Danny states “The downside to PPC is that it cost a lot of money as compared to traditional SEO.”  This is a total misnomer.   In my experience SEO costs can be far higher than that of PPC.  Yes PPC takes a outlay of cash to pay for clicks but SEO takes TIME.   

He goes on to say, “With SEO it has a slower start-up. So, in fact, SEO can take a long time to start working. But it is essentially free.” SEO takes time and a large amount of sweat equity thatis used to create, maintain and implement SEO strategies over the long term.  That time costs money too and can be a huge chunk when added up over time.  That isn’t even thinking about development costs that can be incurred or third party agency or consultants that one might utilize for recommendations. 

SEO can actually benefit from PPC testing, analytics, and reporting.  By testing different landing pages for keyword conversion in PPC you can optimize that same page for SEO purposes.  And yes utilizing SEO best practices for content will improve the quality score of keywords used for PPC therefore aiding in PPC placement and conversions. 

So yes I agree share the research and work together to build a better branded, optimized and converting search marketing program.   By utilizing both channels you can compliment each other’s programs and reach more traffic. 

PPCers are NOT big dum-dum heads…they are the pioneers who push the limits and build a brand in a way that SEO can’t.

Meanwhile in reality with each improvement to Google’s search system SEO becomes even MORE important!  Google Instant is no different.  It benefits searchers by bringing up relevant sites for a term before the user finishes typing.  This to me just speaks ‘Challenge’ and I love it.  A challenge to make sure that when the first few letters of a keyword or parts of a key term are written that my site will come up in those results.

I can see challenges for both SEO and Paid search for Google in the future.  As sites try to improve their SERPs to do better in the new Google Instant world so will Paid Search advertising costs go up as site owners scramble to utilize Google Adwords for better placement during SEO development.  This will drive up costs and well Google will become the winner.

But this isn’t this really a Google Adwords issue? There are editorial guidelines in place to keep things like this from happening so why weren’t they being enforced? If the guidelines were being enforced as rigorously as they were in the past these ads never would have made it ‘Live’ on the search listings.

When an ad is built in the Google Adwords system there is a short period of time where the editorial process takes place to make sure the ad meets the standards. This used to take a hours or even a full day, now it takes minutes and the ads aren’t always as scrupulously watched as they were when it was actual humans looking at the ads every day.

Back years ago you couldn’t use a brand key term anywhere in your keywords or Ads unless it was your actual brand. But that standard was removed to make it more ‘competitive’ but it looks like unscrupulous and unethical companies are seeing how they can exploit this now. Is it time for Google Adwords to bring back their more stringent editorial guidelines and start enforcing them again?

To protect not only the Google users but also the Google Brand. So many see Google as a ‘trusted’ source and when things like this pop up it takes away that trust. Maybe the staff at Google needs to read “Trust Agents”….psst Chris can you spare some copies for them??

Serious bloopers include:

• Sending users to an error page
• Sending users to the home page
• Sending users to a page that has nothing to do with the product or service in the Ad.
• Ad info not matching the landing page information
• No calls to action
• Making users ‘search’ or click too many times to get to the item or service in the Ad.
• Ad text mentions a promotion that does not appear on the landing page.
• Information overload – Too much information without a call to action.

In the example below I found that the top 3 ads on this page were not going to relevant pages at all.  The top page goes to Lift tables, but they are not coffee tables, this is a case of broad terms gone bad, this ad most likely gets a high click thru rate and an even higher bounce rate when users find it isn’t what they are looking for.  The 2nd ad goes to JC Penney’s Home Page, not at all helpful to someone who is searching on such a specific term.  If this bid is on the broad term ‘coffee table’ it should at least take the user to the coffee table page, this will cause high bounce rates for those users who don’t have the patience to go drill down through the JC Penney site to search yet again for what they want.  Meanwhile the 3rd ad by Rotmans at least takes the user to ‘coffee tables’ but those who are looking for specific type like this keyword is it might be best for them to bid on that term and do exact match as well in order to mitigate the possibility of loosing people on this page.  All three of these ads landing pages are disassociated from the exact term they are driving traffic to.  They are all getting high CTR but also high bounce rates and lower conversion rates as a result.  This is also skewing their cost per conversion high.

Google Ads

Meanwhile, the 4th, 5th, and 6th slots to the right are perfect examples of a good PPC landing page experience.  These ads take the user to an exact matching product that matches clearly with the keyword.  They have pictures featured which also tells the user immediately that this is the product they are looking for.  These ads will be paying a slightly lower CPC and have high CTR and most likely lower bounce rates and a resulting higher conversion rate and their cost per conversion will also be lower.

It is easier for some PPC advertisers to just send their ads to a single url, their Home Page or to a general page thinking the user will find what they want, but it isn’t true.  You want to have focused PPC ads that go to a relevant and focused web page that will result in conversions.  Paying out on wasted clicks like this will take away from your ROI and keep conversion rates low.  Focus the ads and they landing page and you will see a big improvement in the cost per conversion.

There are photos from my childhood that are embarrassing,  pictures in the tub, mud pie face, running around in a diaper, etc…  We hide them, we beg our parents not to show them and we keep them hidden away.  But what if they were out there for EVERYONE to see 24/7!  That’s the new world order our kids are living in.  Parents posting baby pictures, cute anecdotes and information that would have been in a private family brag book or the like are now out there on Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, etc.

Those of us who use social media for work understand the concept of being careful what and how you say something because once it is out there it’s out of your hands.  Carefully crafting our posts and making sure we can live with the consequences.  But what about everyone else?

Are we thinking long term?  Do we think about how what we post online today will be viewed in the future?

Some great inexpensive tools for analyzing and helping to create better optimized landing pages were discussed.

• http://sitetuners.com/
• http://www.attentionwizard.com
• http://crossbrowsertesting.com/
• http://www.usertesting.com/
• http://www.clicktale.com/

But the most compelling part for me was in the end of the presentation when Tim critiqued landing pages that attendees sent in before the webinar.  The landing page I sent in was the first, it was difficult to watch but I had to keep reminding myself I hadn’t built this page I knew what was wrong with it but I really needed and wanted more input on what should be done to make it better.

As a result I think I’m going back to the drawing board.  I had begun building a few other possible landing pages that are awaiting approval but I’m now going to apply the techniques and suggestions from this webinar and take a stab at making a better landing page.

Organic, and Paid search along with social media can create traffic to any site but the site must lead the users through the conversion process in such a way that the convert.  Whether that is by filling out a form for a case study or white paper, signing up for a newsletter or blog rss feed, or registering for a trial membership the most important thing is to capture that conversion!  At the end of the day we’re all measured on that end resulting goal of the all might ‘Conversion’.

So I ask myself time and time again how to get that person to that form and how to get them to WANT to fill it out?  Not just using calls to action…not dangling more information in front of them…but make them WANT to be a part of that end result?  I believe that it is going to be by giving them the user experience they need to lead them through the research, sales process, and eventually the sale.  The one thing that is lacking in so many marketing and sales strategies is the user experience.  utilizing landing pages and A/B testing to build a better experience that will convert traffic into customers.

After I have the current site’s information I can then see what I want or need to edit.  It also helps me track my changes over time and see how my optimization changes worked in the long term.

I then run base-line reports to get a perspective on the site’s current performance.  Key site information such as number of inbound links, pages indexed, current keyword SERPs, and of course a spider simulation to see how the site looks to the search engines are part of my long term planning and goals assessment.

As well as looking at the inbound linking

Next I analyze the analytics, and reporting information to get a full picture of how well the site is converting.  Looking over the background data for 3 – 4 months of the key performance indicators such as visits, page views, leads, conversions, etc.  are a good indication of how the site has been performing and an idea of where to put your ongoing goals.I also build a competitive analysis so that I can see how the site looks against the competition.

Finally, and possibly the most difficult is the acceptance and implementation of optimization changes and all the hard work ahead.   It is a challenge but the reward of optimizing an existing site to create better performance is ‘priceless’.

Dropping the meta-keyword tag means that the search engines are no longer using that tag to decide on ranking of a page.  But the use of the meta-keyword tag is still important as an optimization tool in creating, maintaining, and monitoring landing pages.   In my case even though the search engines don’t use the meta keywords tag for ranking I have an will continue to use the tag as a record for myself and other interested parties such as website producers, content writers, etc.  Keeping this tag logs on the landing page what keywords that page is being optimized for and is helpful for content producers, PPC management, and optimization reporting and monitoring.