Pay-per click (PPC) advertising can help drive traffic to your website, but it isn’t for every industry and business.
It is important to understand when your business should use PPC advertising. Check out Mashable’s article, “5 Times You Should Ditch Pay-Per-Click,” to learn when your small business should avoid using pay-per click advertising in your SEO strategy. Here are five factors you should considering when investing in paid search advertising:
- You have too many competitors for available ad slots. The top positions receive the highest number of clicks, leaving other businesses in the dust.
- Your competitors are using metrics you are unwilling to use. When a competitor consistently ranks higher than you, they likely have a great Quality Score and therefore are bidding less than you, especially if they are a well-known brand and you are a small business. With their high quality score, they get a “brand discount” on PPC because their click-through rate (CTR) is higher.
- You can’t match their Quality Score. Businesses with a high click-through-rate (CTR) have higher Quality Scores – this means they receive a natural “brand discount” on PPC. To compete with well-known brands or large corporations with better Quality Scores, you may have to pay a premium.
- Your high-value click choices don’t deliver. Geotags and day-parting can be used to gain the best value for clicks. However, sometimes high-profit clicks aren’t always available to cherry-pick. This can result in a high-profit low-scale campaign.
- Your keyword distribution is off balance. When the long-tail keyword is short, most consumers favor specific keywords, creating tough competition for clicks on those specific keywords. So you may end up battling the same top competitors for nearly every one of your keywords.
