Drive traffic through SEO and PPC
If you want your website to bring you more business and a return on your investment, then it’s vital that you obtain relevant traffic using a careful blend of Search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) advertising.
Far too often we see companies either targetting the wrong keywords or spending too much on Adwords, but it’s always a pleasant surprise when we show new clients how we can save them money as well as increasing traffic to their website.
There are two ways to generate targetted traffic to your site;
- paid traffic from PPC, banners, affiliates
- natural traffic from SEO
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising – make sure you get it right.
Paid traffic from PPC is instant, highly targetted and highly prominent. Your adverts are visible as long as you pay. Stop paying and your adverts disappear.
PPC has the distinct advantage of displaying your advert on the front page of a search engine, precisely when a visitor is searching for your products or services, and you only pay when someone clicks on your advert. Now, whilst this may sound like an easy way to get targetted traffic, the real danger is that if you don’t manage it carefully, then your costs can creep up and up and up. Trust us when we tell you that the number one problem we discover when we speak with the majority of new clients is spending too much money on PPC.
Now, we’re not warning you against PPC advertising, but it’s one of these things that needs to complement SEO, not overtake it completely. Forewarned is forearmed (as they say) and it’s very easy for costs to spiral out of control through lack of expertise.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Non paid listings are known as the organic, natural or free listings and unlike PPC adverts, you don’t have to pay when someone clicks on your listing. The advantage is that unlike PPC adverts, your listing isn’t an on-off switch and they stay there more or less all the time. This is much more desirable than paying for PPC adverts and if you consider this next example, it’s easy to see why.
If you have a free listing on the front page of Google and you get 100 clicks from this per week, then it doesn’t cost you a penny. On the other hand if you didn’t have a free listing on Google and you had to rely on PPC adverts to get those same 100 clicks, at say, £5.00 a click, then it’s going to cost you £500 a week!
When you think of the possible benefits for your website being ranked at the top of Google, it’s easy to see why a free listing is much more attractive than a paid listing. Many companies however, obsess about ranking their home page number one on Google’s free listings, so much so that their efforts are mostly in vain and the rewards are very poor as a result.
Indeed, almost every client that ever comes to us for help makes exactly the same mistake. They target the keywords and keyphrases that they think are best.
The number one starting point for SEO on any website is keyword research. Without it, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. You can’t presume that your visitors are searching on what you think.
For example, if you asked 10 people from the street to sit down in front of your computer and search for a website that sells “blue widgets”, how many do you think would enter the same phrase into Google’s search? The chances are that only one or two would and the rest would enter varying versions of blue widgets. We know this from experience because we’ve done this same test for our selves many times and what you will see are variations on the “blue widgets” phrase such as…
- blue widgets (2 people)
- find me blue widgets
- where can I find blue widgets
- blue widget companies
- blue widget company (2 people)
- companies selling blue widgets
- website selling blue widgets
- blue widgets ebay
So, presuming or guessing what your visitors are searching on can be a waste of your time and resources. If your competitors are doing the same thing then this means your work will be made a lot harder due to the increased competition.
We can make a difference to your online marketing and your bottom line. Contact us to continue.
