In the last lesson, I gave you a run-down on the common “Black Hat” SEO techniques or what we call SEO spam. These techniques are used mostly because they get your website well-ranked, relatively quickly. There is however another way to get excellent search positions very quickly (and 100% legitimately) using a tool called Pay Per Click (or PPC) advertising.
What is Pay Per Click Advertising?
Whenever you search for something on Google, it will return two sets of results (whether you know it or not!).
- Organic results – these are the normal results of the Google search (where your SEO efforts reflect) and are positioned in the middle of the page (the green area below).
- Paid results – these are PPC adverts placed along the top and right-hand side of the page (these are prime positions to feature results – indicated by the orange area below).
Placement Of PPC Adverts
PPC allows you to create an advert that will be displayed whenever someone searches for a particular keyword or phrase. There is no cost to display the advert as such since you only pay when someone clicks your advert. Of course,
PPC is a paid advertising option and as such, does not fall directly under SEO (nor does it in any way affect your organic SEO results). It can however, compliment your SEO endeavors by allowing you to “pay” for difficult keywords, as well as fill the time gap between optimizing your website and getting it well ranked. The biggest benefits of PPC are that:
- Your website does not need to be changed in any way (unlike SEO)
- Setup is quick and easy, and results are noticeable within hours
There are many PPC advertising programs and networks available online, but I will be focusing on Google’s PPC network, called Google Adwords, as this is by far the most popular, targeted, and user-friendly system available for normal advertisers – http://adwords.google.com
How does Google Adwords work?
Although Adwords offers a huge amount of control and customization in terms of how your advertising campaign can be managed, the process can be simplified to the following essentials:
- You choose your desired keywords that you want your advert to appear for
- You create a text advert – similar to a classified (this is limited to a certain number of characters)
- You choose your region to display the adverts (i.e., United States, Canada, South Africa, etc)
- You set a maximum “per click” budget
- You set a daily budget
Your adverts will then be displayed as often as possible (dependant on the budget you’ve set as well as the competition for your chosen keywords). Every time someone clicks your advert, they will be taken through to your website (or page within your website) and you will be billed for the click. This way, you only pay for actual visitors and not the thousands of other by passers.
The cost per click essentially depends on the demand for the keyword used. It is therefore imperative that you perform a keyword research analysis (as for choosing your SEO keywords) before starting any PPC campaign. I once again recommend using the Adwords Keyword Tool for this task.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Using the Keyword Tool, enter your broad keyword and search. Then go to the “Choose columns to display” drop-down menu and select “Show Estimated Avg. CPC”. This will show you the approximate cost per click of each keyword or phrase.
Once you have done this, sort these results by CPC from lowest cost to highest cost. From here, you can select the most cost-effective keywords for your advert instead of wasting big money on the keywords that all of your competitors are paying for. Rather go for a whole lot of cheap, low volume keywords, as opposed to one or two expensive, high volume, high competition keywords.
You can also lower your cost per click be refining how your keywords are matched. For example, do you want your advert to appear only when your keyword is searched for alone (i.e. no other keywords or phrases accompanying it) or do you want it to be displayed when it is searched for as part of a sentence?
Sometimes a keyword can mean something completely different when combined with other words or phrases. Of course this will all be dependent on your industry and product or service. The more specific you are, the lower the cost of the keyword (and more targeted your visitors will be). Play around with this to see what works for you.
Once you’ve decided on your keywords, it’s time to write your advert. Standard copywriting rules apply here:
- Write an attractive advert that stands out (Try differentiate from competition using the same keyword)
- Be clear and concise (to avoid unqualified prospects from clicking on your ad)
- List the benefits of your product or service
- Include a telephone number if you wish (this will minimize the number of people actually clicking, thus saving you costs) and ensure that there is a call to action.
Make sure that the advert takes them to a relevant page on your website. So many advertisers miss this point – if a customer lands on your home page and still has to try find what they are looking for, chances are that they will leave your website (despite you having already paid for their click). Send visitors directly to a sales or informational page which they can act on – don’t expect them to browse around your website looking for information.
PPC advertising is to a large degree, a process of testing, trial and error. There are numerous factors which will influence the success of a campaign – all of which need to be tested and tweaked over time. As mentioned in the beginning of the lesson – PPC cannot replace SEO, and is at best a complementary system. Very simply, you can view PPC as the cherry on top!
If you have the budget to try out a PPC campaign, I would recommend doing so. If not, don’t worry about it – rather put the effort into SEO. Remember, as long as a PPC campaign is running, it will cost you money – whereas SEO, once implemented correctly, will never cost you a cent.
PPC vs. SEO
As you can see above, PPC has some great benefits over SEO, such as quick setup time, immediate results, and minimal on-site adjustments. But it is important to realize that the two (PPC and SEO) need to work together to get the most out of your internet marketing plan. It is estimated the PPC adverts only get about 25% of the total clicks, and as such, you cannot rely solely on PPC (even if you have the budget!).
Below is a focus heat map which shows which areas people focus on when presented with a results page in Google.
Notice how much focus is placed on the top 3-5 organic results, and how little is focused on the PPC results (right hand side). Also notice the clicks (represented by purple crosses).
Focus Heatmap Of Google Results
Of course, the focus and click levels are different for each and every search, and depend on the quality of the natural results, whether there are local mapped results for the particular search, etc, but this is simply to prove the point that you cannot rely solely on any PPC program.
There must be a complementary relationship between SEO and PPC.
Free eBook Download
As an added extra to this lesson, I also have a free eBook download for you – Brad Callen’s “Adwords Made Easy”. If this lesson has left you feeling confused, or if you want to learn how to really harness the power of Google Adwords, download this eBook – it’s completely free:
http://www.seobasicscourse.com/pdfs/ebooks/AWMadeEasy.pdf
In the next lesson, we look at analytics – the art of refining and tweaking your website to get maximum results and conversions. Remember to post any questions you have below!
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