In 2016 alone, PPC was able to generate almost $35 billion. These numbers have only gone up since then. However, organic traffic accounts for more than half of the search engine traffic. And this has many Singapore business owners asking their SEO consultant which should they invest in: PPC or SEO. Which one will bring in the most profits in the least amount of time? Is one more efficient than the other?
The answer is, there needs to be a balance between the two. You see, if you invest all of your budget and time in PPC, then you won’t experience as much organic growth. And you will most likely have to continue to pay for your customers as time goes along. On the other hand, if you put all of your resources towards SEO you may have to wait quite some time before you actually see the fruits of your labour.
The best thing Singapore business owners can do is use both of these methods simultaneously. If done well, your search engine marketing campaign will be incredibly successful. Here are a few tips that will give your SEO a boost.
The Importance of Running PPC Campaigns
One of the best ways to drive sales and traffic is to use pay per click, or PPC, advertising. Most companies tend to gravitate to it because their listings are shown before all of the organic listings. In most cases, the first thing users see when they search are two things: paid ads and local listings.
Another great advantage to using PPC ads is that it gives you more control over the messaging. You can tell Google and other search engines which site links you would like displayed. This just isn’t the case with organic search listings. With organic listings, users see the title and description, but nothing really compelling.
PPC advertising also gives companies more control over how, when, where, and why their audience sees their ad. They can target their keywords by time of day, their device, location and much more. Organic listings, on the other hand, tend to be more or less a guessing game. Sure, you can target specific keywords, but ultimately you have no control over what you will rank for.
Lastly, PPC usually leads to quick results. You can quickly set up a new campaign and within hours of launching a new ad, you can see a burst of traffic coming to your website. You may be able to quick launch your SEO strategy, but you may not see more traffic for months.
The Importance of Running SEO Campaigns
When you compare how much of website traffic is organic and how much of it is from paid advertising, you will find that organic search wins each and every time. Paid search only makes up a tiny percentage of website traffic. Sure, PPC ads may show up in the listing first but organic search takes most of the clicks.
Another benefit of using SEO is that not only does it tend to get more clicks, but these clicks are free. While PPC requires you to pay every single time someone clicks your ad, whether or not they convert, SEO costs you nothing. The only thing you will be expending is the time and effort that you put towards your content, getting backlinks and monitoring your website.
The only downside is that it takes more time to get to the first page–in some cases months or even years. This is especially true for the newest content. New content is often at the bottom of the search engine listings. Aside from doing your own promotion, it’s really anyone’s guess when people will see it. This is why balance is so important.
1. Reclaim your paid traffic
Before you kick off your PPC campaign, you need to make sure that this traffic is not being eaten up by other channels. Meaning, you need to make sure that Google is recording it correctly. This can be done by filtering out your paid and organic traffic with the help of Google Analytics.
Simply select ‘Aquisition.’ Your direct traffic should on represent the user who type your website’s URL directly into their address bar. If this is not the case, then it’s a signs that your ads are not being recorded properly. Use UTM codes for a quick fix. Put you URL into the Google URL Builder and customise your tags.
UTM tracking can be a little tedious, but it will go a long ways towards helping you decipher between your paid and organic traffic. Once your links have been created, copy your campaign URL and it can be used as your the link in your Adwords. Now you will be able to separate the two sources of traffic.
2. Take up as much SERP real estate as possible
In other words, you need to crowd the search engine results with your brand’s content. You see, less than 10% of searchers ever click past the first page go Google’s search results. And this results in the first page getting over 90% of the traffic. So if you want to get as much traffic as possible, then it just makes sense to take up as much space on the first page as possible. The more listing you have, the more clicks you get.
The best way to do this is to bid on your brand name. In this way, whenever someone clicks on a link they will always be led directly to your website. Not only that but it will increase brand awareness and establish you as authority in your industry. Even though people are more likely to click on your organic search when they see you on the entire page, PPC ads can still further help you to boost your SEO! Your money will be better spent.
3. Leverage SEO Keywords
When it comes to PPC, not all keywords are created equally. Some offer a high rewards. Others lead to zero conversions, even if you’re showing up at the very top of the search engines. What’s worse is that people are still clicking your ads even when they have no intent to buy, which can become quite costly. The best thing to do in this case is to use SEO to your advantage. Instead of purchasing that expensive keywords, find variations of it that you can use to get organic traffic.
Use tools like SEMRush to check the average organic SEO strength and CPC. Once you find a keyword that has too much competition and is very expensive, look for other variations of it. Moz’s Keyword Explorer is a great tool for finding variants. It’s a good idea to identify a few low cost keywords as well, as long as they have potential.
4. Match organic results with PPC ads
Another great way to intertwine your PPC and SEO strategies is to match your organic results content to your PPC ad. Here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter if you have the best ad copy in the world, if a customer is not ready to buy then they are not going to click on it. So what you can do is match the searcher’s intent. For instance, if they are trying to compare different products, then don’t advertise yours in your ad, instead show them a comparison list and include yours in the list.
Conclusion
When it comes to online advertising, people tend to lend to one side of the spectrum more than the other. They either prefer to use PPC or SEO. But the truth is, the only way to get the best result from your online campaign is to mix the two. Each offers benefits that the other does not. And each has weak points that the other does not. These two forms of advertising are better when they are together.
