PPC gets talked about like it needs a specialist vocabulary. It does not. The core idea is simple, and understanding it makes you a much better judge of whether your ads, or your agency, are doing a good job.

What PPC means

PPC stands for pay per click. You create adverts, they show when people search for relevant things, and you pay only when someone clicks. No click, no charge. The most common form is Google search ads, the results marked "Sponsored" at the top of the page.

The basic idea

You tell Google which searches you want to appear for, how much a click is worth to you, and how much you are willing to spend a day. Google shows your ad to people making those searches and charges you when they click through to your site.

What happens the moment someone searches

Every time someone types a search, Google runs an instant auction among the advertisers who want that search. It happens in the time the page takes to load. Two things decide whether you show, and where:

• Your bid: the most you are willing to pay for a click

• Your Quality Score: Google's rating of how relevant and useful your ad and landing page are for that search

A high Quality Score means you can appear above competitors who bid more than you, and pay less per click. Google does this because it wants to show ads people actually find useful.

Quality Score in plain terms

Quality Score rewards relevance. If someone searches "dog groomer Eastbourne" and your ad says "Dog Grooming in Eastbourne" and sends them to a page about dog grooming in Eastbourne, that lines up, and Google charges you less. If your ad is generic and dumps them on your home page, it does not line up, and you pay more for a worse result.

This is why sending traffic to a specific, matching landing page is one of the highest impact things you can do.

Keywords and match types

You choose keywords, the search terms you want to trigger your ads. You also choose how loosely Google can match them:

• Exact match: only that search and very close variants

• Phrase match: searches that include your phrase in order

• Broad match: anything Google thinks is related, which can be very loose

Broad match without close control is how budgets get wasted on irrelevant clicks. Most small accounts do better staying tighter.

Negative keywords

You can also tell Google what not to show your ads for. A roofer might add "jobs", "courses" and "free" as negative keywords so they stop paying for clicks from people who will never hire them. Building this list is ongoing work and one of the clearest signs an account is being looked after.

Budgets

You set a daily budget. Google spends up to roughly that each day, sometimes a little over on busy days and less on quiet ones, balancing out over the month. When the budget is used up, your ads stop for the day.

The landing page is half the battle

The ad only buys the click. Whether that click becomes an enquiry depends on the page. It needs to match the search, load fast, make the offer clear and have an obvious next step. A brilliant ad pointed at a poor page loses money.

Conversion tracking

This is how you know any of it worked. Conversion tracking records when a click leads to a form submission, a call or a sale. Without it you are flying blind, judging the account on clicks instead of results. If your ads are running without conversion tracking, that is the first thing to fix.

The main campaign types

• Search: text ads on Google results, for people actively looking

• Shopping: product listings with images and prices, for online shops

• Display: image ads on other websites, more for awareness

• Video: ads on YouTube

• Paid social: ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and similar, targeted by interests and behaviour rather than searches

The takeaway

PPC is an auction. You bid on searches, Google weighs your bid against how relevant your ad and page are, and you pay per click. The levers that matter most for a small budget are tight keywords, a growing negative keyword list, a matching landing page and proper conversion tracking.

Koprio's paid advertising service sets all of this up and manages it for small businesses across East Sussex, from a fixed monthly fee. Get in touch for a look at whether PPC fits your business, or read Google Ads for small business: is it worth the spend first.