Archive for the ‘Paid Search’ Category

Combining Organic and Paid Search Strategies

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Choosing over organic and paid search isn’t necessary when you’re into search engine marketing. This is because you don’t have to choose only one of them. Search engine marketing is flexible in a way where your can combine organic and paid search strategies to achieve top search results.

Organic and paid search have their own advantages and disadvantages. You don’t pay for clicks with organic search, while paid search can be expensive. You can have more control with editorials and messages with paid search, though, while in organic search you cannot guarantee a placement. These are just some of the key advantages and disadvantages of organic and paid search. Looking into these, you will find that you can form search engine marketing tactics to make full use of both and get great results in the search engines.

Here are some suggestions on how to use both organic and paid search and create a well-balanced search engine marketing strategy:

  • Optimize your site using organic search first. For those areas or markets that are hard to get into to get a placement with just using organic search, paid search will provide to be very helpful.
  • Regarding keywords, choose over three keywords or keyword phrases of your site that you can optimize mainly with organic search, while you can opt to use the rest of your keywords with paid search.
  • Use paid search strategies in testing out messaging and make use of the most effective copy in your meta descriptions and page titles. You can also do this same strategy in choosing your keywords. With a short-term paid search plan, determine which among the keywords or keyword phrases that you have been considering is giving you a higher response rate and use this keyword or phrase in your organic search campaigns.
  • Organic vs Paid Search

    These are just some mixed strategies that you can use to optimize both organic and paid search. These are proof that organic and paid search can work well together and that you don’t have to choose between them in search engine marketing. On the contrary, combining organic and paid search strategies makes a great campaign in search engine marketing.

    Missed Opportunities in Paid Search Advertising

    Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

    In using paid search advertising in search engine marketing, online marketers sometimes lose focus on finding new opportunities with it to generate more traffic and boost sales. Marketers usually focus more on the cost of keywords and disregard the other tactics in paid search.

    For example, in concentrating too much on the cost of keywords, inventory is being ignored. Retailers and other business cannot afford to promote a product that is not available in a paid search. Problems will ensue when a customer clicks on an ad and the product is not delivered on time. It’s not only the inventory that has to be ready, of course. The landing pages, design, and other factors have to be as customer-friendly as possible.

    Paid Search Advertising

    It is not surprising for marketers to worry about the cost, of course. Any click on an ad that cannot deliver is wasted money. There can be no delay in pulling this ad out in paid search. Due to this, constant monitoring is done on the paid search ads.

    Monitoring the keyword in paid search is also important. In any paid search campaign, about half of the keywords selected without testing turn out to be bad performers for the ads.

    Concerning the management of page availability, know that some links to landing pages turn out to be going to dead pages. This is especially tiring for those managing hundreds of landing pages. In some cases, they fail to notice that some of the links are bad, and didn’t pull the PPC ad out.

    Landing pages are also specifically created to suit the copy in the ad. It should not appear like the home page because you are no longer advertising to the general online community but to a specific consumer who clicked on your ad. It should meet the search intent of the customer.

    A clean layout with clear callouts and highlights to the products is what the landing pages should have. Add to that an shopping cart and friendly colors. You also need a link to the site search to link with the product catalogs in case the customer is looking for another product that you have to offer.

    Matching keywords with the shoppers’ behavior is also factor. There are shoppers who use keywords to search for a products and locate a store where that product is, and there are shoppers who search for items they can buy online and pick up at a store. Behaviors such as these, and the time or days of the week that the consumers exhibit them, can be tools for marketers to tailor their marketing strategy and keyword selections properly.

    There are actually a lot more opportunities in paid search advertising despite the cost. One only needs to see how a factor can affect sales of a company and be creative in improving methods to maximize sales.