Cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you pay each time someone clicks your pay-per-click ad.
In Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, CPC is reported as an average, calculated as total ad spend divided by total clicks for the date range you select. You can set a bid (often called a max CPC), but what you actually pay per click can be lower than your bid because auctions charge only what’s needed to beat the next advertiser below you.
If you’re running campaigns in Central Florida, CPC can swing fast, especially in high-competition categories we see in Orlando like cosmetic dentistry, personal injury law, roofing, and pest control. That’s why we treat CPC as a control knob, not a scorecard. For hands-on management or a clean campaign rebuild, our PPC management services are built around lead quality, not just cheaper clicks.
What changes your CPC
CPC is not random. It moves when any of these change:
- Keyword and match type choices (broad terms and “near me” buyer terms often cost more)
- Your ad relevance to the search and the landing page
- Competition and time of day (when more advertisers bid, prices rise)
- Location targeting (tight radius targeting can raise CPC, wide targeting can waste spend)
- Device and audience settings
- Your bidding method (manual CPC vs automated bidding like Maximize Conversions)
How we recommend using CPC in your business
We like CPC for budgeting and early diagnosis, but we do not judge success by CPC alone. A $15 click that turns into a $1,500 case consult is a better deal than a $3 click that never calls. The metric that matters more is cost per lead (and then cost per booked job).
To keep CPC from drifting upward while still getting qualified leads, focus on intent and filtering, not bargain hunting. That usually means tightening keywords, adding negative keywords, improving the landing page message match, and tracking calls and forms correctly.
If you want a simple starting point for keyword selection, our FAQ on what keywords are in SEO explains the concept in plain language, and the same idea applies to paid search.
If you’d like, tell us your industry and the Orlando area you serve, and we can outline what typically pushes CPC up in your niche and what we would adjust first inside the account.
