Using PPC to Improve Your SEO Efforts

One of the greatest advantages of Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) is that it grants you instant control of your targeting, ads, and landing pages. Try as hard as you want, you will never get instant results out of organic SEO (search engine optimization) efforts. This means that if you have not started using SEO or if your SEO efforts aren’t living up to expectations, PPC can help guide you to the results you are looking for.

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Keep in mind, that even if you are getting a lot of traffic organically, it doesn’t mean your SEO has been successful. If it doesn’t convert your users into customers then that traffic hasn’t done much for you. Below are some easy ways to take what your PPC results are and turn them into revenue from SEO, as well. Don’t know what SEO is?  See our What is SEO Questions page.

• Keywords: Figuring out whether or not you are going after the right keywords in PPC can save you a ton of time and effort in SEO. If you are not already ranking for a term, buying your way onto the first page of Google can help you assess whether or not that keyword is worth targeting organically. If you set up your PPC campaign to track conversions you can tell what percentage of people who visit your site from a keyword actually convert into customers. If a keyword has a lot of search traffic but doesn’t convert, this is a big indicator that this is not a term you want to spend your time on organically. If you have keywords bringing in a lot of traffic and they are not converting, no matter what messaging and offers you try, it is a clear sign not to focus on those terms organically.

• Messaging: Just because a keyword doesn’t convert well right now doesn’t mean it is a bad term. PPC allows you to split test different messaging to see what brings in the highest click-through rate and has the highest conversion percentage. Using PPC to test your ad copy can go a long way to helping you write your metadata for SEO. Knowing what offering is drawing the highest click-through and conversion rates for a keyword in PPC will guide you in writing the meta description and title tag on the organic ranking page. If you are targeting the keywords that bring you the most conversions and getting more clicks for them it will lead to a better return on your investment.

• Landing Pages: One thing that is often overlooked organically is which page is ranking for each keyword. In many cases, the home page is what is ranking for your top keywords. While this is hard to control due to the home page authority compared to your interior pages, it can show you how to direct your SEO efforts to get the right page ranking. At the least, it can show you how to direct people from the home page to a page better interior pages that is designed to convert. If you do happen to have an interior page that ranks for a keyword you can easily adjust your messaging to reflect your landing page to make sure that you are getting as many conversions as possible.

How to use this Information
Obviously how you use this information hinges on your current SEM strategy and whether or not you are currently using SEO or PPC. If you are dealing with a struggling SEO campaign or thinking about starting one, it may be worth it to consider launching a PPC campaign to guide your SEO efforts. If you would like advice on how you can better your SEO or PPC efforts you can always get a free online marketing consultation from Webolutions.