A common question that a lot of business owners ask is if they should be running a pay per click campaign alongside their current SEO one. SEO and PPC may share a similar goal, but their life span and methods that they involve differ greatly from one another.
Both campaigns have their own set of merits and drawbacks so it is important that you know what your end game is to plan appropriately.
Below we are going to explore PPC and how it can work in conjunction with SEO.
What is PPC?
If you’ve just wrapped your head around what SEO is you may be upset to hear that there is also another digital marketing effort that you can apply to your website. Pay Per Click, or PPC, refers to paid ads where you pay an amount of money for how many clicks you get. These ads are the sponsored results that generally appear at either the top or the bottom of the results page when you are searching for something.
Each search engine has their own variant of pay per click ads as they get money for hosting ads. Google’s variant goes by AdWords where Bing has Bing ads. These tools are an effective way to get a boost to your website traffic over a short period of time.
How does it work?
To wrap your head around this concept an easy to understand analogy of it is to picture a stock market. Instead of shares you have search terms (or keywords) that go up and down in price depending upon their popularity. These terms will have an amount of money that is required to be paid each time someone clicks on your link. Keywords that are more popular and have higher competition require you to pay more as there are more people trying to bid on that particular search term.
While you can make an offer to pay lower for the high priority keywords, your ad won’t appear at the top or even on the first page for that matter. This ultimately defeats the purpose of the ad as you want it to be seen.
Do I need it?
Many experts and tech savy gurus claim that there is no direct correlation with PPC impacting SEO however that doesn’t mean it can’t help you. As mentioned previously, PPC is very good in giving your website a boost in traffic over a short period of time. SEO is a long term campaign that aims at growing your traffic organically. The general rule of thumb with that is it takes about 3 months minimum before you start to see any real results shine through.
If you have an upcoming event or simply want people to see a specific landing page more, PPC is great in that regard. You can pay a flat amount of money to get so many visitors to your website to see what you need them to see.
How to get started
While it is possible to start your own pay per click campaign it is advised that you call in an expert if you are planning on investing a lot of money into it. Digital marketing agencies have the industry experience and expertise to run these campaigns effectively and efficiently.
You may think that the job is done once the campaign has started and your budget has been set. That unfortunately is never the case. These campaigns need to be constantly optimised and checked to ensure that you are getting the best results from your keyword bids and budget.
Charlotte is a digital marketing and communications practitioner working in our Sydney office. She takes on a range of roles relating to SEO and has a keen interest in studying the SEO industry and its future direction, particularly in relation to content marketing. Charlotte takes her writing very seriously and always seeks ensure the content she produces is of a high standard of quality.