While never seen as fundamentally separate ideas, search engine optimisation and paid search aren’t necessarily considered as being symbiotic concepts. Often resulting in a either/or question for any search engine marketing strategy.
While one requires time and the other money, the methods used in SEO and the results thereof, can be used as valuable data to inform the best course of action for future PPC campaigns.
Keywords Are The Foundation
The success of the various organic keywords related to your site can be viewed through search reports and the like, and can give perspective on your campaign. You can use the data form these reports to decide which keywords to target for your PPC campaign.
If your campaign leads to a landing page, the the most valuable keywords are the organic terms that resulted in that landing page, for expert search engine marketing. Training your paid search marketers to infer keywords from SEO can reduce the operational wastage of a paid advertising campaign.
The Right Traffic
While many believe the key to a good SEO strategy is to increase overall traffic, professional search engine marketing companies know that it’s all about conversion rates. If you attract a visitor to your site who was looking for something else, it’s pointless traffic. It’s all in the keywords. Pick ones that will send you traffic that’d be interested in your content, or at least are more likely to value it.
Obviously, this is even more important with sponsored links, as you’re paying for every person who clicks on that link. Your conversion funnel should be geared towards the idea that every clickthrough is vital. So use don’t use the keywords from the organic keywords that got the most traffic, but the ones that resulted in the most conversions.
User Aimed Content for Landing Page PPC
Search engine marketing, despite what the term would imply, isn’t all about marketing your site to web-spiders but also the people who click on these results. Here are some ideas for your landing page, to optimise on your conversion rate.
* Link to a specific offering or explanatory page rather than your homepage. Homepages can often be too general and might lose their attention.
* Put an actionable item on the page, like a form or sign up sheet.
* Shape all the content around conversion rather than just having rich content.
* Don’t put in too much content, it may confuse the visitor.
* Make sure your landing page doesn’t ask too much from the user too soon. For example, don’t make your form too long and don’t request financial details right off the bat.