As An SEO Consultant I Love PPC
I provide my clients with top notch SEO Consulting. I focus on organic search, but I have found PPC to be a very effective tool for SEO and business in general. PPC can provide an accurate game plan for SEO.
In An SEO Consultant’s View On Keyword Research I discussed different methods of keyword research that I undertake. Always focusing on value, not just traffic. All though traffic is needed to produce value, traffic is not synonymous with value.
One of the best ways to determine the value of a specific keyword is to analyze what traffic the site has. If there is an analytics account with some goals set up your job just got much easier.
Determining SEO and Business Value
What is your SEO or SEM worth? Does it actually yield value for yours or your client’s business. Do you know? I do. I always know. It is the first thing I tell my clients when I meet with them. It goes something like this.
“Hello, good to see you, I don’t know about you, but I am really excited about the increase of XX% in sales your site experienced for April. Blew March out of the water”.
This usually sets the tone for the meeting, because most business owners may have a general idea of how well things are going, but rarely get specific numbers and are usually impressed. I got off track there…let’s continue.
When a CEO hires me as an SEO Consultant for a site that is already launched, I immediately request access to their analytics and PPC accounts. I want to see what’s working and what’s not. If they do not have the proper goal and tunnel configurations set up, I set these up first.
Why? Because a good, solid fact is always better than a good, solid educated guess. After all, isn’t guessing what we do most of the time as SEO Consultants? We look at the market, use keyword tracker and determine what our keyword focuses are. This is an important step in SEO Consulting. But, if you want really solid facts, turn to PPC.
Running PPC to determine SEO keyword focuses
If my client already utilizes PPC, I simply log in, ask for permission to make some changes and start my research that way. If not, I start a PPC campaign with my own keyword focuses.
I use the PPC campaign to decide which keywords produce the most value in terms of:
- Traffic
- Bounce Rate
- Pages Views
- Conversions
Traffic
Although traffic should not be the number one goal of SEO, it should still be achieved. I look through my account and see which keywords are getting the most impressions and click-throughs. Google gives you some general data as to search volume, but using your own impressions and click-through rates is a much more effective way to determine average search volume and estimate top ten organic traffic.
Bounce Rate
Which keywords have the highest bounce rate? These keywords are usually ambiguous. It is not always easy, especially in pop culture, to determine the actual meaning of a phrase. Check out the search results for Private Investigations. Unless you are a fan, it may not be what you would have expected.
I use this data to steer clear of keywords that have high bounce rates. Not only does this help with conversions, it signals to the search engine that your site is a relevant site.
Page Views
I like to determine which keywords produce the most page views. I can see what people are researching and what questions they are asking with this metric. I will usually use this data to draw visitors and links to a site’s blog. I always compare this metric with the following conversion metric to determine if visitors are shopping or researching.
Conversion Rate
All of the above information is very useful in running a successful SEO campaign, but this is by far the most important measurement. What keywords have the highest conversion rates? By targeting keywords that have the highest conversion rates I can create real value for a website.
Instead of waiting to find out what my organic campaign is going to produce in three to six months, I find out what is going to work from PPC before I ever implement my organic strategy.
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Some very useful and insightful tips.
Very refreshing to hear an SEO expert to regard PPC so highly.
Good and useful thoughts.
In my oppinion tho, the conversion Rates from PPC’s are significantly lower than the ones from organic. I believe that a normal not-sponsored page in the SERP is more effective and seems more reliable to the user than a sponsored link would do.
I don’t believe you can rely 100 percent on the result from ppc’s
There is no question that organic conversion rates are better than PPC conversion rates. However, if a page and keyword combination converts well on PPC than it will in organic even better. Good comment.
Definately… Im not saying it’s a bad idea. Not at all. This is a clever and useful post, no doubt, and i’m gonna consider using this method aswell. It might give some good hints.
Great blog, Jason. I’ll stay tuned for more nice stuff.
Sorry for my english(and that i changed my keyword).
I also use ppc to determine if a seo is right for a keyword i call it the money keywords that bring in the bacon. Great stuff.
Thanks for sharing this, I have always used PPC for my commercial sites when the sales would justify the expense on advertising. And I stick with organic results for sites that rely on indirect revenue methods.
This would help me choose the best keywords that would yield best results if I choose to pursue them. Dire Straits example was perfect, I am a fan so I don’t mind
Hi,
PPC is very useful for seo.
But it is costly we can try basic offpage SEO technique in the starting.It is also generate the traffic.
I am glad you like the example, its actually kinda of weird to see Google list 13 search results for a specific search. Its a great way to integrate the searches.
@Leon,
I love bacon
No problem about the keyword
I am glad you enjoy the posts
Very interesting information but still quite useless to me. Am a total novice at all this and tend to leave it to my designer.
Great post thanks for sharing…
Is PPC like ranktracker? havent rly heard of it, gonna do some research for it! looks promising.
Yeah, I agree with you that PPC to be a very effective tool for SEO and business in general.
Me do the PPC and the sales is up
Cool post. I also use PPC for testing for SEO. You can gain good insights into what will work and what will not without investing time and money into developing and marketing a site or extension of the site.
I actually like the second part of the article where you explain all the like traffic,Bounce rate,Page Views, Conversion Rate.I actually don’t understand before your explanation.
Thanks for the post.
I’ve found Market Samurai makes a good keyword research tool. Have you used it?
Hi buddy i wanna learn ppc i don’t have enough knowledge about How to start a best ppc campaign. If someone has depth knowledge about it plz let me know..
Good article. It really gives me an idea about an very effective tool for SEO and business. I should print out a copy of this.
PPC is something that can be beneficial for some sites from which you want to make money, that it i sgood in terms of making money.
thanks.
I would just like to add that if you are new at this, you should put in a small amount for your PPC campaign just to test the waters. This way, you won’t be spending a lot of money while testing. Of course, the drawback would be is that you would have a small sample but if you do it right, you can get numbers from which you can conclude which keywords are converting.
If you find a good keyword that converts, you can put in some more into your PPC campaign and at the same time ramp up your link building efforts for the said keyword.
I love your application ..Thanks For Info.
I agree that PPC stats can point one in the right direction when selecting high converting keyword phrases for SEO efforts. If one does not have access to a client’s PPC accounts to determine which keywords have been converting well, it’s sometimes useful to use the Adwords keyword tool to look at the competition level on a particular keyword. More times than not, there is a strong correlation between conversion rates of keywords and the competition which surrounds them.
@TJ, good point. Seeing what those already entrenched in the market are bidding will give you a good idea about effectiveness.
Nice post…
I also love PPC as an SEO consultant, it takes an average of 10 hours work upfront but once I tap those profitable keywords I spend maybe 30 minutes a week to maintain and manage the campaign.