In the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content has always been considered king. But is it in Pay Per Click (PPC)?
Content is in fact very important in PPC, but other things are equally important. Identifying these can be the key to running a successful campaign, or running a really successful PPC campaign.
What I want to do here is to give you a few tips and tricks we commonly use to find the gaps in most PPC campaigns.
All of the search engines look at conversions to determine the quality of ads and landing pages. They also use a version of their organic ranking algorithm to ‘grade’ the various elements of your campaign – which directly influences your placement and price. So things like the age of a page and the back links to that page are just as important in natural search results as they are in paid search results.
In many markets the big guys dominate and run up the cost of this valuable traffic to a level that most everyone else cannot monetize. So how can you get to the top spots? After all, being in the top three paid results on Google carries certain privileges like syndication across other networks. AOL, for instance, converts twice as much as every other network that uses Google’s top PPC ads in their search results. These are merged into their organic results just like they are on Google.
Now assuming that you are familiar with techniques like day parting, site placement and keyword weighting, what I’d like to show you is how to implement more off-campaign techniques to improve your conversions.
First off, most of the larger bidders (corporate types) employ PPC companies or professionals. Coming from this scenario first-hand and managing millions in PPC budgets I can say that the majority of these people test and create landing pages. Whilst this is a great idea, the fact that they create new pages is a problem. As I mentioned above, the PPC algorithm is a chunk of the organic algorithm, so you should use existing pages and change the content to include CTA’s or call to action elements. Match back link anchor text to the keywords that your PPC uses.
The next tip is to target ‘break out’ terms. These are terms that have drawn new attention. We use three techniques for this: Google Alerts, Google Insights and DomainTools.com.
Google Alerts allow you to tell Google that any time it finds a particular term on a website, news article or other source that you want an email sent or an RSS feed updated. This monitors anything to do with your targeted term and can provide many longtail terms that you can target. Be one of the few that are actually targeting these terms and your bids are cheap and your click through is high. By the time everyone else comes around, you already have the best history and you stay at the top of the results for less than anyone else pays.
The next tip is to get an upgraded account through DomainTools.com. The cost is only a few dollars per month depending on your settings. For example, if we are primarily targeting the gaming market, we monitor new domains for new operators springing up in this arena. DomainTools will let you know newly registered, domain transfers or just about any change that happens.
Upon receipt of this daily report we decide whether to add the domain, the keywords or both. We may even create a completely new adgroup. How many new start-up’s have you seen in the last six months for bingo websites spending mass amounts of money on off-line advertising? (Since trademark infringement has become so loosely regulated or even allowed, this is useful information.)
The third tool that we use for exploiting breakout terms is Google Insights. You may be familiar with Google Trends? Well this is a new and improved version that gives great information. Google Insights allows you to nail-down recent trends much better than Google Trends.
Besides giving regional search levels, top searches, and a host of other features and filters, it gives you Rising Searches – which we call Breakout terms. You may add this to your iGoogle dashboard and see every day if anything has changed or a newcomer is breaking out in your market. The key to this technique is to find the hot keywords and target them quickly. The various paid engines have loosened their grip on trademark infringement so look into it carefully and find out what you can and can’t get away with.
In closing I’ll say that the PPC market is a competitive market, but with a little ‘outside-the-box’ thinking, you can do very well.
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Gary R. Beal has been in the Search Engine Optimization field for 12 years. He attended Ohio State University in the US and holds a Masters Degree in Biometrics and Mathematical Statistics. Gary is currently the MD of Vanguard SEO based in Leeds. He has been instrumental in the development of many SEO and PPC tools as an analyst and consultant. Gary specializes in Search, Pay Per Click, Affiliate Management and Email Marketing and he has worked for many years in lead aggregation for highly competitive industries such as Online Gaming, Banking and Finance, Insurance, Travel and Investments, and primarily specializes in SEO for the gaming industry. You can contact Gary at Gary@VanguardSEO.com .
