What is Cost Per Click, Anyway?

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money a search engine charges when someone clicks on your paid ad. This amount can change depending on the time of day and the amount of competition vying for traffic using that same word. The more people competing for a keyword, the more expensive it is.

Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter, the three largest network operators, use a bid-based model, and people can adjust their bidding based on how many or how few clicks they get. It’s like a constantly evolving silent auction.

The amount you pay per click often depends on a quality score, assigned to you by each search engine. Your score is based on the relevance of your ad copy to the keywords on which you’re bidding, how consistently relevant you’ve been in the past, click-through rates, landing-page content, geography, and other factors. The higher the quality score, the higher you’ll be ranked and the lower your cost per click.

What About Broad-Match Keywords?

A broad-match keyword is a wide-ranging, non-specific search term like plumber or doctor. For local businesses, we recommend using "phrase matches," like “emergency plumber Irvine California.” Remember, the more specific and less competitive a keyword is, the lower your cost. Also, while the specificity may produce fewer clicks to your site, those clicks are more likely to be from committed buyers who’ll purchase your product or service.

Do I Really Need a Landing Page?

Absolutely. A landing page (or lead capture page) is the page that appears when someone clicks on an ad or search-engine result link. Having a landing page—rather than directing a customer to your website's homepage—will increase conversion actions and will significantly increase your quality score because the language used there will directly correlate with your keywords and key phrases.

Can My Ranking Get Better Over Time?

This goes back to the quality score, which is rooted in the relevancy of your search marketing. As your quality score increases, your ad costs go down—and ranking on a search results page can go up. What makes an ad relevant? You should have ad copy that is clear and to the point, incorporating keywords that appear on your landing page. Paid ads should connect the ad content to the landing-page content. By contrast, buying the keyword window repair, but having a landing page that only mentions "new window installation" reduces relevancy and lowers your quality score.

Online search marketing is uniquely challenging, but uniquely flexible. If you keep your message targeted and refine it as you learn more about how people search for you, you’ll see your costs decrease while your results increase.

What could be better than that?