A Basic Glossary Of PPC Terms To Help You Understand Your Marketing

In one of our recent articles we talked about a PPC workshop we will be running in May and thought we’d share some tips for those looking to understand the fundamentals of pay-per-click marketing. In this blog, we have created a glossary of the basic PPC terms that you might find when looking at your Google Ads account with an explanation of what they mean.  

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This one might seem a bit self-explanatory but this is the price you pay for each time a potential customer clicks on your advert.  

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click through rate is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. CTR is determined by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad by the number of impressions.  

Broad Match

This is the default matching option for keywords and means that your ad may show if a search term contains your keyword terms in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads can also show for singular or plural forms, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. Use Broad Match with caution as it can use your budget quite quickly.  

Exact Match

This is the most specific of the keyword match types and triggers your ad when users type your keyword exactly as is and in the same order.  

Phrase Match

This match type allows ads to show only when someone’s search includes the exact phrase of your keyword or close variations of the specific keyword phrase.  

Conversions

When a user/customer completes a sale, a form, submits and email or downloads a whitepaper, etc.  A conversion is essentially the same as a lead.  

Quality Score

A ranking system that Google uses based on relevancy to determine bid price. It takes into consideration your CPC, keyword/ad relevance and the landing page experience and gives you a score out of 10 (10 is high). These are the very basic terms that you’ll probably be focused on when first starting a new pay per click campaign with Google Ads, although there are a number of other terms that you’ll need to become familiar with over time as you gain experience using the dashboard.   If you’d like to book onto this PPC workshop, you can do so by following this link. If you’d like to understand more about the terminology within your account, contact one of our experts today.