Pay per click advertising is a challenging but important dimension of digital marketing. It’s common to hear about the steep learning curve facing marketers that want to venture into paid search advertising.

It can feel insurmountable.

The difficulty of PPC marketing is two-fold. First, it is inherently complex and requires a deep understanding of your target audience and the PPC environment itself. Second, that environment is always changing, which means you’re always going to be chasing new PPC guides and resources to further your knowledge.

This discussion will explore the best pay per click guides on the Internet.

#1: Search Engine Journal’s PPC 101: A Complete Guide to Pay-Per-Click Marketing Basics

This guide really understands the woes of a PPC beginner. You start hearing all these different acronyms, like CTR, CPC, ROAS and more, and quickly you feel overwhelmed. It’s like you’re learning a whole new marketing language!

The guide has 16 chapters and each one is packed with information and links to additional resources. By breaking the learning into these chapters, the reader doesn’t feel too overwhelmed with a never-ending stream of text.

They start with the basics, like what is PPC and what are the benefits. Then, the guide moves into more complex matters, like understanding some of those pesky acronyms.

Every couple of chapters, Search Engine Journal adds some of their suggestions and ideas for best practices. This advice is really helpful because it allows a new PPC marketer to not only understand the concepts, but also put those strategies to work for their own business.

The other nice feature of this guide is how it ends with a chapter dedicated to top PPC experts to follow. This keeps the door wide open for future and more advanced learning.

#2: PPC Hero’s The Ultimate Guide To PPC Marketing

This is another great guide for newer PPC marketers. The article uses a lot of helpful examples and screenshots to make learning a little more visual. It really does a good job of breaking each concept down into digestible definitions that anyone can understand.

The guide is broken into several sections:

• What Is PPC
• Main Platforms
• Account Structure
• Ad Copy
• Settings
• Technical PPC
• Ad Extensions
• Tools
• Shared Library
• Reporting
• Display Network
• Remarketing
• Dynamic Search Ads

Every section is designed to leave no stone unturned. Readers don’t walk away having too many questions because PPC Hero thoroughly covers every topic for each section. And, as mentioned, they include a healthy dose of screenshots and images to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

It’s a great guide for someone that has an overall understanding of PPC, but needs a little help with certain terms or options. And, pay per click platforms, like Google Ads, have a lot of settings and options. I have recently setup the campaign for various keywords, best swings for infant, best baby gate, best smartwatches for 10 year old.

Following this guide will help you feel at ease as you set up your first campaign and explore these many options and choices.

#3: FasterSolutions’ Your Ultimate Guide To Advanced PPC Setup

There’s a ton of different beginner PPC guides, but it is hard to find a learning resource that goes beyond the basics. Your Ultimate Guide To Advanced PPC Setup is a great source for after you’ve read and understood one of those beginner guides.

The information included is still easy to understand, even for a beginner, but it does assume that you have some prior knowledge or background in PPC marketing.

The advanced information provided in this guide generates very actionable tips and strategies that can be implemented in your own campaigns, which makes it a really invaluable resource. The writer provides personal examples and evidence to support their claims.

The guide goes into good detail about the different aspects of setting up a campaign and creating ads. Not only are advanced topics defined, but they are also analyzed in terms of their importance and place in a PPC campaign. This creates exceptionally insightful advice for beginner-to-advanced PPC marketers.

#4: Everything You Need To Know About PPC Advertising

Instead of scouring multiple resources for your PPC learning, you can just stop here at Everything You Need To Know About PPC Advertising. This guide is broken down into 27 different sections! You absolutely get a full education here.

The guide starts with the basics by defining PPC and explaining how it works, how it is different from SEO and how it can be used. Then, it moves into more actionable insights into how to create a campaign and build a successful PPC strategy.

Aside from its robustness, this guide also stands out because it does a wonderful job of introducing some of the hottest topics in PPC, like AI, voice assistants, chatbots, mobile, augmented reality and more. Remember, PPC is always changing! You really get the latest updates with this guide, so you won’t be left in the dark to the newest changes to the PPC environment.

This top PPC guide also shares a lot of information about the data side of PPC management. If you want your campaigns to be successful, you need to carefully monitor your metrics and find ways to use the data to realize more effective strategies. This guide illuminates this topic very well and provides helpful advice on utilizing data in your campaigns.

#5: Google Help

While not really a guide, the Google Help support site has a deep library of helpful articles and resources for PPC marketers of all levels and understanding. Sometimes, it is just better to hear it from the source!

If you have any PPC-related questions that aren’t covered in your chosen guide, this is a great place to find the answer. You’d be hard-pressed to find a PPC topic that isn’t covered in one of these support articles. And, each article links to related resources, which makes it very easy to explore all the topics involved in answering your question!

Conclusion

No matter where you get your PPC knowledge from, it’s important that you’re always committed to continuing that education. Reading one PPC guide won’t do the trick. Instead, you need to seek out more resources, ask tough questions and seek out the answers yourself.

You’ll always be learning new and exciting things about PPC!