SEO Vs PPC Basics

Lest we get lost in a mire of confusion and optimization acronyms, let us delve into the basics of the two most commonly used methods for generating search traffic:

Search engine optimization (SEO or organic search) — Basically tweaking content quality, HTML elements, and linking behavior of your website to become more visible to search engines. The main objective is to reach the top spot of search engine results pages (SERPs), as the top results acquire the most traffic from search engine users. SEO heavily relies on keyword research in content strategy for proper traffic targeting. Another crucial facet is link building for improved PageRank – the measure of a website’s authority based on the number and quality of other sites linking to it.

Pay per click (PPC or paid search) — PPC ads are display- (advertisers pay for fixed placements) or bid-based (advertisers outbid each other for placement) ads that appear on high ranking webpages or SERPs. Instead of PageRank, PPC metrics employ a quality score. As advertises pay for the placement, the ads are certain to appear instead of having to compete with other search results as in what happens with SEO. In bid-based PPC such as Google AdWords, however, advertising competition comes from other bidders targeting the same ad keywords.

Both are strategies employed to increase traffic from search engines through keywords and authority or quality. Webpage content drives SERP placement in SEO, while ad bids dictate ad placement in PPC.

Just One or Both?

An evident quandary for the fledgling marketer is which one to invest in: SEO or PPC? SEO can drive as much as 70% of search engine traffic to any website, but its conversion rates are lower compared to PPC traffic, where a well-placed and well–worded ad can convert 1 out of every 2 visitors into sales.

The best approach is to use both, but there may be cases where it is best to focus on one more than another.

SEO Vs PPC: Which and When

It may be rule of thumb to engage in both SEO and PPC to reasonable extents. When deciding in which one to invest more capital into, however, you need to determine if you want to market to a broader audience or to a more specific market.

SEO reaches broad audiences because what search users generally see is content and not sales pitches. You can receive visitors only passively interested in the information you offer in your website as well as people who are eager to purchase online. On the other hand, PPC reaches a more specific audience that is already inclined to engage in ecommerce because what enticed them to follow the ads is a sales pitch.

The debacle on SEO Vs PPC more or less revolves around what search users respond to: SEO traffic responds to content while PPC traffic responds to ads. Keeping this bottom-line in mind, and depending on what you wish to achieve, you can invest more heavily on one over the other.

Google’s Interest-Based Advertising

As early on as 2009, Google was already testing what will eventually be rolled out as the “Interest-based advertising” feature on its Display Network. Officially opened to the public in 2011, interest-based advertising leverages the reach and data-gathering capabilities of Google to ads that are relevant to user interests.

For marketers, the new feature meant wide-scale behavioral targeting based on a user’s past actions like webpages visited and time spent browsing. PPC campaigns finally have the capability to peek in on digital consumer behavior.

Using Behavioral Targeting in Your PPC Campaigns

Google relies on data stored in individual browser cookies to make sure its display ads show only the most relevant ads to the right user. Depending on the nature of the places on the web that a user takes time to visit, Google can conjecture specific demographics that are translated into interest groups.

On the advertiser’s end, you can choose from over 1,000 interest categories or use remarketing tactics to capitalize on interest-based advertising. Remarketing allows you to display more relevant ads and special offers to users who previously visited your webpages.

Some Pitfalls to Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting on PPC has its dangers, such as:

Not Everyone is Opted In — Google’s interest-based advertising feature allows people to opt out. Collecting such behavioral data on the web without permission (i.e. without “opt in” permission) infringes on privacy boundaries.

You Might be Marketing to the Wrong User — In the perfect, modern world, every person has his or her own computer. In the real world, families and friends share devices, and this means you could be advertising to the wrong user.

More Technologically Savvy Users Clear Their Cookies More Often — All the data used for digital behavioral targeting in Internet marketing is in a browser cookie. When the more technologically savvy and data hygiene-inclined users clear their cookies, there goes your behavioral targeting PPC data mine.

Pros and Cons of PPC Behavioral Targeting

Naturally, implementing behavioral targeting on your PPC campaigns on the Google Display Network, or any other network, will have its ups and downs. The foremost advantage and disadvantage of digital behavioral targeting are:

Foremost Advantage: More Specific Advertising to an Already Specific Market — paid search and display placement through PPC already draws in a specific pool of lead traffic, and behavioral targeting enables you to further zoom in on an even more specific market. This translates to better conversion rates and lower cost per sale.

Foremost Disadvantage: Online Behavior is Never Absolute — Like most other personal digital data on the web, you can never be sure about the information in the browser cookie upon which behavioral targeting relies. Users can also always simply opt out if they feel like going banner blind to ads.

Keeping all this in mind, you can try out how behavioral targeting on your PPC efforts work for you and see if you should continue investing more advertising capital into it.

April Announcement, May Implementation

In mid-April, Google announced a few changes regarding exact match and phrase match keyword matching options in its AdWords program. In a nutshell, Google AdWords matches will start to encompass close variants of the keywords you specify, such as misspellings and plural forms, among others. Google is set to implement these changes by mid-May.

In this regard, exact and phrase match will become somewhat similar to the broad match modifier option, and ironically, this means that phrase and exact match will no longer be so exact by default. Google believes the changes to be for the best as they claim it can help both advertisers and users.

The New Exact and Phrase Match

Currently, exact and phrase match options in AdWords are the two most specific keyword targeting options for PPC managers. Phrase match allows advertisers to specify a keyword phrase to target alongside other keywords while exact match offers matching to only the exact same keyword specified. Used in conjunction with broad match and modified broad match, exact and phrase match types provided specific keyword targeting capability that complemented the more general range of broad keyword match types.

So what happens when the changes are implemented? Exact and phrase match types will go beyond what you specify and will include:

• Misspellings, so “cemaric tiles” is a close variant of “ceramic tiles”
• Singular and plural forms, so “dog supply” is a close variant of “dog supplies” and vice versa
• Stemmings, so “roofing” will be associated with “roof”
• Acronyms, so “DIY” will be associated with “Do It Yourself”
• Abbreviations, so “Acad” will become a close variant of “academy”
• Accents, so “Toupée” will be a close variant of “Toupee”

On one hand, the changes to the keyword match types afford more keyword targeting control for instances of user error (misspellings or typos), which is generally positive. On the other hand, it makes exact match look like a stricter modifier for broad match. When the changes roll out and you are dubious about their impact, you can revert to the old mechanics of the exact and phrase keyword match types by delving into your advanced settings and choosing “Do not include close variants” in the keyword matching options.

Where does This Leave PPC Performance?

This development actually leaves PPC performance at a gray area where these changes to keyword match types will affect varied campaigns differently. At one end of the spectrum an advertiser can reach more users with exact matches that go one letter awry. On the other end, advertisers selling items in quantity ONLY would not be thrilled if PPC campaign costs would double because now exact and phrase matches now included singular variations.

While the introduction of close variant hits to the exact and phrase keyword match types may offer more control, it will depend on the PPC campaign and the business behind it if it is worth using.

Second Tier Search Engines

So-called “second tier” as they acquire only a fraction of the search market share that major search engines secure, these search engines offer a variety of advertising opportunities and almost all of them offer PPC. The first and foremost objection with second tier search engines is that they do not handle as much traffic as the leading players in the search industry. But even JUST a BILLION searches every month (which is a single digit percentage of the total search market) is a potentially lucrative consumer base.

Here are 3 of the top second tier search engines and what they can offer in terms of PPC advertising:

7Search — 7Search is a privately owned PPC search engine that has been in operation since 1999. It boasts an extensive network of online businesses that its search feature leverages to connect users to ads. 7Search is one of the most widely used second tier search engines in terms of PPC advertising because of how affordable it is to generate traffic from it. The average Cost per Click (CPC) for 7Search in 2011 was around $0.32, and you need only $25 to setup an advertiser account to take advantage of the over 1.5 billion searches conducted every month.

Ask.com — According to an October 2010 report from ComScore, Ask.com was the 10th most trafficked website, reaching 73 million unique users. Ask.com is a question and answers search site that offers Homepage Takeover and Question of the Day advertising along with Standard ad placements. Average bids are typically around 30% lower than the big 3, though for less expensive keywords its average CPC may be higher than others because of a required minimum CPC and minimum Click Through Rate (CTR) based on past ad performance.

Business.com — A website that aims to bring users and the businesses that matter to them together, business.com is more of an official website than a search engine. Its extensive content and network necessitates a powerful search mechanism, however, that has since become a treasure trove for adept PPC marketers. Aside from PPC, business.com also offers pay per lead and display advertising, as well as premium gird and directory listing. Business.com is evidently best for business to business (B2B) bidders where bids start at $0.40 (with $0.10 increments).

7Search made this list because of the sheer volume of reported cheap traffic it can generate, and also because a good number of advertisers who have used their PPC platform reported being successful at it. Ask.com, while not as big on market share as 7Search, features a natural Q&A format and 3 types of advertising options to take advantage of their search engine’s nature. Finally, Business.com’s structure and goal of bringing the right businesses to users makes it a gold mine for B2B PPC marketers, and a decent second tier search engine to work with if you are only starting to expand you PPC efforts.

Twitter is ideally positioned to become an effective marketing medium because it is not only a social networking site, but also a micro blog. Aside from actively “tweeting” and joining in hashtag conversations though, are there more specific advertising opportunities businesses can use in Twitter?

Twitter Advertising Opportunities: Promoted Tweets and Accounts

In the second quarter of 2010, Twitter launched “Promoted Tweets.” Seen thereafter, a slew of other promoted promotions were rolled out to complement promoted tweets, and they present excellent advertising opportunities to businesses that can use them effectively. Among the most valuable promotions in terms of marketing are probably promoted tweets and promoted accounts.

Regular tweets are promoted when a Twitter user pays for it to be promoted. It will still look and act like a regular tweet, with the exception of a small promoted icon and attribution at the bottom, as well as where the tweet appears. A promoted tweet appears at the top of tweet search results, in search results for promoted trends, in enhanced profile pages, and home timelines (if they are relevant to the user), among others.

In a similar vein, regular accounts are promoted when an account pays for their promotion. What happens thereafter is the account is suggested more heavily to Twitter users in the Who to Follow widget and page, people search results, and the Similar to You widget.

Smaller Business Marketing through Twitter

So what opportunities do the promoted tweets and accounts offer the small business entrepreneur or marketer?

You can look at it like a cross between search optimization (only in Twitter search) and target marketing. When your tweets and accounts get seen first because they are the top search results or because they are suggested to users who may be interested, they your promoted tweets or accounts gain significant visibility. This means the tweets and accounts you promote reach your target audience better, rather than becoming buried under a flood of other tweets or account suggestions in Who to Follow.

How do you Advertise in 140-Character format?

The potential of promoted tweets and accounts, however far-reaching and impactful, can only be truly realized if you can advertise efficiently in 140 characters. This character limit for tweets severely limits sales pitch script and marketing copy, but there is also a silver lining.

There are a few tips and tricks you can use to make sure your short tweets advertise effectively:

• Keywords:  Always include relevant keywords at least 1 to 2 times within your tweet.

• Links:  Place links at the very beginning or near the end of your tweet, where they are more likely to be followed.

• Verbiage:  Your tweet is a sales script in 140 characters. Make use of verbiage that clicks with your target audience.

• #tags:  Never forget relevant and quirky #tags.

• @tags:  Target relevant Twitter accounts through @tags.

Advertising on Twitter, when done effectively, can bring in voluminous targeted traffic and profit. Better yet, even small businesses can launch advertising efforts on Twitter.

What is Yandex?

Yandex is Russia’s leading and most used search engine, which, according to their website, is used by 60.8% of their population. Being the 5th largest search engine in the world, it also appeals to a broader range of uses than just Russian-speaking folk. It also operates in Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

Just how far is Yandex’s reach in the international search market? Compared to Microsoft search engine Bing that reaches 3.4% of global Internet users, according to Alexa, Yandex reaches about 2.8% – that is approximately 56 million uses worldwide. Luckily for advertisers, this extensive potential market can be reached through Yandex’s international PPC and advertising model.

Advertising and International PPC Opportunities through Yandex

Yandex offers display and search ad opportunities. Yandex has a network of about 20 websites and services, the most popular of which serve as the platforms of its display ads service. You can purchase display ad placement on Yandex Home, Mail, Traffic, News, and Market, among others. A placement on these service websites, Yandex claims, can potentially bring in 15.4 million unique views for your ad.

As for international PPC opportunities, there is Yandex Direct, a bid-based PPC system that uses a real-time bidding (RTB) system to allow management of ads. The RTB system is a relatively recent development.

Real-Time Bidding

The RTB system, announced ready for public testing on March 2012, is an advertising model where bids are placed by ad systems who are bidding not for impressions, but for the opportunity to serve ads from their respective advertisers.

The RTB system works every time a user visits a page. The RTB system opens an auction available to participating ad systems and opens the opportunity for them to post an ad on the particular page about to be viewed by a user. The auction is decided when the RTB system chooses the best bid. The winning ad system chooses which ad to place and the ad is displayed on the page being viewed.

Speaking of real time, Yandex also partnered with Twitter in the beginning of this year to allow real time results of tweets to show in their search results pages.

Yandex + Twitter

Twitter has a similar partnership worked out with Bing, where the Microsoft search engine paid $30 million for the deal. In the Yandex-Twitter deal, Twitter will allow Yandex bots to crawl its firehose of public tweets to be able to return relevant tweet results that Yandex believes will empower its search with real time results. On Twitter’s side, they are aiming to deliver Twitter content where their users are “already going.”

With a vast and growing market share, international PPC, a real-time focus on search, and a place in the search engine race, Yandex offers potentially lucrative advertising opportunities for marketers who want to reach an international audience, especially in regions where Google Search is not the top dog.

Quality Score 101

The term Quality Score is used by Google for how they measure the value of bid-based ads. The concept of this metric, however, applies to all pay per click (PPC) ad providers such as Yahoo! and MSN. They might call it differently and use varying methods and factors to calculate it, but it remains a relevant and significant factor.

In a nutshell, Quality Score takes into consideration the keyword you bid on, the ads displayed for that keyword, and the landing page the link directs users to. It is an evaluation of how valuable and relevant all of the above are in a query request through Google Search. Since Quality Score is used to determine such important facets of PPC as ad placement and cost per click (CPC), it literally pays to understand at least its basics.

What about PageRank?

Some people might confuse PageRank with Quality Score – which is understandable. PageRank, however, is an entirely separate, albeit related concept. PageRank is a measure of your website’s authority and significance dictated by the number and quality of the websites linking to it. Quality Score scores the relevance and usefulness of PPC keywords, ads, and landing pages.

Therein lay the major similarity: both assess the quality of a webpage. Quality Score, however, focuses on landing pages and how well they are designed for search users who follow the links to them. On the other hand, PageRank only assesses inbound links and is a direct factor in organic search and not paid search.

Factors that Affect Quality Score

So what factors should you tweak to ensure higher Quality Scores for your ads? Established factors that Google tells us about include:

• Past Click through Rate of Keywords (CTR) – The past CTR performance of a keyword you bid on is used to calculate its Quality Score, given how the weight of user interaction usually indicates how relevant an ad is to a keyword.

• Past CTR of Display URL – Past CTR performance of display URL is also factored in for the same purposes as above.

• Account History – Overall past CTR performance of ds and keywords in your AdWords account. Think of it like a bank credit score.

• Landing Page Quality – The design and usability of your landing page.

• Relevance of Keyword to Ad – Is your targeted keyword a perfect fit for your ad?

• Relevance of Keyword to Search – Just how relevant is your targeted keyword to a search phrase used in a query?

• Geographic Performance – Campaign success in targeted locations.

• Site Performance – Same as above, only for websites.

Aside from these transparent factors, search engines that have PPC campaigns have openly admitted to other factors at work that they would rather not divulge. Rational speculation leads many to believe that such facets as on-site conversion also lend weight to the Quality Score calculation, like a combination of landing page performance and history.

Quality Scores are calculated every time a keyword you bid on is used in a search request, and throughout the day you are shown an aggregate average of your keywords’ Quality Scores.

Google Suggestion Tool

Google’s search suggestion feature is an autocomplete for queries made within Google Search. Your browser performs a similar “autocomplete” function when you type in the beginnings of a URL in your address bar. In the same light, Google suggests search phrases when you start typing into the search box.

Because the Google Suggestion Tool recommends the keyword phrases that are the most used in query requests, you can use this feature to see which variation of your targeted keywords are most popular. You can also check popular long tail versions as well as see your competition for these keyword suggestions.

The Google Suggestion Tool automatically performs its task in full if Google Search Instant is available. Even if it is disabled, the suggestion feature still kicks in, minus the instant search results.

Google Trends

Another nifty and free tool you can use in invaluable keyword research for PPC is Google Trends, accessible via the URL www.google.com/trends.

Google Trends uses a small population of the searches conducted by Google to show keyword trends for words you specify. It basically takes a sample population from Google’s database of searches performed, and displays a visual trend graph that shows you how much a keyword or keyword phrase (which you provide) was used as a search term in a span of a few years. You can input as much as 5 search phrases and the graph will represent all of them – making the tool a handy keyword phrase comparison implement. Better yet, the graph also shows news search result trends if data is available.

Better PPC Keywords?

So, how do Google Suggestion Tool and Google Trends help in your PPC keyword selection woes?

As mentioned earlier, Google’s suggestions are based on the most popularly used search terms. From this information you already have a few tactics you can apply:

1.  Short tail keyword suggestions are hard to target, given their prominence. You would want to avoid bidding on these too much in your paid search efforts.

2.  Long tail keyword suggestions and variations show you different aspects of your more generic targeted keyword. You can tweak your webpages and their content to target some long tail variations that you have yet to target.

3.  You generally have fewer competitors for long tail keywords, so take note of who leads the search results for a particular long tail keyword and you can do some research on competition.

Meanwhile, Google Trends, while not entirely accurate given its statistical nature, does provide a glimpse of how a keyword’s use in search goes up and down in both general search and news. Acquiring analytical data like this can give you an upper hand as it shows you the trends to which you can pattern your keyword bidding.

Google’s own Suggestion Tool and Trends feature can provide great insight into PPC keyword selection in a free, easy to understand manner that can potentially make a huge difference to your paid search campaigns.

What Are Negative Keywords?

If you’ve ever set up a PPC campaign before, you are no doubt aware that you not only provide a list of keywords that will show your article, but that you also give keywords where your article will not be shown. These are called negative keywords.

Most people spend the majority of their time assembling a keyword list where the article will be shown. They nearly ignore the other category. Well, both lists are quite important and can help hone and target the results. In other words, it’s time to pay attention to the negative keywords more to give you the edge.

Why Are They So Important?

When running a PPC campaign, it is important to put the ads in front of the right people and make sure they get enough exposure to make an impact on your sales, leads, traffic, etc. Since this is your desired goal, it makes sense that you will want to use all the resources at your disposal.

There are several reasons why these keywords are so important. The first is that it can help you save money on your PPC ad campaigns by limiting the keywords where the ads show up. Not only that, but they help you get your PPC ads in front of the right people.

What Are Some Tools That Can Help?

If you want to find negative keywords for your PPC campaigns, there are some tools that can help. In other words, there are software programs that help you perform effective research for these kinds of keywords. This automates the whole process.

You can also use regular keyword tools to help you find these keywords. However, in order to use them for this purpose, you will need to completely analyze the data yourself. The benefit of using a tool specifically to generate a negative keyword list is that it does it automatically.

You can also purchase lists that have already been generated by someone else. Let’s say someone ran a particular PPC campaign in the past and is no longer doing it. Or, they just have a business generating keyword lists for PPC. These are all great opportunities for you to buy a list that has already been generated.

When it comes to running a successful PPC campaign, spending time on your negative keyword list is a good move. Not only will it help you save money, but it will help make you PPC campaign more effective by getting the ad in front of the right people. This is a good way to make sure your campaign is successful.

Google distinguishes AdWords Editor for its ease of use when handling large numbers of paid search campaigns. It can handle and make changes to more than one AdWords account and its campaigns, and a swift adjustment can be made to all accounts and campaigns necessary in one command.

How is It Accessed?

The AdWords Editor is free to download from Google. Once downloaded, it behaves like any other application and uses a basic graphical user interface comparable to most Windows system tools. The application is available in two main types: one for Windows and another for Mac, with separate interface commands that perform the same functions.

How can it Help You Manage Your PPC Campaigns on Google?

While AdWords Editor is best used for multiple campaigns or multiple PPC accounts, it can be used by any level of paid search marketer. Its basic functions and integration with Google make it a handy tool for managing wide-scale PPC campaigns. Among its most notable functions that definitely help in managing AdWords campaigns include:

• Uploading changes to your AdWords campaigns instantaneously anytime you want
• Complete control over AdWords campaigns, ad groups, keywords and other facets (add, append, delete)
• Quick implementation of large-scale changes that affect a range of campaigns or accounts
• Viewing and sorting of performance metrics
• Advanced search and edit features

In a nutshell, AdWords Editor provides functions that allow PPC managers to macro- and micro-manage their account and campaigns from one control hub.

What are the major advantages?

Aside from the inherent benefits of the abovementioned basic functions, there are additional features that provide major advantages to anyone who would want to use AdWords. Some of them are:

• Capacity to work offline (and apply changes once you connect to the Internet)
• Adding comments to changes
• Copying and moving items between AdWords accounts, campaigns, and ad groups
• Export capability (take a snapshot of your account)
• Import capability

In summation, the major advantages are:

• Capability to handle several accounts and all their campaigns as well as the ability to perform cross-campaign or –account changes in a quick, efficient manner
• Capability to perform keyword-level to account-level basic to advanced searches and edits
• Capability to instantly apply changes or work offline and implement changes later
• Other useful features that add value to the basic functions

Is It Just for Beginners?

While the AdWords Editor may be rudimentary in features, its use is not limited to beginners. As mentioned earlier, any level of PPC manager can make good use of the application, but beginners would probably have the most to gain by using this free tool before moving on to more complicated ones.

That said, the AdWords Editor is just one of many AdWords-specific tools out there. The best option is to use it in conjunction with other applications that can help with your PPC efforts.