Often, sites view SEO and PPC marketing as exclusive marketing techniques. Each marketing method has its advocates. In reality, both have a place in the Internet marketing process. If you intend to pursue a major seo effort, a PPC campaign is a critical early step.
PPC For Testing
Let’s say you have a site offering a service or product in the travel market. You’ve put together a healthy budget and decided to go for broke. Yep, you’re optimizing and trading links in an effort to go after keyword phrases with major traffic and competition. For instance, you’ve decided to have a go at “Europe travel”, which has roughly 400,000 searches each month and major competition for high rankings. You spend two years trading links, adding content and so on. Miracle of miracles, you pop on to the first page of search results. You start shopping for your private jet only to realize a very disturbing thing. You are getting thousands of visits, but few sales. After running calculations, you find the site is converting at 1 in 10,000.
Houston, we have a problem.
A PPC campaign should be used to test your site against keyword phrases before you spend the time and money on an seo campaign. The best platforms to use for your campaign are Google Adwords and Overture. Yes, click fraud is a problem, but less so on these platforms.
After opening accounts and laying a credit card down at the PPC alter, you need to give some thought at to how you will test your keywords. Here’s a hint. The campaign should be designed to test the keyword phrases, not maximize sales. This may sound like a strange statement, but keep in mind the purpose of the campaign. You are determining whether you have picked appropriate keyword phrases for the seo campaign. So, how does it all go wrong?
With both Overture and Adwords, you have the ability to designate the reach of your keyword phrases. Most pick the “broad match” option, which is terrible for testing. With broad match, your advertisements are going to appear for your keyword phrase AND variations of the phrase. Since the ad is appearing on a variety of keyword phrases, the results can give you a false impression of the value of the primary keyword phrase.
Going back to our example, we start a Google Adwords campaign for “Europe travel” and use the default broad match option. After a month, we are happy to find the ads converting at 1 in 70. Having validated the keyword phrase, we set off on the long seo campaign. But are we really sure about the validity of the keyword phrase. Since Google has been known to seriously expand keyword phrases under the broad match option, how do we know that the true keyword phrase isn’t “European travel”? We don’t unless we take a few additional steps.
The first step is to limit the PPC advertisements by bypassing the broad match option. Instead, you want to limit the appearance of the ad only to searches for the exact keyword phrase. In Adwords, this is known as the “exact phrase” match. To designate it, you simply place brackets “[]” around the keyword phrase. Second, you need to track traffic originating from the ads. This can be done using tracking tools on your server or through the tracking options offered by each PPC platform. Regardless of your choice, the resulting data will give a much truer picture of the value of the particular keyword phrases.
Nothing is more aggravating then getting top rankings, but miserable conversions. The only way to beat this problem is to test, test, test. Using PPC campaigns at the outset of an Internet marketing efforts can save you a lot of headaches later on.
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Back Links are Votes
If you are Google how can you tell if a site is legitimate?
Well.... you could look and see how much original content there is in the site and the second could be how many other sites have links to your site.
You may ask, why does Google care about who is linking to my site?
I will attempt an answer.
Google views sites that link to you as "VOTES" for your site and it's content. Think about it... if your site is good, peole will link to it. Make sense? Of course it does.
Think of it this way, if you link to a site, think of it as a minus 1. If a site links to you, think of it as a plus 1. Stay as far on the plus side as possible.
Killer Flow has teams of Link Builders that will create additional back links to your site, creating that surplus of positive "VOTES" for your site.
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Below are what I call
the
“10 Commandments”
for Keywords.
To start with select
“keyword phrases”
NOT keywords. This is
very important. After
all, the keyword itself is
included in the keyword
phrase.
Consider select
different endings for
your keywords, (ing,
ed, s and es).
Rack your brain and
brainstorm with your
friends to come up with
a list of 25 to 50
keywords or keyword
phrases.
Find out what keywords
and keyword phrases
your competitors are
using. Do this by going
to your competitor’s
Web sites and click on
“View” in the top
toolbar and then click
on “Source.” Scroll
down to the “Keywords
Meta Tag” and you will
see the keywords this
competitor thinks are
important. Repeat this
with all of your
important competitors.
Go to http://www.
overture.com. Go to the
"Term Suggestion Tool"
and type in your
keywords and keyword
phrases. (Keep in mind
that Overture groups
singular and plural
words together.)
Words with a count of
300 to 500 are good.
Words with counts of
500 to 1,000 are great
(maybe). It depends on
a term called KEI that
we will talk about later
in this article.
Use Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool at http://www.adwords.
google.com.
The best place to get
help with keywords is http://www.
wordtracker.com. You
can get a lot of free
information here or pay
about $7 and get even
more information. The
reason this site is so
great is that it tells you
how many times a
keyword phrase is
searched for, but it also
tells you how many
other sites are
competing with you for
the keyword or
keyword phrase.
This information is
combined into a term
called a “Keyword
Effectiveness Index” or
KEI. A keyword phrase
with a KEI of 0 to 10
usually should not be
selected. 10 to 100 is
good. 100 to 400 is
great and above 400 is
a gift from heaven.
All of this is explained
completely on the
WordTacker Web site
so I won't repeat it
here. Take time to
read all of the
instructions and
information.
You can only optimize
a page for 2 to 5
keywords or 2 to 3
keyword phrases. Don’t
try to do everything on
your home page.
Decide how many pages
you are going to have
(3 to 5 are the minimum
number of pages for
high search engine
rankings). Then use all
of the above techniques
to come up with your
list of keyword phrases.
After you have selected
your list of keywords
and keyword phrases
another good test to run
is to find out the
keywords that people
are actually spending
their money on. How do
you do this? It’s simple.
Go to http://www.
Amazon.com and
search for book titles
with your selected
keywords or keyword
phrases. Then check to
see how the books
rank in sales for
Amazon. The lower the
number the better.
A number of 5,000
means it is in the top 5% (assuming Amazon has
one million books.
They actually have
many more.). If people
are spending money
buying books (on the
Internet) about your
keywords, it tells me
that you have a good
chance of selling your
goods or services on
the Internet also.
The last point to
consider is how many
times do you use your
keyword phrases on
each page? I have
seen #1 ranking with
a keyword phrase
density of only 0.5%
to over 20%. Google
doesn't like high
keyword densities any
more. A good range
to shoot for now is
about 1% to 2%.
Maybe a little higher,
but not much. Google
may increase this
number in the future,
but for now, keep your
keyword phrase
density low. Google
calls a high keyword
density "over
optimization" and they
can penalize a site
for this.
That means if you have 300 words on your page, you would need to have about 6 to 21 keyword phrases on your page. |
