Increase Website Ranking with SEO and PPC, but where to rank?

Did you know that of all searches done on Google, only 30% of the visitors goes to the second search screen, and only 3% to the third search screen? 70% of your potential customers will not see you if you rank on page #2!
If you have a website, you clearly need to be on page#1 in Google. But where on page#1?

..
Click both pictures to enlarge

Above you see two screenshots. The left screenshot shown is the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) shown for a specific query on Google. The arrows indicate the areas where the Search Engine Optimization (SEO, also called "organic") results and Pay Per Click ads (PPC, also called "sponsored links") appear.
The right screenshot displayed is a so-called "heatmap" of the Google search screen, showing the areas in red where people focus on when they use Google. Yellow and blue colours indicate areas of less focus.
From the second image it becomes clear that a website which wants to be seen, needs to be in the top left hot spot; this hot spot is occupied by SEO results as well as PPC ads.
For most of our customers we recommend to use a combination of PPC+SEO, as the plans are complementary; they re-inforce eachother. A PPC plan assures fast ranking and ROI in less then 1-2 months, while an SEO plan generally takes 6 months or more to take effect. More over, the PPC Plan provides excellent feedback on popular (and converting) keywords and keyphrases used, which input is very useful for the SEO plan.
So we advice to use a PPC plan first (while developing and implementing the SEO plan), and as soon as the SEO plan has effect, out-phase the PPC Plan.

About SEO, SMO, PR, PPC and CPM

SEO: Search Engine Optimization

Factors determining your website ranking, also called SERP (Search Engine Result Page) include:

• Source-code settings like website title, meta-tag description, meta-tag keywords, and picture ALT-tags;
• Content settings like header(=h1,h2)-tags, content-text, and correct internal link anchor-texts;
• Keyword settings like correct position in the website title, correct keyword-density, and correct use of the S/C (#search/#competitor) ratio of keywords.
• Link settings like the number and pagerank of inbound (=back)links, correct inbound link anchor-texts, and correct Google Sitemap;
• Domain settings like a correct DMOZ listing and the presence of correct keywords in the domainname and/or website pagenames, where applicable;
• Age settings: the website age is a factor in the ranking; websites younger than 6 months spend a long time in search-engine "sand-boxes"; being evaluated.
• Penalty factors like hidden text, homepage re-directs, content-duplication and doorway pages should be avoided.

Please note that ALL the factors above interrelate; they all should be optimal, and comply with max.length (e.g. title and decsription) and occurrence (e.g. keywords) rules. When they are all optimal a good Google Pagerank (at least 4) is the achievable target, as well as a good Google/Yahoo/MSN ranking in the top 10.
That is why SEO is not easy, and that is where we can assist you.
We cannot specify all the tools we use ofcourse, but the well-known ones include the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (formerly known as the Google KeywordSandbox), Google Insights for Search, Google Trends, Wordtracker, Yahoo Buzz index, Google Zeitgeist, Altavista related searches, Websters thesaurus, etc.
And: of course one of the best ways to think about your optimal keyword-settings is: look at your succesful competitors!

We will define the best SEO settings (see above) for your site, promote your site most effectively, and aim to have your site shown up on page #1 in Google, Yahoo, MSN. Next to this we will generate the best possible google pagerank for your site (check also pagerank explained and google datacenter info).
The pagerank (PR) build-up strategy followed by us is guided by the following principles:

• the home page should be the prime focus of pagerank build-up, as that one carries the main (overall) pagerank of a site;
• linkbuilding should be from high PR towards low PR; facilitating "inheretance" of PR (else it will cause depletion);
• one-way inbound links count twice as heavy as 2-way (exchanged) links, and networked (except open circle) links are forbidden;
• pagerank "inhereted" by a site is "1 lower" then the PR of the originating site; so, to get a PR of 4 you need (at least) one inbound (back)link of PR=5.
• anchor-text in the link itself, as well as contents of the page linked from, is weighed by "relevance"; the more relevant both are, the better the PR received;
• web-farm (FFA) backlinks are forbidden; and it is not advised to purchase backlinks with low relevance;

SMO: Social Media Optimization ("Social SEO")

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content (quote from Wikipedia).
Examples of social media sites (the ones in bold font are used or advised by us in setting up SMO campaigns):

• Communication
  • Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine
  • Micro-blogging / Presence applications: Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku
  • Social networking: Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Ning, Elgg
  • Social network aggregation: FriendFeed
  • Events: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com
• Collaboration
  • Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, Wetpaint, Knol
  • Social bookmarking/tagging: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike
  • Social news: Digg, Buzz, Technorati, BoingBoing, Mixx, Reddit
  • Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp, City-data.com
• Multimedia
  • Photo sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug
  • Video sharing: YouTube, Vimeo,
  • Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam, bizbuzztour.com
  • Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter
• Reviews and Opinions
  • Product Reviews: Epinions.com, MouthShut.com
  • Q&A: Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers
  • Employer Reviews: Jobeehive.com, Streetdirectory.com
• Entertainment
  • Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online,Forterra
  • Game sharing: Miniclip, Kongregate

PR: Press Releases, Article Syndication, Newswires

• PRLog.org
• PRweb.com
• EzineArticles.com
• GoArticles.com
• ArticleBase.com
• Webpronews.com
• ArticleAlley.com
• Freewebarticles.com
• ArticleDashboard.com
• 1888Pressrelease.com
• Free-Press-Release.com
• 24-7Pressrelease.com
• Pressreleasereport.com
• PR-inside.com
• PR9.net
• ArticleMarketer.com
• ArticleHub.com
• Free-Articles-Zone
• MarketingSource.com

PPC (Pay Per Click) or CPC (Cost Per Click); the power

The tremendous power (marketing-wise) of a PPC campaign is six-fold:

• that your ad is shown thousands of times a day for free, until somebody clicks; then you pay a small fee of on the average $0.15 (USD) per click;
• that the clicking customer is the targeted one; browsers-only (tire-kickers) can be excluded easely by using negative keywords and a good ad/website-match.
• that you will never overspend planned budget; you can set your daily click-budget as low as $1 /day.
• that it is lightning fast to set up; after first (SEO-based) analysis, your ad can be shown within hours, and you can receive the first customers on your website from that moment on.
• that the ad campaign is extremely targeted; you can target your ad to specific countries (even cities, in the USA) and search languages.
• that the ad-campaign can be run for hundreds of keywords at a time, allowing many relevant user-searches & clicks; wheras conventional "free" search allows for only up to 15 (mainly title-related) keywords at a time.

PPC; the approach

• Mass product advertising worldwide (e.g. coffee);
• Mass product advertising in a niche consumer market (e.g. men's shoes in NY);
• Niche product advertising worldwide (e.g. caviar);
• Niche product advertising in a niche consumer market (e.g. surfboards in LA).

Many customers ask us: how many adwords to use? There is no golden rule, but on the average ANY campaign can run efficiently with 20-100 words. Having a so-called "universe of 500-1000 keywords" is used frequently by us in the initial stages, but after a few weeks the core-words will settle down to just 50 or so. Focus always should be on the ones generating conversions (leads, sales), and that group usually will be not larger then 50.

PPC; the 4 Key Success Factors (KSF's)

Every keyword targeted (CPC) Google adwords campaign has 4 KSF’s (=filters), going from high-level to lower-level:

• 1: the keyword used; is it searched after or not; if not, the ad will not show.
• 2: the ad-text itself: is it appealing for the user to click, when he/she sees the ad.
• 3: the match between the adword ad and the website; does the user get what he/she expects, or do they backout on the first page-view.
• 4: the website-pitch; is the sales-pitch on the website good or insufficient; can the website convert user-clicks into leads and sales. A good website has a linear path towards the sales-page, motivating a user into a sale, de-motivating de-tours.

For a brief on the E-marketing cycle, and to see where and how PPC fits in, see the picture below. The red lines (from bottom to top) show where feedback from the PPC campaign parameters is used as input its tuning, which is done in iterations, step-wise.

PPC; the cost

By the proper selection of adwords we can guarantee that (even in bidding wars) you will never pay more than 50% of the industry average CPC (of the market segment you are in). We can guarantee this because Google rewards ad-RELEVANCE, measured by maximum bid and CTR (click through rate); your ads will show above the ones bidding more, provided your ad-CTR is higher. We specialize in high-CTR (>3%) and low-CPC (<50% of industry-average) campaigns via iterative tuning; see the "tracking and tuning" chapter for proof and references.

We have extensive expertise in PPC programs, especially the ones from Google Adwords, Overture, now Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter. The minimum CPC (Cost Per Click) for Google campaigns is $0.05, the one for Overture campaigns is $0.10.
Whereas Google PPC ads are shown as "sponsored links" on the Google screen and on AOL, Ask Jeeves, and Compuserve screens, Overture PPC ads will appear as sponsored links only on MSN and CNN (and not anymore on Yahoo, Altavista, and Infospace, like before).
Though Overture started as early as in 1998 with PPC, Google Adwords PPC essentially took over the major portion of the PPC market after its launch in 2002.

Until Q1 2006, up to about 250 PPC programs were set up and managed by us; please check our references page. PPC campaings with maximum daily budgets ranging from $5/day up to $2000/day were set up; with websites acquiring 30 up to 6000 clicks/day.

PPC; break even point and ROI (Return On Investment)

• Suppose there are 100000 queries/month for a specific word, worldwide; source: Wordtracker or Traffic Estimator tool from Google).
• If the word is an english word, it will most likely only be searched after by the english speaking community on the web; which is 310 million people (see internet languages) large.
  If the word is an international word or name like "adidas"; the number of people able to look for it form a much larger group: about 700 million (chinese, japanese, korean and russian are excluded). In the example here we will work with an english word being searched after.
• So the search-word is english; now suppose the PPC target audience is the USA. The USA population comprises about 300 million people (2006 stats) of which 225 million are online; source: internet stats.
  These 225 million are 72% of the 310 million english enquiring internet users worldwide (2006 stats); so 72% of 100000 queries= 72000 queries/month or 2400/day.
• Suppose the cost of click on that specific word is $0.20 (sources: Yahoo Search Marketing Bid Tool and Traffic Estimator tool from Google).
• Now suppose that the CTR of the ad is 3%; so on 1000 impressions there are 30 clicks. These 30 clicks then cost 30 * $0.20= $6.
• Next suppose that the conversion-rate (of clicks into sales) per click is 2%; so there are 2 sales on 100 clicks.
• Cost per sales then is $20 / 2= $10.
• If the margin per sale > $10 the PPC campaign is above break even.
• Concluding: as the USA target market generates about 2400 queries/day (see item 2 above); the number of clicks/day will be close to 72 (at 3% conversion) at a total PPC cost of $14.40 (cpc=$0.20), and the number of sales/day then will be close to 2 (at 2% conversion), with a cost/sale of $10.

Large PPC accounts; automated bidding

Note the current standard Adwords account maxima:
--maximum 25 (active) campaigns within 1 account;
--maximum 100 (active) adgroups within 1 campaign;
--maximum 2000 adwords per campaign (advised);
--maximum 50000 adwords per account (hard limit).
Concerning upload maxima for Overture/YSM, the manual (per screen) maximum is 500 and the bulk upload is 5000 (per session); for MSN Adcenter the manual (per screen) maximum is 200 and the total bulk account upload maximum is 10000.
For Google Adwords one can calculate, that, for large accounts with many adwords (say the maximum of 2000 adwords per adgroup), there is an adgroup maximum of 25. If a lower number of adwords per adgroup is used (say 1000), 50 adgroups are allowed, and so on.
Our PPC optimization offering is for normal SME (small & medium enterprise) accounts with a maximum of 50000 keywords and/or 100 ads; for larger accounts surcharges apply: 50000-100000 keywords and/or 200 ads: +50%; 100000-250000 keywords and/or 300 ads: +100%; and over 250000 keywords and/or 300 ads: contact us (note that for accounts with over 50000 keywords an automated bidding tool install is recommended).
We support the following automated bidding applications:

NB1: pricing stated is taken from the websites of the bidding tool suppliers; status 2008.
NB2: 60000 bid reviews equal e.g. 30000 keywords reviewed 2x/day, or 10000 keywords reviewed 6x/day.
For us to start using one of these tools, they need to be purchased first by our client, and hence will form part of the contract and pricing. The monthly (or yearly, when desired so) fee of the automated bidding tool is to be paid seperately by our client, direct to the bidding tool supplying company.

Organic Ranking (SEO) vs. Sponsored ads (PPC); How to choose?

• Speed: organic ranking can take up to 12 months; sponsored ranking only takes 24 hours;
• Range: organic ranking is only possible for 10-15 keywords; sponsored ranking is possible for thousands of keywords;
• Stability: organic rankings can drop overnight with search algorithm changes; sponsored rankings are guaranteed stable;
• Cost: organic rankings are free; sponsored rankings are paid per click, and can suffer from click fraud;
• Targeting: sponsored rankings can be shown per time of day or per geographic region; organic rankings cannot
• Media: sponsored ads can show rich media like banners and video ads, organic rankings basically only show text (though this is changing with google universal).
• Audience: organic rankings are shown to all people, sponsored ads can be targeted per website (adsense style) and audience demographics (gender, age, income group).

CPM (Cost Per Mil) campaigns

CPM (cost per mil) is the classic banner model, where the advertiser pays a publisher per each 1000 ad impressions.
Google offers CPM ads on content related sites (google calls this "content targeting") or specifically chosen websites (called "site targeting"). Site targeting was introduced in 2005, and renamed to "placement targeting" in 2007.
Since 2008 a combination of PPC ads ("keyword targeting") and placement targeting is offered by google,. allowing ads to be shown on specific websites, for specific keywords. When this option is used, payment can be per click or per 1000 impressions.
The KSF’s (Key Success Factors) of placement-targeted CPM ads are the same as for PPC targeted ads with one additional KSF; the success/failure of the CPM ad is for a large (at least 80%) part determined by an additional, fifth KSF. KSF #5 for site-targeted ads is User Group Relevance; if the website user group does not (very) closely match the requested target group, the CPM’s will go to waste, and the clicks (if any) will be absent or non-relevant, not generating leads or sales. CTR’s close to 0% will be the result; even at extreme high CPM bids (and daily cost).
So it is crucial to choose the website targets very carefully. It is basically a trial and error process; starting with a large enough group of target websites, and next focussing more and more on the converting ones. The process of website selection can also be sped up by using the combination of keyword+placement targeting; however, the number of ads shown per website will be on the low side then.

Adsense

Tracking and Tuning

Tracking

Since Q4 2005 Google is offering Urchin for free; now called Google Analytics it is an excellent stats-package, which we can also install for you. Big advantage of Google Analytics is that is seamlessly integrates with Adwords. The signup for Google Analytics is here www.google.com/analytics/

Whereas Sitemeter installs in 5 minutes, and is very intuitive to use, Google Analytics has quite a long learning curve of at least 1 week. So for a new website which is not too complex, we always advice Sitemeter in free mode, to start with.
Below are some screen-shots of the very illustrative displays from Sitemeter. Note that in basic (free, not upgraded) mode each visitor entry can be clicked and viewed in detail for the search-words with which they reached the website.

SiteMeter screenshots:

Google Analytics screenshots:

Tuning

In natural (unsponsored) search, Google was the first to reward high content-relevancy and high (trusted) backlink-quality of a website by high a search engine ranking. Yahoo and MSN followed this algorithm change.
Next, in 2 following implementations in July and November 2006, for sponsored (pay per click based) search also, Google was the first to start measuring and rewarding high PPC landing page relevancy. Of course, Yahoo and MSN followed.
So from November 2006 onwards, any PPC campaign with a sub-optimal landing page will carry a low quality score calculation, which will result in high cost per click (CPC, sometimes $5 to $10), bad ad-rankings, and consequently low CTR and sales.
What does this mean in 2007 for you, when you have a website and related PPC campaign? It means three things should be in perfect (relevance!) harmony: 1): the website SEO settings, 2): the PPC ad contents, and 3): the PPC landing page settings ( i.e. headline, graphics, sales pitch semantics, call to action phrasing). You need a 3-step (but synchronized) optimization.
Since as early as 2003, this already has been our core expertise; we specialize in SEO+PPC synchronization, delivering the best PPC campaigns in the market.
We specialize in high-CTR (>3%) and low-CPC (<50% industry average) campaigns via iterative tuning. A CTR (Click Through Rate) of 3% means that 3 customers click the ad when it is shown a 100 times. And where other advertisers are paying up to $1 per click or more, we keep the CPC (cost per click) for you below $0.50 (we guarantee a CPC<50% of the industry average).

Considering ad-succes: the ad is the first customer-filter, the website the second.
How well the ad-clicks convert into (website)sales is determined by the 4 KSF's mentioned above, in the PPC section.
When a PPC campaign is running for some time, an advice can also be given to tune the website-contents itself, by introducing keywords which have a high CTR as well as high conversionrate in Google or Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing, or YSM).

Tuning references

• high CTR (>3%),
• low CPC (< $0.40),
• excellent average position (<4), and
• high conversion-rate (>10%) of clicks into leads and sales.

All three campaigns (and its landing pages) were extensively tuned for about 6 weeks, to achieve these excellent results.

Campaign 1:

Campaign 2:

Campaign 3: