PPC Management and SEO should Complement, nor Compete with each Other

There are certain mistakes that everyone makes when they set up their first PPC campaign. Loading up every keyword suggested is the first one. Run a keyword analysis on your website before you write your first ad and look for keywords that are “high traffic” and “low competition”. That means that a lot of folks are searching for those keywords and not a lot of websites are featuring them. Make a list of those keywords that look promising in both areas and then create some ads. Make sure whoever is handling PPC management for the account keeps track of what’s hitting and what’s not so you can make changes in that keyword list periodically.

Once the keyword analysis is done and you have an idea what your ads will say, add some pages to your website to use as landing pages for your new ads. This is where PPC and organic SEO can be used in conjunction with each other. They should complement, not compete. In order for that to happen, your link building campaign should focus on the same keywords that your PPC campaign does. Add even more power to the effort by writing articles and blog posts using them too. The combined use of all your tools to focus on a set of low competition keywords should bring you increased traffic.

Those who do small business SEO have been benefiting from the collapse of big retail that came about as a result of the latest recession. The massive corporations that controlled the power keywords in the retail industry by throwing millions of dollars into PPC are no longer able to do that. Some are out of business and others have changed their strategies. That means that certain keywords can be targeted by ambitious smaller companies. Of course, they’re still expensive, so adding a few more affordable keywords to a PPC campaign might not be a bad idea.

One more, slightly less well-known PPC strategy, is to use long-tail keywords that are specific to your particular company. An example would be, instead of something general like “pet food”, going with “Purina dog food in Los Angeles”. You might get less traffic from something like that, but every hit will be a quality one from a potential customer looking for something specific that you sell. Long-tail keywords also give you better article titles, something that will bring you links and direct traffic.