Search Engine Marketing Campaign – SEO and PPC Compliment Each Other
Posted by:
Barry Byers on October 20th, 2008
In Internet Marketing
On Friday, I was reminded of the importance of including search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click advertising (PPC) in your search engine marketing campaign.
One of our clients wanted to promote a new product on their website as soon as possible. In this case, we set up a Google Adwords account specifically for the new product and added a landing page focused on the new product to their website. This morning, the ad is up and running and driving new business to our client’s website. Immediate gratification.
On the flip side, same client, we noticed that PPC leads generated by a different product were eating up both the advertising budget and the sales staff time while providing less than optimal traffic. We researched the traffic through split testing ads and landing pages. The results were consistent with each strategy.
We concluded that the traffic we received for the given product would inherently include a large percentage of consumer traffic when we were looking for business to business traffic. We still wanted the traffic but it didn’t make sense to pay for it. In this case, we settled for the traffic we were receiving through search engine optimization.
In this case, we used PPC to meet immediate goals and SEO to meet long term goals.
I often find that utilizing PPC for immediate results are a great way to supplement traffic while waiting for the full effects of SEO efforts to kick in.
I am thinking that, if the PPC campaigns are managed properly, it will likely speed up the SEO process. If Google sees incoming traffic, low bounce rates and buzz (organic links) generated through the succesful PPC campaign, it should help move things along, right?
Hi DMA, Your comments are right on the money. A focused PPC campaign will lead to faster results from your SEO campaign.
In fact, we advise clients to run a pay per click (PPC) campaign before getting started with their search engine optimization(SEO)campaign.
By running a PPC campaign first, you will generate an effective list of keywords that are actually converting into sales, not just driving traffic to your website.