Introduction to PPC (Pay Per Click) & SEO (Search
Engine Optimisation)
What is SEO?
When you type a keyword into a
search engine and hit enter a list of 1000s of results
appear in front of you. Have you ever wondered why
the search results are ordered in a particular way?
How do search engines rank websites? Why do other
companies appear above my listing?
Search engines crawl the web constantly looking
at every single website. They consider many factors
from what they see of your site and decide how they
rank your site when someone searches certain keywords
that are relevant to your business.
Obviously all businesses want to rank at number
one for the most relevant keywords to your business
or at the very least in the top ten / first page
of the results. Estimates of increased business
from being on the first page for your keywords range
from 10 to 40%. Imagine what that would mean for
your business.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process
of analysing websites, and implementing changes
both offsite and onsite to improve rankings for
search terms most relevant to your business. There
are 100s of factors to be considered, all of which
are not particularly difficult to resolve however
as some factors are more important than others the
trick is to know where to focus your attention first
to get the best results.
Unlike PPC which is great for new sites that are
yet to be crawled and rank low for all key search
terms, SEO is about developing high ranking in the
Natural / Organic search results. Search engine
users trust natural results over paid ads almost
always and they receive far more clicks than sponsored
links.
SEO should not be viewed as a short term project
but rather a long term business decision to maintain
high search engine rankings. Search engine algorithms
will always be fine tuned and changed, therefore
maintaining an SEO strategy is vital to remain on
top with the major search engines.
What is PPC?
Pay per click (PPC) is a
targeted search engine based advertising method
that is perfect for increasing quality traffic to
your website. How does it work? Take Google for
example, type something in the search bar, hit enter
and you as always will have the natural results
(see SEO above) on the left hand side of the page
while you will have sponsored ads down the right
hand side of the page, basically companies decide
to bid on certain keywords that are relevant to
their product or service.
When someone types that keyword or term into Google
for example their ad will appear with a short message
appealing to the user. Because the user is obviously
looking for this particular product or service the
ads enjoy much higher success than traditional press
adverts. PPC is especially good for new websites
that are yet to be evaluated by the search engines
as they tend to take a while to gain trust and move
up the rankings.
