What To Know About SEO and PPC

Frequently Asked Questions on Search Engine Optimization and Pay Per Click Campaigns

Why should I pay the search engines for placement when I can do it organically?

Marketing research shows that the most effective way to increase brand recognition, visitor traffic, and sales conversion is to utilize a combination of organic search engine placement and pay per click sponsored advertisements. Pay per click advertisements can help provide immediate visibility for websites undergoing organic search engine optimization that take a much longer time to see visible results.

Pay per click advertisements also give you the ability to reach the top of the search engine result listings for a more competitive keyword phrase that you may not be able to reach through organic SEO efforts. The more competitive keywords are likely to have a very high cost per click, but with a good analytics package you can determine which price points provide you a profitable return on your investment.

In turn, you might ask why then pay the search engines increasingly high prices on a daily basis when I can put some time and effort to building my website and utilize organic search engine optimization strategies. Research shows that will pay per click advertisements do help drive more traffic to your website, visitors still prefer to click on the natural listings first. Showing a presence on multiple areas of the search engine result pages will help you maximize your search engine visibility and draw in the most amount of visitor traffic.

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How do I know what keywords to choose for my campaigns?

Choosing effective keywords can be the difference between making money from your website and watching your marketing dollars go down the drain with no return on your investment. Every search engine optimization and pay per click campaign starts with a strong foundation of keyword research. Don't rely on what you think or expect your target audience to be looking for. Make sure that your SEO firm provides you with a detailed report on the research they did for your site. Every SEO campaign should be customized around the specific keywords for the business, industry, target audience, geography (if applicable) and profit goals. Any search engine marketing firm should be able to give you the results of real-time keyword research that visitors are actually searching for on a monthly basis.

A different set of keywords should be targeted for your organic search engine optimization campaign and your pay per click campaigns. The best way to target appropriate customers is to find niche keyword phrases that don't have a lot of competition, but result in a high sales conversion rate. Targeting single keywords has now become a slowly outdated method. Three, four or more keyword phrases reach a much more specific target audience and are more likely to convert your website visitor to a concrete sale.

The bottom line, be specific with your keyword phrases and do the research to find out how web searchers are really behaving. Don't rely on your intuition about your current customer base or your knowledge of your industry - what web searchers will look for may surprise you.

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How much money do I need to allocate each month towards my PPC campaigns?

You should plan on dedicating a set monthly budget to use for your pay per click campaigns. The amount of money you should spend will vary depending on the size of the website, the industry, and the competitiveness of the keywords you are targeting. Small business owners who are selling a few products and target a very small niche market might spend $75-100/month on pay per click advertising, while mid-size or larger companies can spend upwards of thousands of dollars a month.

Obviously, the more money you dedicate towards your PPC campaigns, the more often your ads are likely to be shown and the higher placement you are likely to reach in competitive areas. It's important to remember, however, than no pay per click campaign should be set up without establishing methods of tracking results, reporting, and conversions rates. It's easy to get caught up in the numbers you see of impressions (visitors seeing your ads) and click throughs (visitors click on your ads and coming to your website), but it's important to remember that your end goal is to not only drive more traffic to your website, but to increase sales.

If you are spending more money on advertising each month with the search engines that money you are bringing in as a result, it's time to reevaluate your goals and strategies. It's important to calculate your ROI on each of your campaigns and keep testing and updating your campaigns until your goals are met.

There are many different ways to define a conversion or goal from a website visitor. Non ecommerce websites (those that do not directly sell products online) may be focusing on increasing brand recognition or number or registered visitors on an informational website. Make sure that you discuss your goals and profit motives with your search engine marketing firm to get the most out of your marketing dollars.

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