Using PPC to Supercharge Your SEO Campaigns

Search engine optimization (SEO) is often referred to as a “black art”.

It’s enormously competitive, expensive to implement and, to make matters worse, you constantly compete with notoriously illusive search algorithms.

For that reason, it’s important to eliminate as many variables possible. And pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great way to do it.

Staying On Top of Your Game

Like it or not, PPC ads will always be found at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google makes upwards of $16 billion per year from such advertising, so it’s no surprise it gets pride of place above those organic search rankings you worked so hard for.

Optimizing a page for the search engines means crafting a keyword-focused document, publishing it, building a few backlinks and hoping for the best.

You receive absolutely no traffic until you rank. And when you do get ranked, a search result shift can result in your business finding itself nowhere to be seen.

A PPC ad supplements your first page search result and effectively more than doubles your chances of getting noticed – creating a synergistic effect between your search engine marketing components.

When you consider that keywords in most industries can be purchased for cents on the click, it’s a worthwhile way to invest a little extra marketing spend.

Gathering Data With PPC

Okay, so supplementing organic results with PPC is good for traffic. But what are the other benefits? In a word: data.

Let’s say you determine a longtail keyword with low competition and relatively decent search volume. Naturally, you set up a product page optimized for that keyword.

With SEO, the only way you can test and improve that page is by waiting until you rank and organic traffic is delivered.

However, by setting up a PPC campaign, you can get traffic almost immediately.

That means you can test and optimize the page, tweaking it so that by the time you’re ranked for the longtail keyword, you already know your content is effective.

Refining Your Keywords

Pay per click ads are a great tool to gather user data on effective copy to implement on your SEO marketing campaigns. You can augment your choices of your keywords, meta titles, and meta descriptions to more effective versions.

Let’s consider a landing page for an example.

A landing page optimized for SEO is not the same as one optimized for pure sales and conversions.

Let’s say you target the keyword “local specialized widgets.” Your landing page headline (usually the title tag) must include the full keyword, maybe something like “50% off local specialized widgets.”

Including the so-called “exact match” of your keyword informs the search engine scraper bots the landing page is designed for people searching this phrase.

However, after experimenting with a number of PPC ads, you discover the highest converting phrase is actually “need local widgets today?” Notice how this copy doesn’t include the “local specialized widgets” keyword.

However, with the data in hand, you augment the title tag to include elements of your high-converting PPC ad copy. The end result becomes “need local specialized widgets today?”

Now, you’ve got the exact match keyword in the title, augmented specifically using proven copy from your successful PPC ad. The same principle can be applied to meta descriptions, calls to action and any other part of your copy.

When you’re armed with such data, you’re in a better position to optimize your landing pages for maximum conversions, and not just for what you hope will keep the search engine bots happy.

Conclusions

Google is ever secretive about the specifics its search engine algorithm wants to see when deciding who’s on the front page of the SERPs.

At the end of the day, if everybody knew how it worked, it would be all too easy to exploit the knowledge and gain a front-page position.

Pay per click advertising circumvents the guesswork necessitated by Google’s tightlipped secrecy. It provides you with actionable user data. So, instead of catering to the elusive search engine bots, you’re catering to your target audience in a quantifiable way.

The fact that you’re likely to score a few sales from PPC ads in the process makes it all the better.