Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a digital marketing strategy where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Essentially, it’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically. PPC is commonly associated with first-tier search engines (such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising). Advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market and pay when users click on their ads. These ads appear when people search for things online using a search engine, especially when they are performing commercial searches, meaning that they’re looking for something to buy. This could be anything from a mobile search (someone looking for “pizza near me” on their phone) to a local service search (someone looking for a dentist or a plumber in their area) to someone shopping for a gift (“Mother’s Day flowers”) or a high-end item like enterprise software. All of these searches trigger pay-per-click ads. In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.” PPC advertising offers the potential for a high return on investment, as you only pay for the ad when a potential customer clicks on it, offering a direct path to your website.