy Now” or “Subscribe Here”.

Keywords

Keyword optimization is as important to PPC campaigns as it is to SEO. Jeff Haden of the INC website writes about the benefits of the long-tail keyword, or one that’s more honed-in and relevant than general ones:

Long-tail keywords typically have less competition and therefore cost less per click. However, one in four small business advertisers rely exclusively on very broad keywords like “insurance.” Making matters worse, one in five don’t use a single negative keyword, an important tool that prevents your ads from showing up on irrelevant searches.

 

“Advertisers need to do their research to find those specific keywords that can help reduce cost while tapping into more targeted markets, yet we’re not seeing small businesses achieve this in great numbers,” […] “And without also using negative keywords you’re going to waste a lot of your budget on clicks that don’t convert.”

Mobile Conversion

These days, online marketing campaigns have been taking to the mobile center stage, with everything from responsive web design to mobile-user friendly SEO content being uploaded on a regular basis. PPC too, can help you tap into this channel, with services like ad extensions for things like sitelinks, directions, or even a call button.

Pay-per-click marketing from a reliable Greenville, SC ad agency just might be the edge you need to not only get visitors to your sites, but to actually turn those visitors into paying customers.

(Source: 6 Habits of Highly Effective AdWords Advertisers, INC)