FAQs

PPC is a service offered by Google within their core product, which is called Google Adwords. PPC simply stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it makes it possible for users to own a piece of real estate within the first page of Google. So basically, it is an advert, an opportunity to advertise your products and services on the first page of Google. It is a very quick service that allows you to advertise your products and services literally within 24 hours of creating the advertisement.

The advertisement is created surrounding the keywords relative to your service. So if we consider real estate and off-plan properties, the name of the project will be considered a keyword and your ad will show for that particular keyword.

The way PPC works is that you are charged an amount of money every time a user clicks on your advert. The process involves bidding on keywords. Normally, there are a number of companies or people bidding for the same keyword. So what Google does is that it will offer you a position on the first page, either right on the top or at the bottom, which is relevant to the amount of money that you are bidding for. Generally, by investing a considerable amount of money and by being the top bidder, you will have your ad shown at the top of the first page.

For the best results, it is necessary for the adverts to be optimized. Google offers support and has a how-to guide on the Adwords platform, which assists users to create, set up and optimize their PPC campaigns. There is always an element of optimization, which must be done continuously, and what this does is that over time it reduces the costs per click. So by having the ad fully optimized, the user will actually pay a smaller amount of money as compared to the competitors while enjoying an equal presence, right at the top.

Now, we at United SEO take on ONLY PPC clients as well, and this is actually recommended for certain industries. This includes events as these are generally, or in some cases, a one-time thing. For example, the Expo 2021 – once it finishes, there is no need to continue advertising for it. So this could be something that is setup very quickly and ended the same way. In short, for some of our clients and certain industries, PPC is the way to go for sure.

A Google penalty is something that no website owner wants. At times, when a website is hit with a penalty, the reason is known – in such cases, Google reaches out to the webmaster and notifies them about the penalty being inflicted. But at times, it is not revealed and remains unknown. Generally speaking, the impact of a penalty includes a severe drop in rankings, resulting in a loss of traffic.

There are a number of reasons why Google would inflict a penalty on a website. Ultimately, it is something that has happened either to the website or something connected with it that Google doesn’t like – and this could be a number of things. Two of the most common instances would be:

1. The duplication of content, whereby part or all of the content within the mother website has been copied
2. Other websites linking and filtering poison into the mother website. In simple words, there are websites that Google generally doesn’t like; including unethical websites that are linking to the mother website and passing down this unethical substance, thereby making the mother site appear unethical. This leads to a repercussion in the form of a severe loss in rankings

But, the good news is that it can be repaired. The first thing that needs to be done is the identification of the problem, and then to figure out solutions to fix it up. So, if it is the second version, the bad websites linking to the mother site, there can be a “disavow”. A disavow is basically the removal, an actual request to Google to remove the link between the unethical websites and the mother site. With time, as the removal process is carried out, Google revisits the website, notices that there is no longer a connection, and starts to reward by progressing the rankings.

On the other hand, duplicate content is quite an easy fix. There are a number of softwares out in the market which can detect duplicate content. What we then need to do is identify where that content is located on the site – if we are in control of removing that content, we can do it right away. However, there are instances when this isn’t under our control, for instance, when competitors literally copy the site’s content. In this case, we would have to knock on their door and request for the content to be removed or again, reach out to Google, explain the situation, inform them that this website has copied our content, and request for us to continue optimizing the mother site to reap the rewards of our hard work.