PPC Agency UK

PPC (pay-per-click) is paid advertising — you bid on keywords and pay Google each time someone clicks your ad. SEO is organic — you earn rankings through content, links and technical work. PPC is instant but stops the moment you turn off the budget. SEO is slower (3–6 months) but compounds and keeps working without ongoing ad spend. Most UK businesses run both: PPC for immediate traffic and seasonal pushes, SEO for long-term authority.

Two costs: ad spend (paid directly to Google, set by you) and management fees. UK agency management typically runs £500–£2,000 per month for retainers, or 10–20% of ad spend for performance-based pricing. Ad spend itself varies wildly by industry — competitive sectors like legal and insurance can see £5–£10 per click, while retail and ecommerce often sit at £0.50–£1.50. We always agree fees in writing before launch.

PPC delivers visibility within hours of launch — your ads can be live and clickable the same day the account is approved. Meaningful conversion data usually takes 2–4 weeks to accumulate, and 6–8 weeks of optimisation before the account is running at its best CPA or ROAS. Unlike SEO, you don't wait months to see if it works.

Quality Score is Google's 1–10 rating of how relevant your ad and landing page are to the keyword. It directly affects how much you pay per click and where your ad appears. Three things drive it: expected click-through rate, ad relevance (keyword-to-copy match) and landing page experience (relevance + speed). A Quality Score of 7+ can cut your CPC by 30–50% versus a score of 4 — it's the single biggest lever in any PPC account.

Yes, in almost every case. Sending paid traffic to your homepage wastes the click and hurts Quality Score. A dedicated landing page matches the ad's promise word-for-word, has one clear above-the-fold call to action, loads fast (Core Web Vitals matter), and includes UK trust signals like reviews, phone number and address. Our clients typically see 2–3x conversion rates on dedicated landing pages versus homepage traffic.

They're stronger together. PPC tests which keywords actually convert before you commit content to them in SEO. SEO traffic can be remarketed to with PPC display and YouTube ads. Owning both the paid and organic slot for branded searches blocks competitors from buying your name. We treat them as one channel, not two.

Negative keywords stop your ads showing for irrelevant searches. If you sell premium kitchens and someone searches 'cheap kitchens', a negative keyword on 'cheap' prevents that click — saving you money and lifting your Quality Score. Most underperforming Google Ads accounts we audit have no negative keyword list at all, which means they're paying for searches like 'free', 'jobs', 'wiki' and competitor brands by accident.

Macro conversions (the ones that pay invoices): purchases, form submissions, phone calls, booked demos. Micro conversions (early signals): newsletter sign-ups, video views, time-on-site over 60 seconds, add-to-cart. Both Google Ads conversion tracking and GA4 should be set up, plus a call-tracking number for any UK business that takes phone leads — phone calls are often the highest-value conversion and the easiest to forget to track.

Yes. Google Ads is the core platform we run — Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Display and YouTube — plus Microsoft (Bing) Ads where it makes sense for older UK demographics or B2B audiences. We keep Performance Max campaigns ring-fenced with brand-exclusion lists so they don't cannibalise your organic or branded search.

Always. Your Google Ads account is opened in your name, on your billing, and you keep full admin access. We manage it under MCC (manager) access, which can be revoked any time. There's no lock-in, no proprietary tooling — if you ever change agency, you keep the account, the history, the data and the campaigns.