SEO - PPC - Webdesign - Ten Thousand Things

I say kinda, because PPC should be the last part of anyone’s online strategy. The goal of pay per click is to get users to your website with proper key word selection and compelling ad copy. I have always told clients that the goal of PPC is to get people to the party; it’s not up to PPC that makes them stay. That is the responsibility of good design and proper search engine optimization. Let me explain how this all works.

Good design is, well, good design. This means that a site is easy to navigate, with relevant and congruent content that makes users view multiple pages, spend more time on the site, and hopefully produce the desired out come (a conversion metric such as - a purchase, phone call, leaving a comment, etc) while differentiating its self from the competition, if necessary.

Well executed search engine optimization will ensure proper messaging when being indexed by search engines. This means that the messaging of the site (a product of good design) will match how the site is read by the search engines and then ranked in order by keywords. Once design and SEO is in place only then should proper Pay Per Click advertising tactics should be used.

When all three elements come together this is what a search experience should look like:

1. An internet user types in a the keyword that is targeted by both PPC and SEO
2. The ranking of the site appears in both the organic and paid search listings of the search results page, thus increasing the chance of a click through.
3. With good design, the user finds what they are looking for and a conversion metric is triggered
4. Search engines reward the PPC advertiser because the high relevancy with lower cost per click and higher ranking

PPC rocks but it isn’t the end-all be-all that so many people incorrectly believe it to be. SEO, design AND PPC are all required for the most effective online branding strategy.

A friend asked recently “If no one, outside of Google developers, know how the search engine indexes and ranks websites why do so many people give so much money to have their sites optimized?” No sooner had this left my friends lips did I say: “Because we do know.”

I then went on to explain that while we don’t have access to the code that makes the crawlers work – we still know how to work with and around the system.  We know these things through testing and thanks to the free exchange of theories and experiment results from people across the world – we know what works and what doesn’t.

Being able to have an open dialog and discuss SEO with thousands of other people who have a very vested interest in SEO and search marketing is an incredible thing.  With this open discussion and rapid advancement of SEO it has caused something, perhaps, unexpected.

As SEO’s get better at what they do, by being able to communicate in such an advanced way, so too does the mighty Google get better at thwarting their efforts.  Each advances the other as quickly as they advance themselves.

It is social media that has allowed SEO professionals to take their game to the next level and keep ahead of the constantly changing Google landscape.  Without being able to go to sites like Sphinn and find the latest news, developments and ideas about search - SEO would be a much more difficult thing.  Only those within the most trusted of networks would know what worked and what didn’t and because of this Google would likely not be where it is today.

Communication is key but it is also a double-edged sword.  Speaking freely with each other is what makes us better at getting our sites ranked and it is that same free speaking that lets Google know where it needs to tighten its defenses… and so the cycle continues.