Greg Ichshenko

Calgary SEO expert and digital marketing specialist,
developing advertising strategies for businesses of all sizes

(403) 308-5949

greg@to-the-top.ca
1509 14 Ave SW, Calgary,
AB T3C 0W4

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    How to Cancel Google Ads

    Three different things hide behind the phrase. Knowing how to cancel Google Ads means first deciding whether you want to pause a campaign for a while, remove a campaign for good, or shut the whole account down. They are not the same action, and picking the wrong one is how people lose data they wanted to keep or keep paying for something they thought was off.

    We have run paid search for Calgary businesses since 2007, and the cancel question lands in our inbox more than you would expect. Usually it arrives in a panic. The ads kept charging after a launch, or a seasonal promotion wrapped up, or someone inherited a business account nobody set up properly. So here is the plain walk-through of the whole process: every option, what it does to your billing, and what happens to your advertising once it is switched off.

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    How to Check Competitors’ Google Ads: Free and Paid Tools

    Knowing how to check competitors google ads usually starts with the wrong expectation: that one magic dashboard exists. It does not. What you get instead is a stack of free tools and a couple of paid ones, each showing a slice. Ads serving right now. The search terms behind them. Roughly how often a rival shows up against you. Stitch those slices together and a working picture appears. SEO Company To-The-TOP! has read these signals for Calgary advertisers since 2007, and the plain version is that the data points a direction, it does not hand you exact figures.

    Worth saying up front: none of this is spying in any real sense. The ads are public. Google publishes them. Your competitors see yours the same way. What separates a useful audit from an afternoon of clicking around is knowing which signal answers which question.

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    How to Find Google Keywords

    The keywords you pick determine which searches find you. Wrong ones mean invisible campaigns, wasted ad spend, pages that never rank. Right ones mean consistent traffic from people already looking for what you sell.

    Here is how to find them.

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    Google Ads Setup and Strategy: How to Start Advertising

    Short version: start a Search campaign, target the queries your customers actually use, write ads that match those queries closely, send traffic to a page that answers what the ad promised, and track which clicks become conversions. That is the whole system. Everything else is optimising within that frame.

    Slightly longer version: Google Ads is an auction-based pay-per-click platform where every search triggers a real-time bid on who shows up and where. The ad you see at the top of a results page is not the highest bidder, it is the highest-ranked combination of bid and Quality Score. Quality Score rewards relevance between keyword, ad, and landing page. Understanding that one mechanic makes every other decision easier. For search marketing in Calgary and beyond, the businesses that get the most from Google Ads are not always the biggest spenders.

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    How to Use Google Keyword Planner

    Google Keyword Planner is free. Runs inside Google Ads. Pulls data directly from Google’s own search index. A Google account is all it requires to access, though full search volume data means adding billing information at some point.

    I have been using it with clients in Calgary and across Canada for years. Here is how the keyword planner tool actually works and what to watch out for.

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    What Is Google Ads and How Does It Work

    Most businesses that call To-The-TOP! about Google Ads have already tried it. Budget went in, the dashboard showed activity, and the revenue picture did not change much. The question is never about what Google Ads is. More often, it is why the campaigns produced clicks without conversions.

    The answer is almost always the same. Clicks are easy to buy. Converting those clicks is not. (more…)

    How Much Does It Cost to Buy Keywords on Google?

    Two to four dollars a click for most keywords. Legal and insurance terms can run past fifty dollars a click, and sometimes well past it. That is the honest range for what it costs to buy keywords on google, though the phrase itself is a little misleading. Nobody hands Google a payment and walks away owning a word.

    What you actually pay for is a click. Pay-per-click, in the shorthand everyone uses. Your ad shows when someone searches your term, and the charge only lands when that person clicks through to your site. No click, no cost. So the real question buried inside how much does it cost to buy keywords is less about a sticker price and more about an auction you enter every single time someone types that query. Worth a step back first on what SEO keywords actually are, since the same terms you bid on are the ones you can also rank for free.

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    Stopping Google Ads: How to Pause, Cancel, and Protect Your Data

    Two different questions get phrased as “how to stop Google Ads.” One comes from users who are tired of seeing ads in search results. The other comes from advertisers who want to pause or shut down the campaigns they are running. This post covers the advertiser side: how to stop Google Ads campaigns you are paying for, what pausing versus canceling actually means, and what happens to your account and data either way.

    For business owners managing campaigns without professional support, knowing where these controls live and what they do is the starting point. The platform is straightforward once its structure makes sense, but the terminology and campaign hierarchy can be confusing the first time through. If you would rather not wrestle with it yourself, you can have us manage your Google Ads instead.

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    What Is Amazon PPC? | Calgary | SEO Company To-The-TOP!

    Sell anything on Amazon and you run into it fast. The organic results push your product down, and paid placements sit right at the top of the page. What is Amazon PPC, then? It is Amazon’s pay-per-click advertising system, the auction that decides which sponsored products show up when a shopper types a query into the search bar.

    PPC stands for pay-per-click. You only pay when someone taps your ad, not when it shows. Sellers bid on keywords, Amazon runs the auction in milliseconds, and the winning ads appear in results and on product pages across the marketplace. Simple in theory. Expensive when the targeting gets set without a plan.

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    How Does Google Ads Work? The Auction, Quality Score, and Ad Rank

    Google Ads is an auction. Every search on Google triggers an instant bidding process behind the results page. Advertisers who have entered keywords matching that query compete to have their ads shown. The winner is not the highest bidder. Position is determined by a combination of bid and quality; that distinction changes every campaign decision you make.

    The auction runs in milliseconds. No human involvement. What you set in advance determines where you appear, whether you appear at all, and what you actually pay. Keywords, bids, ad copy quality, and landing page relevance are the levers. Whether the campaign runs alongside Calgary SEO work or on its own, the same mechanics apply in every market on Google.

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