PPC vs SEO Optimize both for better online performance
SEO vs PPC to leverage website growth
A strong SEO strategy can help new websites avoid big ad spend, drive high quality traffic and be found organically, but a solid understanding and implementation of SEO can help connect content, clarify messaging topics, build authority, present better, more organized information and help with a sites overall conversion metrics.
SEO is more than your content, it’s the big picture of relevancy and how ideas are connected online
SEO is all encompassing when it pertains to marketing online. It’s makes up your entire virtual footprint, your channels and your website(s), traffic, authority, feedback and engagement. The more refined your content and connected are thoughts, ideas, organizational initiatives or any other part of your company is now a factor into your SEO.
Proper Mark-up for Technical SEO Improvements
A well marked-up site of content, linking structure and and technical SEO all contribute to a sites quality score. If you currently are running PPC ads, this quality score may also have a compounding effect outside of search by allowing the paid placements to obtain higher quality scores ultimately boosting campaign performance.
SEO and PPC are both very powerful tools at our disposal and utilizing both effectively can help boost a domain. It should rarely be one or the other. If you have the budget, leverage PPC but first optimize for SEO to help ensure you get the most for your ad spend dollars.
We’ll try to help demystify SEO for new websites and provide business owners, leadership, director level administrators or even new SEO’s in the field a more comprehensive understanding of what’s at the core of SEO and how focus on these factors can help build a rock solid foundation for your website and also allow paid campaigns to work at their highest potential.
SEO is here to stay, now implemented across many of today’s most popular online channels
SEO appears to be infiltrating every nook and cranny of the online world from websites to social media. This expands beyond Google Serp and onto every major platform used today. However for the sake of this article we’ll be focusing on how and why it’s connected and what advantages leveraging SEO for a new website can provide.
Is PPC better than SEO for Website Traffic?
They are both digital marketing methods that provide the life blood which drives online commerce, service and reach for brands looking to be successful online. You’re marketing should be diverse but intentional. It’s not one or the other, because in a lot of cases today the use of both effectively skyrockets brands from meek start-ups to online powerhouses that are capable of turning incredible revenue streams.
Start-Up Brands Looking to Improve Organic Traffic or Elevate PPC Performance Need to Optimize Their New Website for SEO
Understanding the Business Objectives and Formulating an Approach that Best Accomplishes them through today’s Marketing Channels
Effective marketing is about understanding the objective and how best to leverage the tools we have available. Developing and executing those plans as under-budget and improved performance is not only valuable, but when leveraged correctly can be game-changing for start-up brands or domains struggling to find a constant flow of traffic.
The way it looks, the future of most small businesses will rely on the ability to build organic traffic across the web or pay hefty sums in media buys. SEO takes on new frontiers across the web as it expands into every platform we use online and in most of today’s cases it’s required to be successful on many platforms even outside of Google.
SEO and Social Networks, Optimizing Content
SEO on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the lot of em, now require at least some knowledge of SEO, best-practices, properly laying out content, titles, descriptions and the infamous hashtag. Successful creators and publishers need to be well versed, effective copywriters, and able to distribute content to their audiences across a variety of channels in order to grow online.
SEO Expansion in to the Majority of Digital Channels, Demand the Need for Marketers to Understand How Content is Marked-up and Connected
A lot has changed with SEO and in an incredibly short time. SEO strategies and methodologies have come and gone, millions of sites penalized by trying to leverage shortcuts to riches. We’ve seen forums, linkfarms, keyword stuffing, and a laundry list of blackhat or un-ethical ways of creating authority online be used, leveraged and ultimately penalized by the powers that be.
Black-hat strategies have in fact been successful for a while but as time progressed, Google identified and makes adjustments accordingly these concepts end up hurting most in the long run. The past decade we’ve witnessed sites get banished to oblivion for a many factors as a result of core algorithm updates. Websites trying to beat the system with paid backlinks, scraping content, link farms, keyword stuffing and an armament of other black-hat SEO tactics just does not seem like the best approach when looking to build a long standing business online.
Focus on quality over quantity, best-Practice SEO and Value/Solution centered content for e-commerce or lead-gen style websites
Here we feel White hat SEO should be the basis of online development. The time and energy required to plan and build a website should not be undercut by urges of that short-term payoff.
If a website is poorly curated, content consisting of subpar or incomplete SEO optimizations or is simply just slow, conversions will most likely be down, it will be hard to rank and the business owner is left with one option, to continue to throw more money at media buys and PPC campaigns in hopes of keeping the tills turning.
Simple SEO Recommendation for a New Website
Websites that dominate the serp results have great content, and that content has been optimized better than the rest. Good content and SEO, the two go hand-in-hand and is what allows us to develop authority that wins those coveted top search spots. Focusing on quality, format and your backlink portfolio will have the largest impact on organic opportunities for your brand.
Great content and backlink portfolio signals to Google that you are an in-market authority
Great SEO enables you to more clearly and loudly to google that you are the authority
Focus on the website and how you imagine it, then work closely with a developer who can provide a detailed plan of content and its placement and accessibility throughout your domain. SEO has gotten a bad rap, but not because it SEO doesn’t work, it most certainly does.
SEO is a long-term approach, but Quick Wins Can Be Obtained
SEO should not be thought of as a quick win, we all know that but there are many leverage points that can be had and begin seeing results in as little as a couple of months. The time for a site to be indexed will vary greatly and depend on a long list of variables. In my experience a new website without an existing DR or links will take roughly 3 months to get completely indexed. This of course will depend on how well the site is configured. The ability to develop a strong link portfolio will often determine trajectory.
If your website is already indexed, a good brush up on the technical aspects of SEO can help give a boost to those site struggle just out of the top 3.
How do we best optimize a website for organic search performance?
I’d like to explain my approach to analyzing and optimizing a website specifically for organic growth and I hope in a way that the main concept can be grasped even for the non-seo reader.
There are many technologies and tools available to build online and how improvements are added will vary wildly across the board.
At the root of successful search engine optimizations is quality content, user perceived value, page/link architecture and website optimization.
Website optimization or online SEO is a carries and under appreciated scope of work, a Pandora’s box of sorts for digital marketers, sending most new SEO’s quickly down the rabbit hole with what seems an ever-growing number of factors to keep up with, consider, strategize and somehow implement.
We want a high SEO score but we need the page to connect and flow just as well, everything is interconnected and needs to be tested across a variety of different devices, desktop, mobile, the dogs iPhone you name it.
Perfect Website SEO, Is it possible?
Does a website need to rank top numbers for all facets of SEO to be successful? Absolutely not, but a little can go along way, especially in tight niches where a snippet is the difference between above the fold or below the fold placement in the serps.
It’s this fact that compounds the variability of optimization. Like building a brick house a websites foundation needs to be strong in order to survive the storm of today’s volatile marketplace. Strong SEO practices will cement in a strong foothold for a website giving it the ability to compete effectively online.
Optimization is a complex process and incorporates many facets of the web. The copy, images, heading tags, structured data, url slugs and much more can be used as building blocks to establish content authority and improved performance in the serps.
When implemented correctly solid SEO can better define sites content and in the end that’s what its about. Developing a clear picture of a topic, its identifying problems and providing solutions that are all semantically connected. If its voice optimized to follow along natural speaking terms even better. This along with a strong inbound link portfolio builds authority for a website and gives it a chance battle for the top spot.
What do we need to Focus on for SEO?
There are many elements on the web that can be optimized for but to start, and especially for new to market ventures, focusing on these key pillars will prove most beneficial.
Most Important SEO Tools:
• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Google Data Studio
Content Quality
How well is the page content written?
Are the pages complete, do we feel they cover the topic enough?
tip: If struggling with finding content check out AlsoAsked or even the Serps for related topics or variations to often asked questions.
Schema and Structured Data mark-up done and validated?
Site Architecture
Is your content categorized effectively to similar content, products and services?
Is content linked adequately enough throughout the site?
Are the heading tags connected and configured on the url for the specified search terms for the page and how do they connect across the topic cluster.
Page titles, image alt txt, link titles all are available tools for content creators and SEO’s to use for website optimization and should be carefully thought out.
Focus on Improving the user experience, How they navigate and find your content. Often less is more with the web, so keep a clean house with space on your sites.
Useful Site Architecture Tools:
• ScreamingFrog
• Site Analyzer
• Ahrefs
• SemRush
• Moz
Utilize lists to simply concepts and provide quick access to long pages and content.
If its longform content are the pages utilizing methods to improve navigation via anchored lists that allow users to quickly jump to key sections and if possible configuring those anchors to support the search term. It’s another puzzle piece to the mystery that is SEO.
Solid Internal Link Structure
Once the pages are created and formatted we can move onto linking structure. We want to develop connections between overlaying content if possible and provide quick navigation to what we feel are the important sections user need to interact with. We want to develop with our visitors in mind help them discover and digest the content they are reading as easily and quickly as possible.
The where and how links are used within a webpage can be important, and I think every SEO i’ve talked to has a slightly different stand point. In general develop a solid plan for how to link your content, it needs to be consistent and really should be done with an experienced SEO.
If we feel the copy is complete enough to pass mustard and the linking structure is on point, what’s left on page is the use of images, their size, file names and their alt text attributes.
On-Page SEO is done but my website is slow….Website Performance Optimization
Leveraging image compression or next-gen image formats can help dramatically. Serving your content with acceptable cache parameters and possibly through a CDN can help a bloated website perform better. Images are optimized, compressed and/or served in next gen formats? Great now we can move onto Schema and Structured Data.
Useful Page Performance Tools:
• Google Developers Page Speed
• GTMetrix
• Pingdom
Schema / Structured Data Implementation and Validation
Schema and structured data mark-up where applicable. We wan to check this existing mark-up and identify missing mark-up, and fix any potential validation errors. All this can be viewed directly in GSC.
Quick Wins and possibly the Edge in your Industry with Properly Configured Schema and Structured Data
Most businesses unfortunately tend to neglect schema and structured data. I’ve personally noticed organizational schema is used but often applied in a way that is inconsistent or under utilized for the various internal processes schema is able to help identify. Even review schema tends to be under utilized, and next to products are essential for today’s ecommerce websites.
Proper Configuration Schema and Structured Data
Implementing valid schema can be a quick win for your website and also improves the domain on multiple fronts. First it better organizes a domains content and provides clearer connections and information about certain content. Schema allows us to add additional information into our pages often providing the ability to begin showing snippets and enhancements within the serp pages themselves. Schema can help domains to take take up more serp space with qualifying snippets such as reviews, product info and more which is a great thing especially on mobile searches.
Useful Schema Validation Tools:
• Google Rich Results Test
• Schema Validator Tool
• JSON Schema Validator
On Page and Website Optimization and delivery methods to boost performance
Once we have our solid base of content developed and deployed well want to make sure optimizations are being considered and utilized where necessary. Is the site cached and how so, does it utilize AMP and are those pages registering in search console or do they hold validation errors that need to be resolved. Every piece of the website has a roll and an intended purpose when it comes to demand-gen style websites.
Focus on Providing a Better User Experience
At the end of the day much of our focus should be placed on user experience and not what someone needs a website to look like. This is the web in 2022, It needs to perform to have a chance. Online business is a battle and only getting more difficult for the un-prepared, new-to-market players unable to adopt a strong online strategy.
Is that it? Oh, dear no, We’ve Just Quickly Highlighted Primarily On-page SEO
Once here we need to take additional steps to begin building a strong backlink profile. The good news is, if you did your due diligence and the content you provide is truly a value for online users than you will discover your sites will develop organic backlinks without the need of intensive link building campaigns.
In Conclusion Search Engine Optimization is an industry I find fascinating, one that I am happy to have had a part in, and one I will continue to learn about
Our advice is focus on the core items, making your your website as light and powerful as it can be.
- Content Quality
- Site Architecture
- Strong Internal Linking Strategy
- Website Performance (Speed, Load Times, Weight)
- Schema and Structured Data
- A Focus on User Experience
This is where we often see new brands enter a market and dominate online. Most of the time leaving their competition scratching their head about what’s are they doing so well.
Less can often help more on the web, Keep websites lightweight yet powerful.
If your building a new website make sure its a lightweight but packs a powerful punch with as much optimization that your budget will afford. SEO is an investment but only if executed correctly and all member of the teams need to be cognizant of the importance these factors throughout a website.
This approach of working within the scope simplifies much of the website development, and ensures a more capable domain competing on the web.