A guide to Search Marketing - PPC

This shows you how often people who see your ad end up clicking on it. The higher the rate, the better your keywords and ads are performing. Average CPC’s can range between 0.5% up to 2 % but do vary across different service sectors. CTR is a key performance indicator for Search Marketing campaigns as it demonstrates a relevancy between the keywords set up to capture customer traffic and the ads which are shown to these customers.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you pay each time a user clicks on your ad. You'll often see an average CPC shown for the time period you're looking at.

Maximum cost-per-click (CPC) controls the highest amount that will be paid for a click on your ad. We set this at the keyword and/or your ad group-level. The Google AdWords Discounter then automatically reduces this amount so that the actual CPC you are charged is just 1p more than the minimum necessary to keep your position on the page.

A 'conversion' is when a user completes an action on your site, such as buying something, signing up, or requesting more information from you. A conversion is directly linked to your particular website. It might be a phone call, an online enquiry or a direct sale if users can buy goods and services online from your website.

This is the website address that appears in your ad - typically shown in green text. Display URLs clearly show which page you'll go to when you click an ad. Google's policy is that both the destination and the display URLs must be within the same website (i.e. they share the same domain).

A negative keyword is put in to a campaign to stop your ad being matched to an irrelevant search. For example, if your keyword is 'tennis shoes' and you add the negative keyword '- red', your ad will not appear when a user searches on 'red tennis shoes'. Negative keywords are especially useful if your account contains lots of broad-matched keywords (see also question below).

Dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) is a functionality used by Google that allows us to automatically change your advert based on the specific search terms. This helps to increase the prominence of your ad on the page and promote the user to click.

DKI needs to be used carefully to ensure that once the keyword is added your advert still makes sense, hence we take great care to ensure we are not inserting irrelevant keyword into your ad. DKI can be used in different ways to maximise its impact. Typically we might use it in the title of your ad and also sometimes in the description as well for added impact.

A destination page is the page a visitor "lands on" after clicking on your ad from the search engine results page. This can be any page on your website and should be the one most relevant to your campaign. We recommend having separate destination pages where you want to promote multiple products and services and these are shown on different pages of your website.

Impressions are the number of times your ad is displayed on the Google search engine results page. It also includes displays on partner sites where this is enabled as part of your advertising package.

This is the number of impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads' targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and quality scores (QS).

Geo-targeting lets you target your ads to specific locations. For each campaign, you can select the regions for your ad. That campaign's ads will appear only to users located in those areas. Google recommend targeting a minimum radius of 25 miles from your business location - any less (particularly in rural areas) and you'll struggle to get the number of visitors to your website that you want.

Quality score (QS) is a 10-point measure applied at keyword-level within your search marketing campaign. As your quality score increases (typically as your campaign settles down over the first few weeks) you can normally expect to pay a slightly lower cost per click. This ensures that Google is not a pure auction model and that you can potentially enjoy a higher position than a given competitor whilst paying a lower CPC.

There are various measures that are used to calculate QS, but ultimately Google defines the core components of quality score as:

• The historical click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google.
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
• The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group.
• The quality of your destination page
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group.
• The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query.
• Other relevance factors.

This describes where your ad appears relative to other ads across all the times it is matched. Searching on Google on a desktop computer for example, you will typically see three ads at the top of the results page and a further eight or more down the right hand side.

Deep linking is where we make sure that users are delivered to the most relevant page within a website, relative to their search. For instance, if a user searches on 'brown leather shoes', then clicks on an ad for an online retailer www.shoes.com, the advertiser has two options:

• Direct the click to the main www.shoes.com home page
  
  Advantage: If the advertiser doesn't specifically sell brown leather shoes it may be an option to deliver to a generic page if it is felt the product offering is strong enough to persuade the user away from the intent of their original search.
  
  Disadvantage: The user may find the page less relevant and therefore is less likely to 'convert' to buying a product. Direct the click to a more targeted 'deeper' page within the website that specifically lists brown leather shoes.
  
  

• Direct the click to a more targeted 'deeper' page within the website that specifically lists brown leather shoes
  
  Advantage: High relevancy and a higher chance of conversion.
  
  Disadvantage: May not receive much traffic to this page if it only contains details of a few specific products or services you offer.