5 Tips for Integrating PPC and SEO

Posted on | June 23, 2008 | Comments Off

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are both effective strategies for promoting a web site, and either method is used by some companies as their sole marketing tool. However, the best results may be obtained when businesses combine PPC and SEO, while integrating the benefits of both strategies. Here are some tips on integrating SEO and PPC advertising.

1. Use your PPC statistics to determine which search keywords are effective and popular, then target these keywords with SEO. Additionally, a more sophisticated tracking system can enable you to determine which keywords (and titles, descriptions) produce more sales, registrations, or other desirable actions by the user. It is much easier and faster to experiment with different keywords by using pay-per-click listings than it is with SEO.

2. Consider designing separate pages for PPC and SEO promotion, with the pay-per-click pages targeted to people who are in more of a hurry (and click one of the first search results they see). For example, a page promoted with PPC could offer a more expensive product which includes free Priority Mail shipping and several accessories, while another page would advertise a less costly item that allows users to choose the shipping and accessories at additional cost.

3. After an SEO campaign, determine which search engines your web site’s non-paid listings are ranking most poorly on. Then purchase pay-per-click advertising on these engines. Integrating them in this manner will prevent you from obtaining redundant, duplicate listings on the same pages. If you do pay for a PPC listing which appears on the same page as a non-paid search result for your site, use separate titles and descriptions so that both listings appeal to different types of people.

4. If you don’t do your own web site promotional work, consider using a marketing firm which offers both PPC management and SEO services, and has skill at integrating them. This should also eliminate the extra cost in time needed to find and communicate with two or more firms. If the firm’s web site doesn’t mention integrating PPC and SEO, you could ask them about this before requesting their services.

5. Another way of integrating SEO and PPC is to transition from primarily pay-per-click advertising during the first year of your web site’s existence to mostly SEO based promotion in subsequent years. Use PPC to build up your site’s popularity (hopefully resulting in more inbound links) and identify the best keywords, while working to improve its search engine optimization at the same time.

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