How it works, in a paragraph
You choose phrases (keywords), write adverts, and set a daily budget. When someone types a matching phrase, Google runs an auction among the advertisers bidding on it, weighing bid against advert relevance and landing page quality, and shows the winners above the organic results. You pay only when someone clicks, at a price set by the auction, up to your maximum. Nothing appears in the organic results because of it, and it stops the moment the budget does.
What clicks actually cost
“How much do Google Ads cost” is the commonest question about the platform and the honest answer is: whatever the auction for your phrase settles at. Google publishes average click prices in its Keyword Planner, and the range is wide. In our own market it runs from single figures to over seventy pounds a click, and the table shows the shape.
| Kind of phrase | Typical click price | Cost per enquiry at 1 in 100 / 4 in 100 |
|---|---|---|
| An early cost question a buyer types (“what does X cost”) | Under £10 | Under £1,000 / under £250 |
| A local service search (“your trade + your town”) | £15–£40 | £1,500–£4,000 / £375–£1,000 |
| Agency-service and lead-generation phrases | £70 and up | £7,000+ / £1,750+ |
Source: Google Ads click prices in Cybrial’s own market, read September 2026, given as ranges because the exact phrases and figures are our own research. The last column divides the click price by a 1% and a 4% conversion rate; the 4% is what one client reports after a rebuild, the 1% is what they report before.
The last column is the point of the table. The same click costs four times as much per enquiry on a site converting one in a hundred as on one converting four. Fix the site before you fund the clicks; the conversion guide sets out how.
Setting up a first campaign in an hour
- Create the account at ads.google.com with a business-controlled Google account. When the wizard offers a “Smart campaign”, decline it and switch to expert mode; Smart campaigns hide the controls that stop waste.
- Set up conversion tracking first: a form submission and a phone tap at minimum, via Google Tag Manager or the GA4 link. The GA4 guide on this site walks through it. Without this you cannot tell which phrases produce enquiries and the account optimises for clicks.
- New campaign, goal Leads, type Search. Untick the Display Network and Search Partners. Set the location to the area you actually serve and choose “presence” (people in the area), not “presence or interest”.
- Create one advert group per service. Add five to fifteen buying phrases each, as phrase match or exact match: “driveway cost bolton”, “block paving bury”. Avoid broad match at first; it spends on anything Google thinks is related.
- Add negative keywords immediately: free, jobs, DIY, course, how to, and any towns you do not cover.
- Write two or three adverts per group. Repeat the phrase in the headline, state a price or starting price, name the area, and say what happens when they click. Fill every headline and description slot.
- Send each group to the page that matches it: the driveway group to the driveway page. Never the homepage.
- Set a daily budget you can afford to lose while learning, a manual or “maximise clicks” bid with a cap for the first weeks, and schedule adverts to the hours you answer the phone.
The five default settings that waste money
- Broad match keywords. The default. “Driveway” broad-matched shows your advert for driveway sealant, driveway alarms and driveway repair jobs. Use phrase and exact match until the search terms report shows you what converts.
- “Presence or interest” location targeting. The default. It shows adverts to people anywhere who show interest in your area, including people abroad researching it. Choose “presence”.
- Display Network and Search Partners ticked. The default. Your search advert appears on unrelated websites and apps. Untick both.
- Smart campaigns and automatically applied recommendations. Both hand control to Google’s optimiser, which optimises for its goals as much as yours. Review recommendations manually.
- No negative keywords and no search terms review. The search terms report shows the exact phrases that triggered your advert. Read it weekly for the first two months and add negatives; it is where most wasted spend is found.
Reading the results
Ignore impressions and click-through rate for the first month; they are inputs. Read cost per conversion, by phrase and by advert group, once there are twenty or more conversions to read. Pause phrases that spend without converting, move budget to the ones that do, and compare cost per enquiry with what an enquiry is worth to you. If the phrase converts and the sum works, raise the budget; if the site is the leak, stop and fix the site.
Google Ads is also the best keyword research you will ever do: within weeks it tells you which phrases produce enquiries, not just visits. Those are the phrases to build SEO pages for, so the adverts can eventually be switched off phrase by phrase. The SEO-or-PPC guide sets out that sequence.
