PPC Interview Questions and Answers for Hiring Executives and Freshers in 2018

Traditional advertising is facing a crisis. This is because the numbers of people reading newspapers or listening to traditional radio stations are diminishing as the former is dying fast. At the same time, huge growth is gracing digital advertising.

Thanks to the changed scenario, Ad spending in radio, newspaper, and TV advertising is decreasing while digital ad spending in search and mobile advertising is going up steeply.

The expanding digital world is bringing more business opportunities. This offers great career chances for recent college graduates to get into search marketing. For that, whether they have taken any course or not, they must go through all these Adwords Interview Questions to have some basic knowledge and idea on the subject.

PPC Sector Jobs

The PPC sector is looking for dynamic, young candidates. Irrespective of the company joining they have the opportunity to work with a great group of people. To tap the career options in paid search marketing field, here we are discussing some PPC interview questions.

PPC managers are running paid ad campaigns to get the highest possible return on investment (ROI). Therefore, candidates seeking this role should have expertise in driving traffic and leads through successful Adwords campaigns. They should be experts in analytics tools and have received digital marketing training in SEO/SEM or AdWords.

1. What do you mean by Adwords?

Adwords are systems designed by Google to assist in marketing product or services in Google search engine and affiliated sites.  It places a text ad that will appear when people search for phrases associated with an offering.

2. Explain how Adwords work?

Adwords work through a bidding system in which the ad with a higher bidding price will appear on top of the Google page.  Adwords works on “pay per click” principle, which means you need to pay only for the amount you bid if someone taps the ad as a result of a web search.

3. Why is Google Adwords strategic in improving traffic?

Unlike traffic that flows from web surfing for information, the traffic via pay per click is clear what they are clicking on and what they want to buy.  So visitors coming through Adwords are more valuable than a million other visitors.

4. Explain what is Ad rank?

Ad rank is your ad position on Google page and is decided by the bid made for that keyword and quality score.

5. Explain how does Ad rank impact Cost-Per-Click?

Ad rank defines the actual cost-per-click that the competitors have to pay when their ads are clicked.  The CPC can be calculated by the following method.

Your Price = The ad rank of the person below you/ your quality score + $0.01

6. What is the procedure of Google auction work?

Each month, billions of auctions happen so that the users find the ads they are looking for.  The search engine processes the request and runs the auction to allocate the ad positions to each advertiser of CPC.

7. What is Google Quality Score?

Google’s quality score determines the benefit and relevance of an ad to the user. It is based on the ad’s CTR, quality of landing page and keyword relevance.  A higher quality score for the keywords will save money and earn better ad ranking.

8. What is an ad group in Google Adwords?

An ad group contains keywords, advertisements, and landing pages.  Google rewards Adword campaigns carrying well-structured ad groups. Make sure that there is no inclusion of all keywords into the single ad group and organize keywords on the basis of themes.

9. Explain what is conversion optimizer in Adwords?

Google Adwords use Conversion Optimizer for manipulation to decide who clicks on the ad.  This maximizes return on investment.

10. Mention some of the Google Adword Ad Extensions?

Different types of ad extensions enhance traffic.  Some of the common Ad extensions in Adwords are

• Sitelinks
• Social Annotations
• Call Extensions
• Seller ratings
• Location Extensions
• Offer Ads
• Mobile app extensions
• Communication Ad
• Image drop down Ad extension
• Review extension

11. How will you increase conversion rates?

By creating ads using match keywords and tightly themed ad groups, it is easy to target users to a campaign and increase conversions.

12. What is the limit for the number of characters for Adwords ad?

• First Description line: 25 characters
• Second Description line: 35 characters
• Destination URL: 1024 characters
• No images permitted in URL

13. What is CTR and how it is calculated?

CTR stands for Click through rate and reveals the number of visitors who visited an ad on the web page. The formula for CTR is==Number of click / Number of impressions X 100

This gives the percentage of customers who viewed an ad.

14. What are the important types of Keywords?

Keywords are classified on the basis of the probability for clicking by visitors. The categories are…

• Research Keywords: Contains one or two words – Tea
• Consideration: Contain two or three words – Green Tea
• Purchase: More than three words – buy loose green tea
• Loyalty: Must be short – Starbucks

15. What are the other options for bidding other than C-P-C?

Beyond CPC other options include CPM (Cost per Thousand Impression) and Cost per Action.

16. Mention some of the automatic bidding strategies?

The different automatic bidding strategies in AdWords are:

Maximise clicks: It is a way of automatically managing a bid to obtain maximum likes as per the budget.

Target search page location: This bid will increase the chance of ad display at the top of the google search page or the 1st search page.

Target out ranking share: This automatic setting of bids will outrank a domain.

Target CPA: This bid will seek to get maximum conversions as per the target CPA.

Enhance CPC: This type automatically adjusts bids to maximize conversions.

17. How will you describe Google Ad API?

Google Ad API is meant for third parties and big tech-savvy advertisers. Here the developers have to build an application to interact with the Google AdWords server.

18. Is there a method to track conversions in Google AdWords?

Conversions are trackable by basic tracking code provided by Adwords by modifying the additional code that is unique to certain platforms.

In view-through conversion window, a person can see his ad but cannot click it. He can also access the search funnels inside tools and analysis to know when customers click will click an ad for the first time and can see an ad before getting converted.

Prepare for Operational PPC Questions

Aspirants for PPC roles must also prepare to answer operational questions like the following ones.

• What are the important metrics that show an online campaign has failed?
• What are the essential features to build an effective PPC landing page? (e.g. CTA, images, tagline)
• If a significant drop is noticed in weekly rankings, what would you check first?