SEO, PPC or Both?
One of the questions we get asked most frequently by prospective clients is, ‘Should I go for PPC or SEO?’ It’s a fair question, though I think it kind of misses the point. As I always point out to new clients, PPC and SEO should not be viewed as separate entities, rather as different parts of the same strategy.
Yeah I know, we would say that, wouldn’t we? We sell SEO and PPC. Yes that’s true, a client signing up for a full service solution rather than just one branch is Christmas morning for us, but it goes further than that. SEO optimisation can be much more effective if we have a working adwords account already in place and, vice versa, the data from an SEO campaign can inform your choices when it comes to PPC campaign management.
The benefits of combining the two are clear to see – if you appear at the very top of the page in the adverts section, and again at the top of the natural search listings then you double your chances of a click by reaching both the less internet savvy people who don’t know the difference between sponsored and natural listings and the more capable types who always bypass the top three paid results.
But what about the relationship between the two? Well, as anyone who has ever attempted to manage an SEO account will tell you, the initial stages of the process can be the hardest, as you try to research the best keywords to optimise for with only keyword tools to go on, the findings of which can be unreliable. This stage also worries people as mistakes made here are difficult to roll back and can affect the whole account for a long time to come.
Having a PPC account already running completely takes the hassle out of the beginning stages of an SEO programme, as you already know exactly which keywords are going to gather the most clicks, from the PPC data. Another thing you can tell with PPC data is which keywords are actually converting. It’s all very well and good having hundreds of people access your site via a specific keyword, though if that keyword isn’t converting what good is that traffic, really?
It’s not only click data that can be used either, things like AdWords quality scores are also useful to know as they tell you how relevant Google thinks keywords are to your site. As we all know, Google wants relevant results in the natural search listings and rewards people using keywords relevant to their sites, therefore, maybe it’s a good idea therefore to push those keywords harder.
So, you see, far from being a competing service to PPC, SEO is in fact its logical extension and anyone with an established PPC account should definitely think about extending into the world of SEO.
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