7 Ways to Better Orchestrate SEO and PPC Campaigns
- February 27, 2009
- by Richard Gregory
1. Know their Strengths and Weaknesses
While paid search is the more responsive and controllable of the search disciplines, it is monetised via an auction model and has seen continued inflationary pressure year on year. Indeed, the slow-down in Google’s s own quarterly earnings is testament to the fact that some sectors have reached the maximum possible CPCs payable by advertisers. By comparison, organic search lacks the monetisation of paid search and therefore delivers similar volumes to paid search activity, at a much lower cost. However, natural search keywords rankings are much less controllable than their paid search equivalents.
2. Be Tactical with PPC
In light of the above, it makes sense to leverage paid search activity for tactical purposes. While organic results can be achieved over days, weeks and months, a PPC ad can be live within minutes and directing potential customers to your online experience. A sophisticated search marketer can add time sensitive promotions, such as a one day special offer, to seize upon tactical opportunities.
3. Protect Your Brand Terms
The easiest terms to rank naturally for are a site owners own brand terms, but sometimes the rest of the search engine results page (SERP) can feature other, less desirable, results. While various reputation management strategies can eventually remove these listings from the natural results, the addition of a paid search listing on a brand term can help “nudge” any negative results below the fold.
4. Rank for Competitor Terms
Once you’ve optimised for you own brand terms, it’s time to be a little more controversial and use PPC ads to get you site in places that SEO cannot often reach – your competitors’ brand terms. Since the adjustment to Google’s trademark policy last year, it is possible to pay a premium to have your Adwords appearing on competitor terms. Search for “moneysupermarket” on Google and you won’t see any competitors in the natural results, but you will see them in the sponsored links.
5. Test Position Strategies
It’s many online marketer’s dream to hold top positions in both natural and organic search, but for some markets, the incremental cost of the number one position in paid search that lower positions might make more sense. There is no “golden rule” (e.g. you should have position 4 for PPC if you have position 1 for SEO) for positioning since, as we have found on numerous occasions, performance will vary from keyword to keyword so test, test, test.
6. Develop Separate Landing Pages
This may sound decidedly un-harmonious but a landing page that generates great SEO rankings for a selection of keywords might not necessarily be ideal for a PPC campaign. Most PPC campaigns are focussed on delivering conversions to landing pages are often more “salesy” while SEO pages need to be more content-rich.
7. Optimise your budget by blending PPC and SEO costs
Combining both reactive paid search with low-cost organic search can dramatically reduce the average cost of acquisition while delivering maximum volume so one should never happen without the other. Whether you use these cost savings to subsidise further market growth or use the savings to maximise profits is you choice.
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robseo
Thank you for this article. It is very helpful article for any new company who want to PPC campaigns for his company.Many tips they get from this article.thanks.