GOOGLE ADS

Where search engine optimisation (SEO) is the act of making your website rank higher on Google search engine results pages, Google ads are the paid alternative. Rather than adjusting various elements on your website, maintaining outreach and referral networks, and releasing constant content marketing, the Google Ads platforms allows you to create online ads with targeted keywords around your products and services and push them forward on a bidding system. This is known as pay-per-click (PPC), meaning when someone searches for a keyword and clicks on your ad, you then pay a specified amount. It is a far more direct method to getting your site link to the top of Google search engines.

Google Ads can cost as little or as much as you would like – it really all depends on your goals. With the pay-per-click (PPC) structure, the amount you invest can fluctuate based on your available budget, the amount of traffic you are trying to generate, and the timeframe in which you are trying to generate them. This can be a fluid amount, and when you partner with a reputable agency to handle your Google Ads management, the area of focus will be creating and refining ads that convert the generated traffic at a higher volume, resulting in a greater return on investment. This can take a considerable amount of research, development, and testing, which is why management will also have a price attached to it, given the amount of work involved in operating campaigns to achieve your goals. If you try to save money on agencies offering less in management fees, you will receive less work on those campaigns, as well as a higher likelihood on tactics going against Google’s ad management guidelines, creating a poorer overall result from your investment.

By law, Google must apply a 10% GST charge on all services, including the Google Ads product. This will be added to your account after you have allocated your budgets and should be treated with similar tax implications to other transactions based on whether you are registered for GST (we recommend speaking to your accountant should you have any further queries).

This duplicitous act is called ‘click fraud’, and unfortunately is not uncommon within competitive industries. Google does have several methods to circumvent this practice, however, such as when a bot has been created to repeatedly click on an ad to exhaust your budgets. Google can block the activity and punish this IP address, saving you from paying for those artificial clicks. You can also manually block clicks from particular IP addresses attached to competitors to further protect yourself from this tactic.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is the pricing structure where a business pays for their advertisement every time someone clicks on it. As Google Ads works on a bidding structure, users allocate a maximum amount they are willing to pay, and if they ‘win’ the auction for the ad, will have their ads displayed until that budget is exhausted.