PPC (Pay-Per-Click)
An advertising model where you pay only when someone clicks your ad — the pricing mechanism behind search and social ad auctions.
PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, is an advertising pricing model: instead of paying for how many people see your ad, you pay a fee each time someone actually clicks it. It is the billing mechanism that powers search ads (Google Ads), most social ads, and display networks, where advertisers bid in a real-time auction for each impression.
PPC and SEO are complementary, not interchangeable. PPC gives you immediate placement and precise control — you choose the exact queries, budget, and landing pages, and you can turn it on or off in an afternoon — but you rent that traffic and it disappears when spending stops. SEO is slower and less controllable but builds an asset that keeps returning traffic for free. A common, healthy pattern is to use PPC to validate which keywords actually convert, then invest in SEO to own those terms organically over the long run.
Related terms
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing) — The umbrella for getting visibility on search engines — historically both paid ads and organic SEO, though today it usually means the paid side.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — The practice of earning more relevant traffic from search engines by making a site easier to crawl, index, understand and trust.