What is Paid Search?
Paid search, or PPC, is the act of bidding on keywords on major search engines (Google, Bing etc). These bids are place in order to show up as a top result when people search for a desired keyword. You can tell when a result is a paid search ad, by seeing the Ad Box on the left of the result. You can see an example of this on this screen shot.
Paid search is auction based, meaning there is a bid for the right to show up. Google uses what they call "ad rank" to determine the order of the ads that will show. Ad rank is determined by multiplying a web pages' quality score with max bid. Quality score is the score given to the landing page an ad is being directed. Quality score is based on how relevant the page is to the search term being bid on. Max bid is the amount submitted as the highest cost per click an advertiser is willing to pay.
Our Approach to Paid Search
Paid search is something that needs to be built out and optimized very strategically. If not focussed and properly targeted paid search can drain budget without driving results. That's why at The Missing Link we conduct extensive research to determine the best keywords to target. We base our research on relevancy, right to win, search volume and competition. Our team also ensures we are targeting the right people at the right times. To avoid waste we set restrictions on who sees our ads. This prevents any wasted spend from unqualified prospects.
When taking over existing paid search campaigns we frequently uncover a significant amount of wasted spend. On average we see about 30% of spend being wasted. To resolve that issue and prevent it from recurring we closely monitor performance. This involves enhancing top performing keywords, while eliminating the poor ones. The result is greater ROI and money saved. That saved money can be funneled into other areas, such as conversion rate optimization, to drive bottom line results.