Introduction to Search Advertising

What is Search Advertising?

Now that you know the ins and outs of search engine optimization and how it works, we will continue to search for advertising? Search advertising, or also referred to as pay-per-click advertising (PPC), is another incredible way to advertise your business or your brand. 

Through search advertising, you can directly advertise your brand or company on the search engine results pages or SERPs. It is the first thing you see on a search engine results page, and is usually highlighted and marked with the word “Ads.” 

To get this top spot at SERPs, you will need to pay a certain amount. But, you only pay for each click on the advertisement you posted. It constantly changes in format, and ranges from simple text adverts, media banners, and sometimes even video advertisements.

Online Advertising Industry

According to reports, Google gets 95% of its revenue from pay-per-click advertising. Indeed, it has reformed the online advertising industry as we know it today. 

Most of us spend a lot of time on the internet these days, and everyone knows how to spot an ad when they see one. In the search engine results page, the ads are labelled as such, and they are separated from the organic search results, as previously stated. 

Most of the time, ads on SERPs are found at the top of the page, these ads are usually in a box. Sometimes, they can also be found on the right-hand side of the results page. 

Just like search engine optimization, search advertising on search engines heavily relies on keywords and key phrases. This means that PPC ads are triggered by the search term entered by a user into a search engine. 

This all circles back to the keyword research we have discussed in a previous article. Those keyword research will be your guide on which keywords you want to target for which you want your ads to appear. 

Benefits of Search Advertising

One great benefit of search advertising is that your adverts will already be displayed for potential customers who already expressed their intent to purchase. If they look for a specific product or keyword online, it is possible that they are searching for a product or service. If you ad is right there on top, you get a better chance of acquiring a new customer. It gives you the opportunity of presenting your offer to a potential customer who is already in the buying circle. 

Throughout the next series of articles, we will focus on search advertising. And how you can utilize this marketing strategy on search engines. The main focus will be Google, but the same principles. We will discuss can also be applied to other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and etc. 

This next series of articles will give you an insight and in-depth look not just on search advertising. We will also discuss how to put together a search advert and how to target your search ad to relevant users. Additionally, we will also cover topics such as the bidding process on key phrases, and how it affects your ranking. Lastly, we will give you a guide on how to plan, set up and run your own search advertising campaign. 

Key Terms

In the meantime, let us look at the most common key terms and concepts in search advertising.

• Click through – this is by far one of the most commonly used phrases in PPC. It refers to a click on a text or ad link that leads to your website. 
• Clickthrough rate – the clickthrough rate or CTR refers to the total number of clicks on a link divided by the number of times that the ad link has been shown. This is often represented as a percentage. 
• Cost per action – often referred to as CPA, the cost per action is the amount you pay, as the advertiser when a certain action is performed by a user. This differs for every ad type and every action.
• Conversion rate – this refers to the percentage you get when you divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors. 
• Cost per click – The amount paid when a link is clicked on is referred to as the CPC. 
• Cost per action – this refers to the amount paid when a certain action is performed by a user. 
• SERP – or search engine results page shows the actual result returned to the user based on their search query.
• Sponsored results – are the results of search engines that are paid for by the advertiser.
• Quality score – Google Adwords uses quality score or QS to indicate how relevant a keyword is to an ad text to a user’s search query. 

Key Concepts

Check out the other list below:

• Google Adwords – this is a search advertising program by Google. It helps advertisers to display their adverts not just on relevant search results, but also across Google’s content network. 
• Key phrase – this is when two or more keywords are combined to form a search query – these are also often referred to as keywords. 
• Keyword – this refers to a word that is found in a search query. For instance, if you search for the key phrase “Digital Marketing”, it includes the keywords “digital” and “marketing”
• Impression – this key term refers to each time an advert is shown.
• Paid search advertising – this term usually refers to advertising on search engines where the advertiser pays for each click on the advert. It is also called PPC, as we mentioned earlier. 
• Organic results – or the natural results, are the ones served by the search engine’s algorithm. Organic results are not paid, and the search engine does not charge the website owners to list these results. 
• Return on Investment or ROI refers to the ratio of profit to cost

You will encounter and come across these key terms and concepts mentioned above. Throughout this whole article series. So be sure to get yourself familiarized with these terms. In the next article, we will talk about advertising in search. And how to structure your search advertising campaign. See you then!

© Image credits to Francesco Ungaro