PPC advice from a SEO expert
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PPC advice from a SEO expert

23rd October 2012

There have been written a lot of articles about SEO and PPC synergies, and how PPC can benefit a SEO campaign when it comes to both analytics data, keywords and visibility. But today, I will try another angle. How can a SEO geek bring your PPC campaign to a higher level? Here it goes, PPC advice from a SEO expert…

PPC people get invited to cool Google breakfast meetings all the time. Where Google serve cupcakes and great coffee and present their shiny new products:

I been have working in the SEM industry since 2007, and still I am rarely included in these invitations. For instance a couple of weeks ago, I was not invited to a meeting where Google presented this to the Norwegian market, a pure, organic product (?):

Some search agencies even exclude SEO as a service, and offer PPC only. I don’t understand why. Maybe it is time that we show the value of thinking like a SEO geek? Here`s an SEO geek`s my PPC advice.

Use your SEO friend to create great content

Many SEO geeks are great copywriters. They write user- and search engine friendly copy with great focus, that will make your landing pages convert much better. PPC drive the traffic to the page, SEO make the page convert better.

Also, landing pages with great content will reduce the total cost of your PPC campaign through better quality score and lower price per click. Ask your SEO friend to create optimised content for the landing pages of your PPC campaign, it will give you great results!

Landing page optimisation

SEO people don’t think about content of a landing page as the text between the header and the footer. We think about all elements of a page:

  • URL
  • Title-tag
  • Navigational elements / internal links
  • Headers
  • Body
  • Alternative text in non-textual elements

When Google index a page, they index all the content. Therefore all the content must be optimised. SEO geeks know this and we do it every day! Use your SEO friend to optimise your campaign landing pages!

Keyword research – more than just AdWords!

When a SEO geek do keyword research, she of course use the AdWords Keyword Tool. This is something PPC people and SEO geeks have in common. She also use PPC data from the campaigns to find keywords to use on existing pages, and to find ideas for new content. Some SEO´s even use the adwords ad texts CTR data to get ideas for meta descriptions. But it doesn’t stop there.

Where PPC people can test a lot of keywords for each page and each ad, and even use broad-match and keyword insertion, SEO geeks have to choose a few keywords for each page to focus on. We therefore use lots and lots of other tools to determine what keywords to put our efforts into. We look at trends, we look at the competition, we look at demographics, we try to find gaps between search volume and competition, and we use a lot of time to get to know the customer`s products to be able to choose the very best focus for each page.

The tools we use can greatly benefit a PPC campaign too. Ask your SEO friend to show you some of the SEO tools she use. The insights you get can drive the PPC campaign even further!

Technical insight

Needless to say, an SEO geek very often also have technical insight. Maybe technical difficulties affect your PPC campaign negatively? Maybe the customer did some structural changes, or changes to their code? An SEO geek can help you find out! I recommend at least one quarterly technical report. If possible, let your SEO friend follow up the implementation of the technical changes as well.

Web analytics from a different angle

Web analytics is very often placed under the SEO-umbrella by search agencies. This means that many SEO experts have great insight into web analytics. We can pull data that a PPC campaign could for sure benefit from. In addition to this, we do reports on valuable data that PPC people don`t. For instance, SEO geeks do ranking reports all the time. The organic ranking of a keyword can help you develop the PPC campaign further. Sudden increase of CTR? It might not be the PPC ad that rocks! Maybe a change in the organic ranking is actually the answer to the change? We all know that better organic rankings increase the over all CTR. Or what about competitor analysis, which we also do frequently? Maybe the competitor did some changes and now rank differently? This can for sure affect your customer`s PPC campaign. Ask your SEO friend what reports you should get your head into!

Deep Knowledge of Customer Website

Since a great part of SEO is on-page work on the customer`s website, we like to believe that we know the customer`s website in and out. Maybe we even contributed directly to the website structure, technical solutions or content. Since we know the website so well, we might have great ideas for development of the PPC campaign as well. This could be new keywords, ad groups or ads, maybe a new angle, or a new topic to move the campaign forward?

Take the time at least once a month to sit down with your SEO friend and listen to her ideas. You might be surprised of the type of insights she does have about both customer and web site.

To summarize? Make an SEO geek your friend (and invite us to your cool breakfast-meetings please), and we could potentially take your PPC campaign to a higher level!

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Written By
Agnete Tøien Pedersen is Head of SEO in iProspect Norway and has years of experience within SEM, SEO, web publishing and journalism. She is also chairman of the Board of Ethical SEM in Norway, BraSøk. On a daily basis she is working with customers of all sizes, in Norway, the...
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