Keyword Research
The nice thing about launching a PPC campaign is that you can get a lot of useful data very quickly that can then be applied to your SEO campaigns, including keyword research. Site owners can test the effectiveness of certain keywords with a PPC campaign and then slowly incorporate those new keywords into their SEO. Instead of waiting 3-6 months to find out if you targeted the right keywords, you can make faster headway and start your SEO off in the right direction. SEO is a long term process, but cutting out some of the uncertainty about choosing the right keywords can definitely give your SEO a boost.

Online Branding
I have found that PPC ads work best for branded searches. When someone is searching for your site directly they are already one step closer to conversion. I’d rather pay the few dollars for that click when I know that someone is actively looking for my company, and not just checking out their options. The further they are in the buying cycle the more worthwhile that PPC ad is.

Search Presence
Having a strong, branded presence in both the organic and paid search listings really enhances your overall online brand presence and helps build your trust factor. The more touch points you create with your website, PPC ads, social profiles, blogs and so forth the more likely you are to connect with your target audience, increasing your traffic and ultimately your conversion rate.

I feel like I should mention that some site owners claim that they’ve noticed a correlation between how much they spend in Google AdWords and where their site ranks; the more they spend the better they do organically. Google emphatically denies they offer any preferential treatment to big AdWords accounts, but that hasn’t done much to quash the rumors. Personally, I have yet to notice any correlation between my or my client’s PPC budget and our organic success. It will be interested to see what happens as time goes on.

In my opinion, if Google says that sites with too many ads above the fold are likely to be penalized, you should drop/move some of those AdSense ads. While having ads above the fold may increase their overall exposure and eventual click-through-rate, what good are those ads going to do if your site is buried in the depths of the SERPs where no one can find it?

Every site owner has the right to try and monetize their site as best as they can. However, you never want to sacrifice the overall usability and user-experience of your site just to make a couple extra bucks now! That is being penny wise, pound foolish with your SEO. Think about it, what has more long term value for your business and your site? While acquiring a new customer takes a lot more effort and time than getting someone to click on an ad, the end gain is so much greater. Chances are whatever they purchase from your company is going to be worth more than a click on that ad. Plus, once they are your customer you have the opportunity to turn them into repeat customers and brand loyalists. An ad isn’t going to do that for you!

Personally, I don’t put any ads on my website because I don’t want to send my traffic away. After all the hard work you put into link building, why would you want to push your traffic off your site? Once someone is on my site I want them to stick around as long as possible so I can convince them to sign up for my SEO newsletter, fill out a lead form and potentially hire us as their SEO partners. To me, that is for more valuable for my business than getting a few extra dollars from AdSense every month.

What are your thoughts on AdSense ads and their placement on your site?

This month, we’ve created the AdWords Grader in response to this very need. If you’re looking to improve your PPC performance (and let’s face it, who isn’t?), consider taking advantage this newly released tool from WordStream.

The AdWords Performance Grader grades your AdWords account performance by analyzing several key performance indicators such as Quality Score, Account Activity, Click-Through Rate, and Impression Share. It then compares your results against those of other AdWords advertisers with similar monthly budgets.

I’m not sure about most people, but there is a part of me that misses getting graded in school. It feels great to get a sense of where you stand. And even when it doesn’t feel so hot getting those Cs, at least you are given a new goal to shoot for. The AdWords Grader can be the affirmation or the kick in the pants you need to get in gear.

Better yet, the AdWords Performance Grader does more than simply asses your AdWords performance, it also gives you direct recommendations on how to improve your score and better your campaign.

Advantages of Using the AdWords Performance Grader

We’ve learned that marketers and small business owners are often desperate to know how they stack up against competitors and are always looking for ways to improve their accounts. They need a PPC audit, but those are usually expensive and time-consuming.

That’s why we made the AdWords Grader—it provides the same benefits of a PPC audit, but it’s free, quick, and easy to use. PPC users are loving the grader because it:

• Is easy to use and understand
• Provides the same kind of account analysis you’d expect from a consultant or agency
• Offers actionable insights and competitive intelligence
• It’s free!

Why We Compare You Against Advertisers of a Similar Spending Budget

The AdWords expectations for large business with large budgets will naturally be different than smaller business with smaller AdWords budgets. That’s why the Adwords Performance Grader grades your account against advertisers in similar spending ranges rather than sorting by industry.

Imagine you’re a small insurance company spending approximately $200 a month on AdWords. It certainly wouldn’t be fair to compare your account to huge advertisers such as GEICO, who spends millions per a month on AdWords.

Grading a small spending advertiser against a larger spending advertiser would give an inaccurate performance assessment, even if the two are in the same industry. That is why the AdWords Performance Grader grades your account against the thousands of other AdWords accounts we’ve graded with similar spending ranges. That way we can prove you with an accurate analysis of your performance.

What Key Metrics Are You Graded On?

After interviewing various marketers, customers, and advertisers, we compiled a list of key metrics that most everyone agrees are essential to a successful AdWords campaign.

• Quality Score
• Usage of negative keywords
• Impression share
• Click-through rate
• Long-tail keyword optimization
• Account activity
• Ad text optimization
• Landing page optimization

These are the metrics that Google themselves asks us to pay attention to, so we know these are essential factors to AdWords success. That’s why we have the AdWords Performance Grader evaluate your account on these important metrics.

How Is My Grade Calculated?

Your grade is based on a sliding scale. For example, with Quality Score we calculate your account’s average Quality Score and compare that score with other advertisers in your spend range.

If you’re the best in your class, you’ll get 100%. A 60% score means you’ve scored better than 60% of the other accounts in your spend range for that specific metric.

The overall account score is based on how you did in all of the different categories compared to other accounts of similar spend.

What Happens After my AdWords Account is Graded?

The AdWords Grader doesn’t just asses your account—it also provides you with immediate solutions and actions you can take to improve your score for each metric. Take advantage of the grader’s recommendations, and you’ll be seeing your score improve before you know it.

So try out the AdWords Performance Grader – it’s free expert advice after all. (And don’t worry, we never save your AdWords credentials, but once you get your report, it’s yours to keep for as long as you want.)
We created this tool to help SMBs develop a better understanding of their AdWords accounts, and our hope is to continue to improve the Performance Grader to make it even more helpful and insightful in the future.

About the Author: Megan Marrs is a marketing associate at WordStream, a provider of PPC software and a Keyword Tool for SEO and PPC.

Not to say that the economy has fully recovered, but there are signs that a recovery, albeit a slow one, is on its way. The State of Search Marketing Report 2011, produced by Econsultancy and SEMPO, projected that search engine marketing will spend an estimated $19 billion this year, a 16% increase from 2010. An increase is spending is a good sign. It means that companies are relinquishing more of their carefully counted dollars for marketing efforts, which means they’ve seen that consumers are spending more. This is not to say that companies are willingly writing blank checks for their search marketing teams, but it does mean you might have a bigger SEM budget to work with this year.

How do you go about planning your SEM budget?

Be Smart About It
You have to pick and choose your battles when it comes to search engine marketing. You have to realize that you may not be able to do everything you want to right away. It can be expensive to get a SEM campaign off the ground, and you can’t always afford to do it all at once. You have to decide what it more important. Do you want to up the frequency of your company newsletter to connect with customers, or do you want to allocate more of your budget to bidding on more competitive PPC keywords? Having a list of goals will help you decide where you should start and how much money you should dedicate to each effort.

Check out the competition
Understanding your competition and what they have done in terms of search marketing can give you an idea of what you need to do to catch up and overtake them. If they are dominating the search results, you know you’ll have to devote more time and energy to SEO in order to compete. If there is no clear leader in your niche, then a smaller amount of money in the right place is going to make a noticeable difference. Big brands tend to have the money and manpower and own highly competitive keywords, both in the organic search results and PPC advertising. But what keywords can you focus on that they’ve missed?

How much are you willing to spend?
SEO and SEM are two very different things. One of the key differences is that SEM involves PPC, a paid marketing tactic. Most SEO tactics (link building, social media marketing, article marketing, etc) don’t cost anything, but require a serious time commitment. What do you have more of and what are you willing to spend? PPC might cost you more, but can lead to faster results for as long as you’re running ads. SEO is a long term process that builds on itself over time. Which is more important to you? Which one is going to provide the best value for your budget? Only you can decide that.

This debate has gone on for many years, as evidenced by this blog. It highlights an interesting case study in which a website ranked well while running AdWords but then was kicked back to page four when it needed to add some funds to its AdWords account. Within 24 hours of adding funds to the balance, the site was back to the top of page two of the search result. That blog post was written a few years ago, but the debate continues and hasn’t really changed much over the years. Google is still filled with secrets that we will probably never uncover. Everybody has a different opinion on the matter and there are numerous stories like that one that suggest a correlation.

Of course this obviously isn’t the case for every website. No matter how much money is spent on Google AdWords, Google would never rank a website well organically that wasn’t optimized and didn’t have any relevant inbound links. It would also never rank a bad site that provided a poor user experience. However, if all of the factors that make up a good website are there, it’s a possibility that running Google AdWords could affect its organic page rank.

It’s important to note that the correlation between the rank of your website and running Google AdWords is different from the correlation between the organic success of your website and running Google AdWords. The combination of a PPC campaign and an organic campaign can legitimize your website in the eyes of a website user. Essentially your website is showing up on the search engine results page twice when they type in a query, once organically and once in the sponsored section. To many users, this emphasizes that your website is relevant to what they are looking for and they are more likely to click on it.

My instinct is that it’s of course a possibility that there is a correlation between running Google AdWords and the rank of your website but this is something that will never be proven. Therefore, it shouldn’t even be given a second thought. Since it’s not a proven theory I would never incorporate AdWords into a campaign to help SEO for a client. I prefer to spend my time concentrating on the tried and true tactics that work according to the Google webmasters. What do you think? Please share your thoughts and experiences!

Starting Tuesday, May 10th, this online summit spreads out over 2 weeks, with multiple sessions each week. Unlike regular marketing summits, the AdWords Advantage PPC training sessions have been designed to fit into the schedule of working professionals. Since it is online, there is no travel required! This means you can attend each learning session from the comfort of your own office or home.

The audio and video from each session are recorded and will be provided for 90 days for your convenience.

AdWords Advantage has brought in some of the best professionals in the field to teach you real world strategies for getting the most out of your PPC campaigns. Each speaker will teach you a skill, tool or technique in 60 minutes. No up selling, no cheer leading, no theory – just solid advice.

Here are a few things you can expect to learn over the two week summit:
• Personalizing keywords to meet the needs of your market
• Leveraging social media to improve your AdWords campaign performance
• Driving traffic and visibility with AdWords.
• Controlling cost and improving conversions
• And much more!

The instructors will be presenting their sessions in real time, right on your computer screen. You can listen and watch their presentations and ask questions through an interactive chat feature.

Unlike other seminars, where you may have to choose between one talk or another, all of the AdWords Advantage online lessons are scheduled at different times so you can attend them all!

Some of the summit’s sessions include:
• AdWords for Local: Sort Heads from Tails, Find Free Clicks and Calls
• Build Your Own Portfolio Forecasting and Optimization Tool Using Google Bid Simulator
• Using Your Remarketing Data to Learn More About Your AdWords Audience
• AdWords for Ecommerce: Drive Maximum Reach & Ecom Sales with PPC

All of the aforementioned sessions (and many others!) have been created specifically for this summit! Each contains insights, strategies and up-to-date tips that you can use to transform your campaigns.

Registration is strictly limited to the first 500 participants.

Register today to guarantee your spot!

Here are a few questions that come to my mind to ask your new SEO employees:

Name me 2 or 3 internet marketing related blogs that you read.
If someone truly comes from a strong internet marketing background they will most likely be able to answer at least a few internet marketing related blogs. Some of the industry related internet marketing blogs are some of the best ways to keep up with what is going on the search industry and any serious professional will most likely have a few that they read almost every day.

What does search engine optimization mean to you?
The answer should not be completed in a mild one sentence answer. The answer should be robust in nature because search engine optimization is robust in nature. The answer should have more than one idea and theory because true search engine optimization comes with a very diverse approach. The answer should consist of more than just rankings.

If you had an unlimited budget, how would you market a website online?
This answer should give you very valuable insight into the caliber of person you are planning on hiring. Now, I understand that you can’t expect details surrounding the business just yet, but the person on the other side of that desk should be excited to answer this question. I know I would be. It should almost sound like they are about to start this campaign tomorrow. You should be able to hear the enthusiasm in their voice right out of the gates.

Hiring the right search engine marketing specialist for your organization could be somewhat difficult at times. You have to take the time to really understand if they are the right fit for your organization, otherwise you could run into some problems with production down the road.