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What is SEO?
If you are trying to get more traffic to your business’s website, then you have probably heard about SEO. Search Engine Optimization involves strategies that make your website easier to find on search engines. SEO involves many different strategies to improve which keywords your site ranks for and how highly your site ranks for those keywords. This is a technical process that is unlikely to have overnight results.
What is PPC?
For those who want to shoot to the top of the search engine results page (SERP), there is the option of Pay-Per-Click (PPC). This is basically a paid advertisement that businesses buy to have their search result come above or next to a specific search result list. Businesses who use PPC advertising pay a fee anytime someone clicks on their ad, regardless of whether it makes a sale.
While PPC ads often appear above SERPs, they are not officially at the top of the search results. Search engines such as Google rely on their algorithm to provide results that are most accurate and relevant to a user’s query. This is why, if you do decide to use PPC, it’s important to understand that those clicks will not have any effect on your ranking the way SEO would. If this were the case, businesses would simply pay for the top spot every time, removing the need for organic SEO strategies.
SEO first, then PPC
If you do decide to use PPC, it’s important that your on-page SEO is up to the task of retaining and converting potential customers. The last thing you want is for someone to click on your PPC ad, get to your site, and then leave because your landing page is taking forever to load, is not secure, is not relevant, or is not optimized for their device. It’s more important to have an optimized, user-friendly site than a million PPC visitors who leave right away and destroy your bounce rate.
To optimize your on-page SEO, consider the following:
- Load speed
Your landing page should load in under 2 seconds if you want to keep people on your site. Load speeds over 3 seconds are one of the main reasons visitors to your site will leave in a hurry- and not come back
- Security
Google and other search engines tend to favor sites that have HTTPS, TLS and SSL security. What’s more, some sites may not load at all if your browser thinks there’s the possibility of a security breach.
- Links
Internal links are good, but only if they actually work. Broken links are another big reason that potential customers hit the road, so be sure that everything is in working order before you start marketing your site to new clients.
- Content
Your content should reflect the products and services you offer. Whether you try to improve your traffic organically or through the use of PPC ads, your site’s visitors should find what they are looking for in the form of high-value, original content. Don’t make the mistake of paying to advertise for a search that isn’t relevant. Your visitors will figure out very quickly that your site isn’t the right fit and your bounce rate will suffer because of it.
- Mobile Optimization
If you’ve ever tried to navigate a website on your phone or tablet that wasn’t optimized for mobile, you know what a headache it can be. Don’t skimp of mobile optimization. Make sure your website can be used on both Android and Apple phones and tablets.
Can PPC boost your ranking?
Once your page is optimized, you can use PPC ads to enhance your SEO ranking. One way to do this is by offering users high-quality content through internal links to different pages on your site. Be sure to provide users with the ability to interact with your content through social shares. Providing internal links to valuable information will improve your bounce rate by giving users more to do before they leave your site. Social buttons allow them to share your content with their social media followers, which can boost your ranking. So while it’s not the PPC ad that is boosting your ranking, the PPC visitor’s user experience and the result of their visit can influence how search engines identify, index and rank your page.