You know you need to increase your online presence in order to grow your business. You know that you need to invest in a good SEO strategy to build your brand and increase traffic to your website. You know that you’d need the help of a backlink checker to rank your website higher. If you’ve done your homework, you also know that SEO is not going to have an immediate ROI, and that you will need to invest a significant amount of time and/or money into your SEO strategy before you start to see benefits.

But you need sales now. Leads now. Traffic yesterday. So you ask yourself, should you pursue PPC advertising instead?

The short answer I normally give clients: yes, we should implement a PPC campaign, but not instead of SEO, social media or other valuable brand building efforts that take time. Pairing a targeted PPC campaign along side your SEO efforts can be a great move for a business looking to see immediate results while at the same time investing in a long term, sustainable organic strategy. Private label SEO services from Web 2.0 Ranker let you pursue and nurture new leads and grow your business.

How PPC Can Compliment SEO

PPC, or Pay Per Click, advertising can complement an organic strategy in many ways. Here are a few of the big ones:

1. Immediate results = more marketing budget to put toward your overall marketing strategy. This can be a big one for a start-up or newer business. You are faced with the catch 22 that you know you need to invest in marketing and SEO to grow your business and drive sales or leads, but you need revenue to support that marketing budget. PPC advertising can deliver fast results, and therefore can be a great way for a business to get some initial traction in the market, and ultimately build some capital to reinvest in a longer term strategy like SEO. Don’t get me wrong, a PPC campaign is going to take some refining through SEO experts (from companies like Home Service Direct), and the longer your PPC company has to optimize the campaigns, the better the results should be. Also, in some markets, the cost per click can be expensive, so it’s critical to identify the terms to bid on which will have the best ROI. But still, many clients that we work with, especially newer businesses, find that a targeted PPC campaign allows them to get the initial exposure and revenue they need to build their marketing budgets overall.

2. PPC lets you test out different markets. Want to test out response for a new product? Are you located in Florida but want to attract leads from NYC? Enter PPC. I love using PPC advertising to help my clients test the efficacy of keywords, product or service offerings, or even expand their local business. PPC allows you the flexibility to gain presence for terms that might not be your main focus, so it is a great way to expand your business beyond what you can achieve with your organic presence. And because you can get a quicker read on the response of certain markets, you can use the insights you gain from your PPC marketing to inform your organic efforts.

3. More presence on page 1 puts your brand “top of mind.” It makes sense that you should bid on terms in your PPC advertising for which you may not yet be ranking organically. However, I often advise clients, if budgets permit, to continue bidding on some top-converting terms in paid search even when they rank well organically. Why? Because having that increased first page presence can subconsciously push the searcher toward your brand, increasing your click through rate on both organic and paid listings. This is even more true when you factor in a well optimized social media presence. Say your website ranks organically #3 for a search term, and your Facebook page #5, and you also have a PPC ad on the side. That’s 3 visual “touch points” for the searcher, and studies (as well as my personal experience) have shown that this additional presence increases your chance of getting that click.

 

PPC advertising, while not necessarily the most sustainable form of online marketing in the long-term, can be a great complement to an overall online marketing strategy and enhance your SEO success. However, a warning: while PPC platforms like Google AdWords make it very easy to set up a campaign with limited knowledge of the platform or PPC advertising experience, the success of your PPC advertising will depend hugely on how well the account is set up and run. I highly recommend contracting a company who is Google AdWords Certified and knows the nuances of the paid search platforms and takes a hands-on, strategic approach to PPC management.

Have you used PPC advertising in conjunction with an organic SEO strategy? What was your experience?

Blog by Webhead Interactive