SEO Step Seven Of Ten: PPC

Welcome to step seven in this ten part SEO series. The ten parts of the SEO process we will be covering are:

1. Competitor Analysis
2. Content Optimization
3. Social Media
4. PPC
5. Statistics Analysis
6. Conversion Optimization
7. Keeping It Up The Three PPC Environments

   Before we launch into the tactics that should be applied to a PPC campaign it's important to understand why you're engaging in it. When one reads about a PPC campaign it is natural to think of a Google AdWords campaign geared around making a sale. While this is generally the main use there are definitely other aspects of PPC, the environment you are in will have a massive impact on how you manage your campaign. This will likely make more sense after they are outlined. So let's do that:

   Environment One: For It's Own Merit

   A lot of PPC campaigns are runs purely for the benefits they themselves provide. That is, the goal of the campaign is to produce a lead or sale independent of any organic campaign. The main issues you are going to face with this type of PPC environment involve budget, tracking, conversion and targeting. We will delve further into this shortly.

   Environment Two: Just Testing

   When you're considering launching into a major organic SEO campaign it is sometimes wise to launch a PPC campaign first. When you're conducting your keyword research for your organic campaign you'll get a good idea of the volume of traffic you can expect from each keyword but that doesn't really tell you what you can expect as far as conversions. To give you an idea - I myself learned this lesson the hard way back at the launch of the Beanstalk site. Our primary phrases was "search engine positioning" with "search engine positioning services" as our main secondary phrase. Within about 5 months of the launch of the site we were on the first page for the secondary phrase and it took another four months to get on the first page for our primary. After a month of stats analysis it became very clear - we had just wasted 4 months.

   What we discovered was that even though the phrase "search engine positioning" had many times the traffic of the services phrase - it converted at virtually 0%. The services phrase converted in the double digits (note that we consider a conversion any communications with our company). After watching it for another month it was clear - we needed to adjust our primary phrase.

   Had we launched a PPC campaign first for these phrases we would have discovered in a couple weeks that the non-service based phrases didn't convert and weren't worth targeting for our site. This would have cost us a few hundred dollars and saved us 4 months of work which we could have put into focusing on additional, tested and converting phrases. It would have been well worth the few hundred dollars to gain that time back.

   Environment Three: Tied Together

   There are also those that run PPC campaigns in conjunction with successful organic SEO campaigns. These are companies that want to be found in both sets of results and/or who want to use PPC to target those phrases that they aren't ranking for in the organic results. Again, for people engaged in this type of promotions the metrics and the focus are very different than those running campaigns in a different environment. We will discuss this further below.

   Below

   Welcome to the below. Let's now get into the tactics shall we? Getting to know why you're running the campaign (or maybe becoming aware of some uses of PPC that you might now have thought of) is an important step one but once we're launching into the campaign the steps we need to go through are virtually the same - it's how we do them that's fundamentally different (in many cases). Now every author needs to note the limitations of their writing. While we're going to be covering the main steps in a PPC campaign, every campaign is different. We're going to cover the main steps but the specifics of your campaign may well stray from points covered directly here. For this reason, at th end of the article I'm also going to include links to some great references where you can learn more and ask questions. PPC campaigns can be expensive and if done wrong - can cost you and your company A LOT of money. It worth taking the time to read the resources and other links provided here.

   Keyword Research

   Just like organic SEO campaigns - PPC campaigns logically begin with keyword research. It is wise to use the keyword tools provided by the engine you are engaging in a campaign with. While all tools have their pros and cons - if you are launching an AdWords campaign with Google - the data provided by Google will be that which they've gathered from their own searchers and thus is far more likely to be more accurate than data gather from any other source. The same can be said for other PPC engines.

   One can also take advantage of their competitors' campaigns. When we're conducting our own keyword research one can sometimes fall prey to the limitations of their own imagination. Looking at what your main competitors' are bidding on and what they're bidding can give you insight into other avenues. Unfortunately calling them up and asking isn't likely to result in great success. Since discovering them during the writing of the first article in the series on keyword research from a primarily organic angle I've been impressed by AdGooroo's free trial