SEO Training

In the last post I was discussing PPC budgets.  It is easy to think of PPC as the only thing to be included in online marketing budgets, but that is not giving the full picture.  This site is all about SEO training.  Some think of SEO and PPC as being interchangeable.  They are in reality two quite separate topics.

SEO can be seen as a gamble by companies when compared to PPC

I found some stats the other day about budget spends on SEO/SEM(PPC).  The results were quite startling.  In general, over 85% of an online spend is on PPC ads, most notably Google Adwords.  This leaves less than 15% of the budget allocated to SEO.  In this instance, when I refer to SEO I am talking about organic Search Engine Optimisation.

This doesn’t seem like a big deal until you realise that only 14-16% of clicks on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) are actually on the Pay Per Click ads.

Why are so many companies spending such a high proportion of their online marketing budget on something that only yields 14-16% of return?  Why are they not concentrating on trying to get a larger slice of the 85% or so clicks that are coming from “natural” listings?

The truth is that most companies have tried.  However, only some can be successful, because of the limited number of top positions.  For the sake of the argument, let us assume that success is your site appearing on the first page of results.  Let us factor in normal company politics and in particular the accountants. What is going to happen?

Well firstly, somebody, either from Marketing or from IT is going to mention that some work needs to be done on the companies web presence.  Discussion will take place about what needs to be done.  The answer will be “SEO, and we can try some adwords too”.  The accountants will hear, we need to do some “ghrjldjfsdkhf” and we can try some “alkjwonjaef” too.

It needs to be explained.  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.  It’s about getting the website up the ranks of google.  Adwords are online ads, where you only pay for each click – as little as 8 cents.

“OK, how much is SEO? Can’t the IT dept do that?”

Ah, but the truth is they have probably already tried.  They may even have had some success and claimed that it is not possible to do much better because of company size, the level of competition, the sun being in aquarius etc.  Put on the spot the only recourse is to offer that SEO is an expert area that requires dedicated consultants to push the site even further. (quite true really).

“Ok, so how much does a consultant cost?…”

“How much?????? And what results will they give us.”

Here they are going to be told that nobody can actually 100% guarantee results.

Let’s sum up.  You can have a fully budgeted spend on adwords, where you can measure results and ROI with ease, or you can spend what seems like a lot of money on an SEO consultant (compared with 8c per click) and have no guaranteed result.

What has been forgotten is that approximately 85% of your potential clicks are coming from the SEO work… not the adwords campaign.  Further more, once the bulk of your initial SEO work is done, so is the bulk of the expense.  Adwords keep charging as long as you need them.  SEO can be dropped for short periods of time without the same total loss of revenue.

Invest in SEO training and your IT staff can maintain and even improve your rankings on their own without the need for massive ongoing spends.

I am not against PPC.  Budgeting 85% of your online spend on adwords is not actually sound financial sense though.  It is aiming for catching a minnow instead of a tuna fish, and the spend is not exactly different over time either.

If you are spending 85% of your online budget on adwords, then your online marketing budget is wrong!

Pay per click advertising, (the ads that appear at the side of your search results) has really taken off in Ireland.  The internet is still a relatively fresh market place in Ireland.  Indeed some businesses still do not have a website today.  With all new technologies it can be difficult to ascertain what is reasonable budgeting.  What will give a ROI and what will drain the budget resources?

PPC advertising was gaining momentum in Ireland.  However, with the onset of the recession, we saw spends decreasing.  How do we know that spends were decreasing radically?  The bid prices fell dramatically.  So too did adsense revenues.

What is the difference between Google Adwords and Google Adsense?  If you are an advertiser then you are using Adwords.  If you display google ads on your site (like the ones on this site) then you are using adsense.  Every time one of you clicks on an ad on this site I get a few cents.  Pre recession, the revenue from these adsense ads was much higher.

All of this points to a lowered pay per click (ppc) spend.  Interestingly though some companies actually chose to increase their adwords budget.  With reduced competition and lowered costs it made / makes sense.

How much should you budget for with Adwords advertising?

The easiest way to find out is to set a budget that you are comfortable with and then see how far that gets you.  It really depends on how much competition there is for the keywords you are targeting.  The higher the competition, the higher your bid will have to be.  This can sometimes be ludicrously high.  If you are paying $5 – $8 per click then you are wasting a lot of money in my opinion.  I don’t like to ever spend more than $2 per click.  In fact, I am more comfortable around the 50 cents mark.  There are other factors to figure out too, before you spend a fortune on adwords.

How many click throughs are converting to sales?

Your Website really needs to be set up to make money out of visitors you are actually paying for.  If you are getting clicks from your adwords campaign, but are not seeing a boost in revenue then you are doing something wrong.  The landing page needs a call to action.  If it is a single product, give them a big buy button. If it is a shopping site of some kind then get them to register.  If you can get an email address you can give occasional reminders about your site.  Most people visit a site up to 5 times before making a purchase.  Your websites greatest focus should be on converting visitors to sales.  This is true of services too.  If you do not interact with your visitors they will go elsewhere.

Some of you will be thinking that there is no call to action on this site, so what am I talking about?  There is the RSS feed, which is gaining more subscribers every day.  There are also links to my main site sprinkled throughout the blog.  I link from relevant topics to relevant pages on the main site.  In this instance, because the post is about Search Engine Marketing or SEM which is the umbrella term for PPC and related advertising, you will see links like the previous one on PPC.  This helps my SEO and leads to more relevant information.

So, in short, if your conversion rates are low, then you are spending unnecessarily.

Why pay for a professional to do my Adwords advertising for me?

The short answer is that professionals have more experience with Adwords and can actually save you money on your advertising campaign.  Of course you can learn it yourself, but that is taking focus away from the core of your business and it will take you time and money to learn.

You will always retain control over our own Pay Per Click budget in either case.  Online marketing budgets need not only take PPC ads into consideration.  I’ll be discussing Online Marketing budgets further in the next post.

There are some simple guidelines for using adwords.

You could of course hire somebody to manage your adwords campaign for you, or you could use the following advice along with some trial and error fine tuning.

Choose your keywords carefully

I made a mistake when I first discovered adwords.  I used the names of every competitor I could think of as keywords.  The logic was sound… anybody looking for a well known competitor would also see my name and have the option of clicking on it and getting straight through to my site.

It worked for two days.  Then it fell foul of Googles quality guidelines (see Ad content below).

When choosing your keywords pay attention to the following:-

1. The search popularity – how many people search for that term (this is your footfall in shop terms).
2. Keyword competition – The higher the competition the higher the price per click.  It is an auction situation.
3. Other similar keywords.  Sometimes a slightly less obvious keyword can give you a better Return on Investmient (ROI).
4. Keyword suggestion tool.  Put in what you think you should appear for and let google do the rest of the work for you.  Just tick any keywords you want to include!
5. Google Trends.  Google trends is great for analysing actual web trafic.  Usefully you can compare keywords by typing in several comma separated keywords.  This is great for showing keyword search popularity for two similar terms like “butchers” and “butchery”.  Google Trends also shows you results by region so that you can target the keywords that are most relevant to your own country.

Ad Content.

It is really very simple.  Your ad content must relate well to the page content you are linking to.  Your chosen keywords for the ad must also be relevant.  The more relevant everything is the less your starting price per click is.  You could have a keyword with low competition (which would signify a low cost per click) but if the quality of the relationship between keywords, ad content and the landing (target) page on your site is bad then that drives up the price.

If you own a Butchers, then an advert that says “My butchers, Finest meats in Ireland, Order online. Nationwide deliveries, www.myButchers.ie” should point to a page that contains all of those phrases, preferably more than once.  Your keywords must also suit the ad.  Having a keyword of “Shopping” will not fit and will cost you more.

Most of you know exactly what PPC advertising is.

Quickly, For those of you that don’t….

When you type in a search query into google Pay Per Click ads are the small text ads that appear to the right of the search results and sometimes as highlighted search results at the top of the page too.

In Googles system these are called Adwords.  Every time somebody clicks on one of them it costs the advertiser.  Usually this is a nominal amount like 20c, but can be as high as €2 or more depending on how high competition is for that search term.

Why use PPC advertising?

If your website is not ranking well for a search term you wish to be found for (SEO in my case), then Pay per Click advertising offers a way of jumping the queue.  You can appear on page one of google (or yahoo / bing /Ask) simply by paying for the privilege.  You only pay for when your ad is clicked on, so you are only paying for actual traffic to your site.  You can set payment caps on what you spend, so that you don’t blow a years budget in a month.

Why Not to use PPC advertising

It is expensive.  €100 a month will not get you far.  The more popular your links, the more expensive it gets for you to rank well.

Compare that to some SEO training.  SEO training can be expensive too, but the results you get from it are free.  If you are ranking well for your keywords then then Adwords become redundant for those keywords.

Ad blindness is also a factor.  Something in the region of 85% of click on ads are made by just 16% of the internet using populace.  That simply means that most people ignore the ads completely.  84% of us rarely click on pay per click adverts.

When to use Pay Per Click Adverts

1. Your site is starting off and has not yet gained any authority in the search rankings.  If your site is new it takes time to build up your rank.  SEO activities take time – something in the region of 6-12 months in general, depending on how much competition you have for your keywords.
2. One off events.  If you have a concert or other event that is a one off, then SEO is not such a good investment.  It takes too long and you will not need the links once the event is over.  In this case using Adwords (or the other PPC ad systems) makes sense.  In fact, with the exception of using social medial it is about all you can do.