SEO Can Lower your Cost Per Click in Google Adwords
Pay Per Click is one of the fastest ways to jump-start your business with traffic today. Just be aware that Google Adwords, for example, isn’t exactly “plug and play.” There’s quite a bit of a learning curve. PPC is the fastest way to get things moving, but it will also provide you with very good information and data for your SEO efforts.
Search Engine Optimization is also important but will definitely take a lot longer to generate results and traffic. If your website is brand new, you’re going to be trapped in the “Google Sandbox” for at least the first few months of your website’s existence. Count on lots of fluctuations in your rankings, lots of inconsistencies, and lots of growing pains.
Still, long term SEO is going to bring you the best kinds of traffic and the most qualified leads. Plus, your SEO efforts (optimizing code, improving page content, etc) is all going to help your PPC results as well. Google likes to reward “good PPC buyers” with lower Cost Per Click and higher
Quality Scores in Google Adwords.
AdWords advertisers struggle constantly to keep pace in an ever-changing industry, where Google likes to switch things up with hundreds of changes to the platform each year.
You can keep tweaking copy and testing button placement forever, but those minor changes won’t have near the impact as these.
Google AdWords: Optimize Quality Score!
Google wants you to think Quality Score aren’t all that important, but we know better.
Your Quality Score impacts your click-through rate and ad ranking in a big way. Google actually rewards high QS advertisers with lower costs per click and higher ad positions. Lets understand Quality Score.
The 1-10 Quality Score reported for each keyword in your account is an estimate of the quality of your ads and landing pages triggered by that keyword. Having a high quality score means that Google thinks your ad and landing page are relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad.
Example:
Let’s say that you own a website that specializes in socks and Sam, a customer, is looking for striped socks. Wouldn’t it be great if Sam typed “striped socks” into Google search, saw your ad about striped socks, clicked it, and then landing on your website and bought some spiffy new striped socks?
What would happen if, on the other hand, Sam simply saw an ad about “socks” or “Clothes,” especially if he saw it together with a competitor’s ad about “striped socks”?
In first case, the customer searches and finds exactly what he’s looking for. That’s what Google consider a great user experience, and that’s what can earn you a high Quality Score. What’s more, relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.
In the illustration above, you can clearly see that Advertiser I, with the highest Quality Score, spends far less per click than the others.
Quality Score also plays a role in how often your ads will appear – and for which keywords. In fact, for every point you improve your Quality Score, you can expect to see a 9% increase in Impression Share.
Quality Score also has a huge impact on cost per conversion.
Remember, QS is just an algorithm and any algorithm can be hacked. Google knows the typical click-through rate for specific types of ads and ad rankings. If you fail to meet their expected click-through rate, you’re going to be stuck with low Quality Scores. Beat that expected CTR and raise your Quality Scores!
Before you can improve your quality score, you need to know what your current score is. Here’s how to find out:
Log in to your AdWords account, then click the Campaigns tab at the top. Next select the Keywords tab. Click the white speech bubble next to any keyword’s status to see details about that keyword’s Quality Score. You’ll see ratings for expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.
Conclusion
Although lowering your CPC is important to succeed in AdWords and improve other aspects of your campaign, it shouldn’t be your end goal. The ultimate goal for running an Advertising campaign should be meeting the needs of your potential customers and improving user experience, which will consequently drive more traffic to your website and make your business profitable.
In other words, don’t get obsessed with metrics, especially with just one. Lowering your CPC is just one piece of the puzzle. You will need SEO.