A Combined SEO and PPC Strategy

Many people leave money on the table by NOT combining a powerful SEO strategy with a PPC. PPC first, in the short term leading to greater SEO results in the future.

Through your main keywords from a long list of keywords from keyword research into Affiliate Elite/Competition Dominator/AdSpy Pro. Monitor them for a week or more. Find what keywords are competitive and what are not. Find out in the competitive ones which ads are good and which aren't.

Bingo. You will have a list of potentially easier phrases to bid against (subject to it being a phrase associated with demand, of course.) You will have a list of in demand phrases too.

Then run a Google Adwords campaign based on those phrases you identify as easy marks and those as competitive but set up separate campaigns for both.

The good thing if you track PPC keyword conversions using a software package like Xtreme Conversions and use Google Analytics is that you actually get a good idea of what keywords are actually being clicked on by people who click on your ad.

The information you get from impression numbers on your Adwords campaign is very helpful indeed.

This sort of keyword analysis is actually priceless. I like to run as cheap as possible a campaign as I get get away with and see how often a keyword is actually shown even if not clicked. As long as I am on Google Page 1 I am happy. (I always choose option to only show my ad on Google and its feed sites and not the content network)

I like to set up as many exact phrase searches as I can, as well as a more general search term as identified above. These I identify with a program like Keyword Elite but also common sense.

I then track to see on a landing page with GA what keywords brought the clicker to that landing page as well as what are getting impressions and clicks.

This, is proper, truthful and accurate keyword research I find!

At the end of the process you have a very good idea, cheaply, of what keywords people actually search for in that niche. You can then run that information back through your competition analysis software and monitor the ads for a while (either with your campaign running or not).

I then take those keywords that look the absolute best and begin the usual Optimisation process, running my competitor sites through an SEO program and working out a better SEO strategy than theirs.

Knowing which keywords therefore gfet shown alot and which convert, I begin to optimize my bidding processes for those keywords.( I.e better landing pages, increased bid.) I raise the bids enough to see a better click through rate but I monitor and split test to get the best conversion.

My tip - make separate landing pages for each keyword phrase the above identifies. Not only can you SEO Optimise those pages but also your ranking will go up in Google because your relevance and click through will go up.

Then go for the Squidoo lenses, the articles, blogs, posts etc aimed at those phrases too.

I use them together, in other words. One a short term, traffic getting strategy that also generates research you cannot get elsewhere and the results of that research fuel the second approach, finding out what is worth optimizing.