Everyone wants to start right in with SEO
But you can’t.
It takes a huge amount of time and resources to get started and off the ground.
Instead of wasting months editing your website and preparing and promoting content around keywords you think will work, we’re going to give you the secret that all successful digital marketers know: you have to start with pay-per-click.
What does pay-per-click have to do with SEO, you say?
We’ll reveal why the smart marketers – like you! – skip SEO and start with paid search.
Use Paid Search (PPC) as a testing ground
- Use PPC ads to limit your budget exposure
- Test out traffic and click through to keywords before you develop an SEP strategy
Decide which keywords to target
Start with your keyword matrix
(if you missed that episode, make sure you listen to episode 3)
Focus on high intent keywords
High intent keywords = those with purchase/or action signals
- “Best all-inclusive vacations for families”
- “Cheapest video camera”
You’re paying for traffic.
Use the platform like the yellow pages
Focus on keywords from pretty far down their purchase path.
High intent keywords will be either
- High traffic (more expensive)
- Low traffic (less expensive)
Exception:
If you have a higher priced product or service and you’re looking to generate leads.
- Those with this goal might send PPC traffic to a content page
- The page should have helpful information and a lead magnet
- Goal = get an email address
- Even if you don’t get an email, you can retarget visitors to your landing page
Set a budget!
Your budget will determine:
- how many ads you can run
- and to how large of a group
- Reduce scale of a high traffic keyword:
You don’t want to lose a bunch of money while you’re testing
Determine the best ad wording & landing pages in a controlled manner
One way to do this = Add a geo-targeted modifier
- Instead of running an ad for “cheapest camera” to all areas of the U.S., limit the ad to only show to users in your city
Otherwise, you could blow through a $2,000 test budget in minutes.
- You can set a budget for each ad group or for the account as a whole
- If you set a shared budget, one high traffic keyword could eat your whole budget.
WE RECOMMEND you set budgets for each ad group
Organize Your AdGroups
Ok, you’ve identified which keywords you want to test first
Use them to build out your Google or Bing AdGroups
AdGroups let you organize your PPC ads and set a target-specific budget.
- Take similar keywords with a similar goal and group them together
Example: An insurance company might offer several kinds of insurance
(personal liability, auto liability, homeowner’s insurance, business property, business liability, etc., etc.)
- Those would be the most likely Ad Group titles
- Under each ad group, there would be a number of related ads.
- For example, in the “Homeowner’s Insurance” ad group you might include ads for the keywords “Cheapest Homeowner’s Insurance” or Best coverage homeowner’s insurance” or “low deductible homeowner’s insurance”
Tip:
If you have a keyword that’s super high traffic
AND you don’t want to limit with modifiers
Put it in its own ad group
You can set a budget for that specific ad
Don’t create an ad group for every ad, though
- Your AdWords account will get impossible to manage very quickly
Sort keywords into their appropriate AdGroups
Pay attention to keyword matching options
- Broad match keywords
Broad match = default Adwords setting
Ads may show on searches that include:
- Misspellings
- Synonyms
- “Related searches”
These are dangerous.
Your ad can show in completely irrelevant searches
EXAMPLE:
Dating sites are targeting keyword:
“find Valentine’s Day date” or “find Valentine’s Day match,”
Broad search match would show their ad for:
- searches looking to confirm the day of the week Valentine’s Day falls on
- those looking for a Valentines matching game for a pre-school class
Pro Tip: Even when you limit your keyword match by choosing something OTHER than broad match, Google will still show your ad to “Close keyword variations”
- Misspellings
- Singular forms
- Plural forms
- Acronyms
- Stemmings (such as floor and flooring)
- Abbreviations
- Accents
For example, if your phrase match keyword is “kid’s scooter,” you’d still want to show your ad when someone searches for “kids scooter” or “kid scooters.”
- Broad match modifier (BMM)
Let’s you define which of your keywords MUST be present for your ad to appear
EXAMPLE:
You sell custom dry erase boards
You’re targeting “dry erase board”
You’d probably want to have “dry erase” be required but board could vary
(to capture traffic from dry erase pen and dry erase calendar but exclude traffic related to board – from board game to cedar plank board)
You Can add Broad Match Modifiers to
- a single word
- multiple words
- or entire phrases
This helps limit your ad to more relevant traffic
- Phrase match
Ad will show to those that type your exact keyword, + a few words before or after BUT no words in between
EXAMPLE:
Your keyword is “tennis shoes”
Your ad will show for
- “red leather tennis shoes,” and “buy tennis shoes on sale”
- but not something like “shoes for tennis.”
Increases likelihood that searchers will find your ad relevant
Ad is likely to have a better Click-Through-RateCTR
BONUS: exact phrase match ads appear in bold in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
- Exact match
An exact match is a more qualified search
Ad is only shown when a searcher types the exact same keyword (or a close variation)
EXAMPLE:
Your keyword is “shoes for men”
Exact match will show that ad to
- shoes for men
- shoes for a man
- men shoes
Will NOT show ad to “red shoes for men” or “buy men shoes”
- Negative match
A broad match or phrase match keyword is likely to generate some irrelevant traffic
Adding a negative match can exclude your ad from showing in certain searches
EXAMPLE:
An optometrist targeting keywords related to eyeglasses may want to add negative keywords for search terms like:
“wine glasses” and “drinking glasses.”
Goal: drive qualified traffic at the lowest cost possible
To do this:
- Start with broad match terms in a limited area to gather data without blowing your budget
- Review search terms that showed your ad.
Which are relevant?
Which are not?
- Use that data to convert your broad match keyword ad into several phrase match & exact match ads
- Ad negative keywords to reduce irrelevant traffic and improve CTR
More relevant ads = lower cost & more qualified traffic
Write your ad copy
- Don’t reinvent the wheel
Look at your close competitor’s ads
Mimic the phrasing
Copy of the ads that appear to be working for them
(from your competitor analysis data)
This will allow you a baseline
- make sure ads you develop over time through tweaking and modifications at least beat the performance of your competitors.
Think all your competitors are idiots?
You should still run similar versions as a control group against your own inventions.
- Include search terms for relevancy
Your ads need to be immediately and obviously relevant to the person that typed the appropriate keywords into search
Consider including the keywords themselves in your ad copy.
If you type “best organic dog food” into Google, the ads specifically include those words.
BONUS: Google highlights the search phrase in the ad
It calls out “here’s what you’re looking for!” to the searcher.
- Dynamic keyword insertion
Use dynamic keyword insertion to put the exact term that searcher types into Google in your ad’s headline or body
Increases apparent relevancy of the ad to the searcher
EXAMPLE:
You sell chocolate.
You want to focus on sales of dark chocolate and sugar-free chocolate
DKI: Insert the code “buy {keyword: chocolate}” into the headline section.
Google will now replace search term “chocolate” with a keyword from your ad group (dark chocolate or sugar-free chocolate)
DKI is also helpful for brands who target long-tail keywords.
Adwords has a 25 character limit on headlines
Long-tail keywords can get cut off.
With DKI, a long search term can be replaced with shorter alternatives.
EXAMPLE:
You’re selling an accounting software
Use dynamic keyword insertion to have a search for “best small office accounting software” show your ad with exactly that headline.
Someone who searches for “best Quicken alternatives for small medical billing office” would see the alternative you set, such as “best Quicken alternatives”
Warning: if you use branded dynamic keywords, your ad can inadvertently appear like you’re intentionally misrepresenting yourself to be a competitor
EXAMPLE:
You are an RV Repair center, “Bob’s Best RV Repair.”
You want your ad to show when people search for your competitor, “Annie’s Awesome RV Repair.”
If you use dynamic keyword insertion, someone searching for “Annie’s Awesome RV Repair location” would see an ad with that (your competitor’s name) for its headline but clicking would take searchers to your landing page.
- Use ad extensions
Call out specific pages on your website that searchers might be interested in
(like location page, reviews, etc)
There are a bunch of search extensions
Extensions give you more real estate on your ad
PRO TIP: Don’t go crazy
If you use them all, Google decides which extension to show
Google decides what it feels will generate you the most traffic/clicks
If you only enable one or two, Google only shows the ones you want
This is a better way to control your message
Landing Page Perfection
Now that you have the perfect ad, you need to decide where to send click traffic
You may be tempted to send traffic to your homepage. Not a good idea.
- Your homepage is designed to talk to everyone at all stages of their buying cycle
- The message is diluted – it likely covers a LOT of information
- The more options you give someone, the less likely they are to convert
- Overwhelmed and easily distracted
- They can click through to anything else on your site & get lost
Instead, create a dedicated landing page. Make sure it:
- Matches the intent of the person clicking the ad
If your ad is focused on “cheapest” or “least expensive,” you know the visitor wants pricing.
If your ad is targeting keywords like “best,” you know the searcher is interested in features
- Limit the distractions
What’s your goal?
To collect email addresses?
Make sure your landing page has an appropriate lead magnet and enticement
To sell a product?
Make sure your landing page sells the product the customer clicked through for.
- Don’t send them to your general product catalog or make them search further – take them exactly to the item they want
- Include appropriate upsells, down sells and cross-sells without pushing the visitor to leave the page
Your landing page should be concise and focused.
Limit paths to anything but your end goal
- Consider using a sales funnel or squeeze page when appropriate
- Use tracking tools like Google Tag Manager to track & retarget landing page visitors
This is particularly important to those looking to generate leads AND
- For those with a product or service that it’s unlikely to generate a sale with a single touch/click
“Marketing Rule of 7” – a new lead needs to see your brand/ad/message at least 7 times before an individual feels ready to commit.
- Make sure you make a version that matches your competitor’s style
You need to A/B test your idea of what you think will work against what your competitor is already doing to gauge success.
You probably don’t need a designer or coder
- Tools such as Click Funnels, Unbounce, and Lead Pages make landing pages design easy, no coder needed.
- It will take you weeks or months to create a series of landing pages with a designer or custom coder
Use a template for fast deployment
- Agile & able to adjust pages in response to your tests & CTR successes.
Many of these landing page generators also let you:
- Easily run A/B tests
- Easily duplicate a page & make minor edits
- Split traffic to a single URL so that ½ goes to the original page and ½ goes to your newly created page
- Make it fairly easy to add tracking pixels for retargeting
Test, Test, Test
Test landing page design, layout, wording for click-through & bounce rate
Paying for traffic makes a lot of sense at this stage in your marketing campaign.
You’re in the data gathering phase. Ultimately pay-per-click lets you identify the highest converting keywords and landing page combinations BEFORE you spend the hundreds of man-hours crafting content and drumming up traffic for SEO.