Warning: If you are not using PPC to fuel your SEO, you’re doing it wrong.
Before starting PPC Nerds, I worked as both an account manager and senior sales executive at a highly respected search engine marketing agency. During my time there, I realized that very few clients understood the relationship between PPC and SEO. It was almost like PPC and SEO were in a secret competition for marketing dollars. Despite signing dozens of clients to our services over the years, I only remember 2-3 clients ever signing up for both SEO and PPC at the same time.
I did my best to explain it to them, but they either ignored my advice or couldn’t afford both (and started with the wrong one for the wrong reasons). So, what is the relationship between the two you might ask?
Use PPC to identify keywords that drive high a ROI, then do SEO for those keywords and those keywords ONLY!!!!
Holy hell, so many people got this wrong. “Yeah, we heard SEO traffic is free, so we really want to get going.” Oh, really. Do you know what keywords drive a good ROI for your business and website? “Well, we offer this amazing work from home opportunity, so we want to go after “work from home.” Ummmm, yeah. (Forehead, meet wall. Repeatedly.)
SEO and PPC
So many business owners hear about SEO and get excited about the raging rivers of ‘free’ traffic that will come to their website. What they don’t understand is that doing SEO for the wrong keywords is just as bad as paying for ads that don’t work. Except for one major difference…
With PPC, you can turn wasteful keywords on and off with the click of a mouse. With SEO, you’re putting months of effort into getting high rankings only to realize the traffic you’re getting isn’t driving leads or building your sales funnel. So how do you do SEO the right way?
In short, you need to implement a thorough PPC campaign. Accept the fact that you may lose a little money upfront. Ignore your losses and realize approaching SEO this way will set you up for long-term success.
If doing this on your own, you need to: build out an extensive, well-researched keyword list. Structure your campaign tightly. Write provocative ads and test them up against each other to determine high performers. Use highly relevant landing pages and monitor conversions and ROI. Then, once your campaign has stabilized and you have a good idea of what keywords drive leads and sales, start doing SEO.
SEO Mistakes
Approaching SEO any other way is making one of the most fatal mistakes marketers make: assuming. Making assumptions is a highly dangerous practice when it comes to marketing. Even if you are your own target audience, which is unlikely in most markets, people buy for a wide variety of reasons. People also search for a wide variety of keywords on today’s search engines, and the obvious keywords are usually the hardest to rank for (meaning they are the most expensive to rank for).
On top of all this, you’re biased. As business owners, we’re all biased. Our websites and businesses are our babies. Unfortunately, the marketplace doesn’t see things the same way. Unless you are doing extensive research to confirm your assumptions, the way you perceive your business and the way consumers perceive your business could be two totally different things.
Conclusion
I could go on and on about this, but the point should be clear by now. If you’re going into SEO making assumptions about what keywords are going to drive a positive ROI, you’re doing it wrong. Bite the bullet. Test via PPC before going into SEO. Don’t be an amateur.
Targeting keywords any other way could lead to thousands of dollars wasted when you realize those high rankings and rivers of ‘free’ traffic do not in fact drive sales for your business.
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