SEO Consult Blog

A little over a decade ago Search Engine Optimization was still in the embryo stage, it did not even have a name yet. Some people happily wandered around the Internet and are excited at the interesting things they could find, while others became increasingly frustrated at wasting time in trying to find what they were looking for.

Now SEO is ‘the’ buzzword on everyone’s lips and over time Pay per click Optimization came along to fight for a piece of this lucrative business that has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry. For the man on the street it can be bewildering when you want to promote your own website as you can easily be drowned under the mountain of conflicting advice thrown to you constantly.

Pay per Click is fast and hot

To understand why PPC and SEO both work, you must understand how they work. Basically you sign up for the service and you pay x-amount every time someone clicks on your site. This is the ‘push’ method; your site is pushed to the top of the search listings, so people see it straight away. This is the ideal way to go if you want to promote your website very fast for a limited time period for you will burn money fast.

The trick is to convert those website hits into paying customers that in turn generate income for you, otherwise you will be paying for thousands of clicks that bring in no money. PPC is excellent if you need to promote a campaign fast, have a promotion that is going to last only for a limited period of time or for those businesses that are seasonal, so they have to get the word out fast, get their customers interested in the minimum of time, thereby generate their own income before the season is over.

Search Engine Optimization the steadily growing tree

Natural Search Engine Optimization is most definitely alive and growing. Going with this means that your ranking depends on the pulling together of certain criteria, the type of website you have, the content of your website and your marketing strategy.

You want your website to appear on the first two pages when someone does a search. Search Engine Optimization works through what is called the ‘pull’ method; people come look for you, you don’t push your product into their faces. Above all, you get this ranking for free. It takes time to build natural SEO, but you lay a solid foundation that will keep on growing in time.

What website owners must remember is that searchers are not stupid, they know sponsored sites involve money and often they mistrust that. They also know that a free ranked website is placed in that spot because for instance Google deemed them worthy of that place and this is something most people can identify with. It is really up to each website owner; do they want to push and go in like a fast burning rocket, or do they want to go in free, build their rating slowly on a strong foundation, in the end it comes down to your circumstances, needs and budget.

With Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the best strategy is always to pick the most generic keywords with the highest traffic volumes and the most expensive cost-per-clicks. All SEO traffic is completely free so you want the keywords that generated tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of searches each day. In some PPC campaigns, you can expect to pay upwards of 20 pound per click — so you can see how SEO can very quickly pay for itself and be very profitable, indeed. It is a good idea to use a good Keyword Tool when you are coming up with keyword ideas and to look at their historical search volumes. The keywords with the most searches are the ones that will really make your Search Engine Optimisation campaign pay.

If your company sells trampolines, for example, your most valuable keyword won’t be “10 foot trampolines” or “trampolines with safety enclosures”, it will be “trampoline” or “trampolines”. You need to be broad and non-specific. You need to be greedy with your SEO keywords and get as many free clicks as you possibly can. You can even put a monetary value on this. Let’s say the average cost per click for the keywords “trampoline” or “trampolines” is one pound for position 2 in the search results and there are 5,000 impressions per day. This would mean that your SEO campaign could be getting you 5,000 pounds worth of free traffic each day and 150,000 pounds worth of free traffic per month.

Of course, an internet marketing effort cannot rely on five or six popular keywords. Search Engine Optimisation should always be supported by a PPC campaign to target the more specific, long-tail searches. These won’t have as many impressions, but that can be good. They won’t spend ridiculous sums of money each day and often the more qualified search terms with 3, 4 or even 5 keywords are more valuable. This is because the search engine user knows precisely what they are looking for and, if you can offer it to them, it is likely to lead a conversion or a sale. Indeed, there has been a lot of debate about what is better SEO or PPC, but the truth is they work better together instead of choosing one or the other. Two other important points worth mentioning: You can cover your entire product catalogue with a PPC campaign (it is unrealistic to SEO tens of thousands of keywords) and at the same time quickly update prices and product information in ad text.

In addition, with the high volume SEO keywords we discussed before, it is good to have a PPC ad in a low, cheaper position on the first page. As before, they support and compliment each other as the user can see two ads from your company in the search results. Doubling your exposure in this manner can make your company look like a major player in the world of search advertising.