Optimizing your website is one of the main concerns for enthusiastic
online entrepreneurs who have just been assigned their domain name for a site.
Some budding entrepreneurs may not fully understand the importance &
definition of SEO and PPC.
SEO stands for Search Engine
Optimization.
This is the method, technique or internal policies of a website by which
it will attract visitors from various search engines with the help of keywords
related to their products and services.
PPC is short for Pay Per Click.
Websites pay search engines like Google or third-party platforms like
Facebook a fee to strategically place their advertisements in the feeds or
search results of prospects interested in their product or service.
SEO is at its core an organic tactic. It does not interrupt what a
browser is doing to bring information about a business and its offering. While
PPC is the opposite. Pay per Click is inherently intrusive.
It often breaks the current experience of a browser (or in the case of
platforms like YouTube – the viewer) to promote the interests of a business.
Now, platforms that support PPC are constantly striving towards a “native” feel
for their advertisements because this ensures that people are more likely to
engage with them. But the art of native PPC is far from being perfect.
Because of their (apparently) conflicting nature – SEO and PPC are rarely viewed as complements by entrepreneurs and even marketers. In this blog, we will take a look at the pros and cons of SEO only and PPC only approaches, and present a case for using them together.
Advantages of PPC Advertising Campaign
PPC ads are one of the easiest and fastest ways to reach a target audience in large numbers in a relatively short period. You can designate a prescribed amount of your budget towards PPC advertising. Once your assigned limit is reached, your ad will automatically be removed. The best part of PPC is that it is easy to track and measure. You can even target a location-based audience for your ad. PPC works perfectly well in tandem with other marketing techniques. You will also get statistics analyzing the success of your PPC campaign. This way it will be easy to determine exactly how many people you were able to convert into customers using the PPC campaign.
Disadvantages of a PPC Advertising Campaign
Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that the traffic directed to
your website will actually purchase your product. If you do not research your
keyword appropriately, there are chances of getting a large number of negative
reviews. PPC can be quite expensive if your conversion rate is not good.
‘Click fraud’ is a real thing which can be very demotivating and excessively costly for website owners. According to Krystal Farmer from Academist Help, “We were paying for clicks on our PPC campaign which simply weren’t customers. They were hired from the same company we purchased our PPC campaign from, and all our marketing efforts were futile.”
Benefits of a Productive SEO Policy
A successfully applied SEO policy of a website will attract visitors who
search for the designated keyword on the leading search engine page. Every page
on your site should be associated with a central idea or product.
That main idea or product of a particular page should correspond to a
unique keyword for each page. Some pages can have more than one keyword, but
the combination of keywords should be unique to that page alone on your entire
website.
This will make it easier for search engines to classify and categorize your site within the search results each time. It will also become more comfortable for your website to achieve a higher ranking depending on the number of satisfied customers you produce in a certain period.
Drawbacks of a SEO Only Policy
The trouble with relying purely on a good SEO policy is that there are some keywords which have a monstrous number of search results associated with them. There may be nothing wrong with the SEO policy but since there is such immense competition for that keyword, your website seldom or never gets noticed. Make sure you conduct the appropriate keyword research before finalizing on a specific keyword. Another problem is that the meaning of some words changes with time. If you are using outdated terms and phrases, there are chances of not being able to reach your desired audience at all.
Combining PPC and SEO Practices to Achieve Optimal Results
PPC and SEO – both start with keyword research.
Search Engine Optimization is the foundation. Don’t scrimp when building
your content repository. Focus on all keywords and phrases that are important
to you.
Head terms are short keywords – like say “Insurance” or
‘A/B Testing” are notoriously difficult to rank for. But they are evergreen.
They never go out of style. So, create cornerstone content for these
competitive keywords in the form of glossaries that you can keep adding to.
Long tail keywords indicate a strong purchase intent. They signal
prospects who are aware that they have a problem and are actively seeking a
solution. For them you can create landing pages that either provide information
up-front, or segue into lead magnets.
The beauty of PPC is, it can positively impact factors like time on page
and bounce rate. These happen to be
signals search engines like Google use to refine SERPs. With a well-placed
ad that goes to a tightly coupled landing page, you are actually supporting the
organic ranking of that landing page.
Head terms benefit immensely from PPC on channels like Google where
prospects are in the mode of “looking for information” and are more likely to
explore your ads related to content.
Long Tail keywords benefit from ads on platforms like Facebook where the
targeting is sophisticated and you can get top of mind of those who are in the
market for a solution, without the typical “spray and pray” randomness.
If you want to take it a step further, you can leverage the SEO popularity of a piece of content by adding the pixel of your Facebook account to the page and retargeting browsers with awareness-decision-action ad sequences.
Closing Words: Don’t Overlook Website Layout and Design
There is no doubt that SEO practices and a productive PPC policy are
vital to the success of a website, but graphics, layout, and design also play
an essential role. The overall appearance of the website design should be
aesthetically pleasing.
Avoid trying to include more than one main idea on a single webpage. If
there is the use of terms which may be difficult for the reader to understand,
add an option to access definitions easily. It would help to choose an
appealing website format that will remain constant throughout all of the pages.
Let it be known if your website employs the latest SSL/TLS certificates. With time users will get used to the layout and design of the site and your website ranking will increase.
Originally published April 22, 2019 – Updated April 05, 2022
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