Google Ads Cost Per Click Explained

Hi, welcome to the PPC Q&A show, where every week we are going to take PPC or Google Ads questions and try and provide you with a very quick answer. Unless it needs to be a little bit longer, and then we’ll do that, as well.

What we’re going to do is provide you with real world answers and show you exactly what we’re talking about. Let’s get started.


Today’s PPC, or pay-per-click, question is, what is cost per click? Let’s dive right in so we can show you exactly what we’re talking about.

All right. You need to get used to this. When we get a question, we’re going to try and fly through the answers so you can get on with your day. The cost per click definition is the actual price that you pay per click in your online marketing campaigns.

How Does Cost Per Click Work?

How does that work? If you’re on Google, let’s say you’re looking for a landscaping company. Let’s use that. As you can see, these top three that come up are ads. Right here, it says with the little green box, “Ad,” and there are a few more here at the bottom.

Right now, these are free for these companies. Right here, this is a free advertisement. However, once I click on this ad, it will charge that company a certain price.

How much that price is depends on a number of things. It could depend on the competition for this top spot. It could depend on how well this ad is written. It can also depend on where this link is taking people to.

If I click on this landscaping company ad and it’s taking people to a website that’s selling cars, I’m going to hit that back button immediately because it’s not what I’m looking for. Google is measuring this.

Google Will Reward You If You Give People What They’re Looking For

If that happens a bunch of times, they are going to essentially start charging this company a lot more per click because people aren’t finding what they’re looking for. Google will actually reward you with lower costs per click if you give people what they’re looking for and they’re taking the right kinds of action.

The cost per click can also be whatever this company is bidding on this, because they are obviously willing to pay up to a certain amount to make sure that they come up above these other companies. It’s not always whoever can pay the most wins.

As I mentioned, it’s also somebody who is giving people value when they click on those ads.
It will also depend on the quality score of this ad. That is essentially a score that Google is giving this ad for how well it’s written. “Landscaping company”, you can see right away it comes up right there in the beginning of the title.

You can also see it comes up right here. “Landscape company”. “Landscape” comes up again a couple of times. I’d say the ad is rather well-written, and the quality score is probably pretty high assuming that, once people click on this, they find what they’re looking for.

The cost per click can also be determined by the click-through rate, meaning how many people saw this ad versus how many people actually clicked on it.

The Cost Per Click Is Based On A Number Of Factors

There are also a number of other factors that do come into cost per click, but what it essentially means is, when people get on this page and they see these ads, what is it costing this company per click? 10 years ago, a click might’ve only cost you a dime, or 20, 30 cents.

Now, depending on the industry you’re in, you could see clicks as high as $50 or $60, or even more. With that said, we work with a lot of service companies, and the clicks probably are averaging between $2 and $5.

If you have a question about Google ads or pay per click, do us a favor, let us know on the comments below. We’re going to be answering a new question each and every week, or possibly twice a week depending on how much you guys like it.

If you’re looking for more information on how to set up or how to run Google Ads pay-per-click campaigns, take a look in the description area below where we have a link to our training course called Google Ads Unlocked.

This course is video tutorial, step by step, for how to set up and optimize your Google Ads campaigns so you can get the most out of them for your business.

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If you like videos like this, over to the right-hand side, you’ll see some more PPC Q&A videos that we have done in the past. I hope you got the answer you were looking for. Thanks so much for stopping by.

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