Towards the end of 2011, Google provided me with an early Christmas present; a present that as a PPC consultant has made a massive difference in reporting back to clients on the true value PPC was bringing to their business.

The present Google provided me with was the multi channel funnels tab in analytics. This new tab provides me with accurate, real time information on the part PPC plays in a websites overall online marketing strategy.

Previously in analytics, the data I could gather about PPC traffic drawn to the site was solely focussed on the last click. By this I mean I could only see what conversions/actions had being achieved directly by PPC. Now don’t get me wrong, this information is great and absolutely necessary because the bottom line is this data will tell you how much of a return the PPC traffic is bringing.

However, I always knew that a PPC campaign provides much more value to a website than simply just the conversions that can be directly attributed to it. The problem was I couldn’t prove it with solid, tangible figures. The new data available within the multi channels funnel now allows me to demonstrate in cold hard facts what additional value PPC is bringing.

With features such as assisted conversions and top conversion paths, I can now see what part PPC has played in the overall performance of the campaign. For example if someone clicks on a PPC ad and comes to my site and then leaves to research prices elsewhere before coming back to the site via an organic listing and purchasing then PPC is then attributed with an assisted conversion as it has played a part in the process. Previously, no information regarding PPC being involved in this process was available and the organic listing would take all the credit.

Now my reports have doubled in size and my clients are twice as informed as to the value PPC is bringing to their website. So, if you haven’t yet examined the figures in the multi channels funnel section of your analytics account I urge you to soon….your clients won’t regret it.

If you’re a fan of Alanis Morissette, you might be interested to know that not that many things she actually sang about in that song were ironic, which is kind of annoying. But late last week I came across something that’s a little bit close to ironic; Google announcing that a recent algorithm change is designed to target and penalise ad heavy websites.

According to their blog, Google are targeting sites which have an extreme number of ads on their site – specifically though they’re talking about sites with too many ads above the fold. Their argument is that sites with lots of adverts above the fold make it difficult for users to find the useful content which Google has directed them too, thus affecting the all important user experience.

So will your site be affected? What type of sites will suffer a hit to their rankings?

Well, to get an idea of the kind of site this algorithm change might affect, imagine a site that places heavy prominence on ads above the fold. A site that optimises hundreds of pages so that each one presents ads before the more natural, useful content, and which does this to monetize and bring in as much revenue as possible. In fact, imagine Google.co.uk.

Any one of Google’s own millions of search results pages could be considered offenders under this new algorithm change, simply because of the number of ads in place. I’ve just run a general search and the resulting page has 7 ads above the fold and three organic listings.

My point is that although Google’s search results pages have lots of ads above the fold, (for now) these ads are relevant and useful, and don’t detract from helping me find what I’m looking for.

This brings us to the crux of this new change – how much is too much? Google might argue that their 7 ads above the fold are acceptable – but then how many is too many in terms of other sites?

It’s also ironic that Google have announced this algorithm change when they own and operate one of the web’s most popular ad display networks. Does this change mean that Google will begin to penalise organically those sites which use its own ad display network too religiously? Perhaps Google haven’t noticed this irony yet, or perhaps there’s provision in the algorithm which effectively ignores Google’s own display network but penalises others. In theory, this would certain help to solidify the display network’s dominance as the choice of the masses, but there are issues there in terms of fair competition.

We’re unlikely to get an answer to any of this in the short term, but it’s worth bearing in mind next time you’re placing ads. Ominously, Google suggested that this change isn’t limited to ads above the fold either. In the blog in question they seem to suggest that if a site has only a small amount of content above the fold then it could be penalised in search, regardless of whether the rest of the above fold space is taken up by ads, flash, video or anything else.

Bear this in mind if your site’s take a hit in the coming weeks.

It can be a case of mixed feelings when you hear the news that one of your competitors have closed down. On one hand you fear the worst – that the same might happen to your business if the demand for your products or service is slowly drying up with the current state of the economy. On the other hand, you’re feeling that this means there should be more opportunity for you to gain a bigger market share. So how do you grasp that opportunity through your online marketing?

Gain instant traffic with pay-per-click adverts

As soon as you hear the news, you could set up a new campaign in your PPC account to target those searching for the closed down company’s name. Add variations of their company name to your keyword list and create adverts that inform searchers that the company has closed down, as well as displaying your key USP. Let’s make an example, let’s say you have a website that sells football socks and your company name is ‘Red Socks United’. Your competitor that’s closed down is called ‘Blue Socks City’. Here’s the type of PPC advert I would run along with keyword variations of ‘blue socks city’ to target those searchers:

Attract traffic to your site with a blog post

To target people searching for your competitor’s brand name through organic search, you could write an article or blog post to publish the news online. Using their name in the title could help you pick up organic traffic, and with Google’s recent freshness update, your article may just appear on the first page of results for a few days after posting. Obviously you don’t want to be seen to be taking pleasure in them closing down, so keep it non-biased and informative like a proper news post. However do make sure you have a call to action of some sort at the end of the post which encourages readers to stay on your website.

Improve your organic rankings with broken link building

This is an SEO link building technique I’ve been reading about more and more recently, and is one which I feel brings a fresh lot of link opportunities for those who have become a bit stuck and are running out of ideas. The concept is basically that you find broken links on a website that you want to gain a link from, kindly tell the webmaster that you have found the broken link whilst browsing their site and just wanted to point it out to them, with the aim that they will agree to link to your site instead, since you have content which is suitable enough to replace the previous content they linked to.

Whilst doing some competitor analysis the other day, I came across various links to a site of a company which I know went into administration last year. As they would’ve been a competitor of my new start-up client, a lot of the links that they have to their (now dead) site could link to my client’s site instead as they sell the same products that their competitor did.

Gain more revenue from your existing customers

Knowing that one of your competitors have gone bust might make you re-evaluate what you’ve done to stay successful and what you’ll probably find is that an important factor is – without a doubt – your customers. Now is a better time than any to thank your customers and businesses can always do more to gain more revenue from their existing customer base. Why not send out a newsletter/email to everyone on your subscribed list and offer them a brilliant discount, free delivery or a free gift with every purchase – whatever you think your customers will appreciate, what you can afford to give away and still make a profit on.

Don’t let a competitor’s misfortune get you down, instead adopt these positive online strategies to try and increase your share of the online market. If you need any help with putting these strategies into place, call Creare on 01788 551 591.

Considering the amount of people who use the internet and the amount of statistics out there about ever increasing amounts of money being spent online year on year, it still bemuses me that many companies strategy for drawing traffic to their website falls solely in the lap of SEO.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of SEO and well aware, as an employee of Creare, the positive results that can be gained. However, I’m also a big fan of PPC which is why I don’t understand when people say my SEO is working well, what do I need PPC for? Isn’t it just a waste of money?

I believe what people often forget is that despite organic listings drawing 65%-70% of clicks from the SERPs the other 30%-35% is drawn by PPC. If you were a clothing manufacturer you wouldn’t make clothes that only fit 70% of the population, so why would you want your site to only be eligible for 70% of the traffic from search engines?

It seems perfectly logical to maximise your websites exposure a strategy for both SEO and PPC would be best. Especially when you consider PPC will only cost you when clicked on, brand exposure in prominent positions on the SERPs across a vast array of keywords costs nothing.

I’ve also seen data that suggests conversion rates of a site can be affected by the differing methods of sending traffic to a site. In the report, I read a series of tests were conducted on a site that’s average visitor was web savvy (knew the difference between SEO and PPC for example) and the conversion rates of the site based on traffic source were as follows:

SEO Traffic Only – 15.1% conversion rate

PPC Traffic Only – 15.3% conversion rate

SEO & PPC Traffic – 15.4% conversion rate

As you can clearly see, conversions are marginally better when traffic is sent to a site via both SEO and PPC. On a site that doesn’t get much traffic, this higher conversion rate wouldn’t have too much effect but on a site that gains thousands of visits a day, this extra .1% could make a significant difference to the bottom line.

Another major benefit of running SEO and PPC campaigns at the same time is the ability to share data. For example you can test the effectiveness of new keywords via PPC before spending months optimising for them via SEO.

SEO and PPC also complement each other very well in many other instances and often when one method has a weakness, the other has a strength so using both mediums also helps makes your online strategy a lot more robust.

In conclusion, what I’m trying to get across today is that even if your site is doing well and your SEO is working, the amount of traffic to your site and conversions resulting from it will increase with the addition of PPC. So perhaps in 2012 you should rethink your strategy and consider adding some PPC to your strategy.

SEO is an excellent method of improving your website’s visibility online and ultimately generating traffic. However, organic traffic has some drawbacks:

• You can’t easily test landing pages, headlines, and templates
• You can’t get rapid feedback
• You don’t get traffic on certain keywords until you rank for the terms

This is where PPC campaigns can help out your SEO by allowing you to conduct testing which heralds instant feedback.

Please see below my top 3 ways a PPC account can help you gather the data you need to make the right SEO decisions.

Testing Home Pages

If you’re thinking about changing your homepage or making some adjustments to the existing one with the aim of increasing your site’s performance, one of the first things you’d want to do after designing the new page would be to test it to check it is actually an improvement on the old one.

Unfortunately, you can’t simply upload a few homepages and tell the search engines to rotate which one the traffic goes too. You also don’t want all of these homepages indexed as that can cause issues with your existing rankings.

Never fear as there is a solution; simply put your new homepage designs in their own folder and use robot.txt file on them to disallow any crawling by the search engines to prevent these pages being indexed and affecting your existing SEO rankings.

Then send your desired traffic to these pages via PPC and monitor the results via analytics or alike.

Testing Title Tags

Webpage title tags serve two major purposes:

• Tell a search engine what your page is about
• Serve as a headline on the search engine result pages

What your headline says when displayed on the SERPs is the difference between your page gaining the click or not.

The main goal of a PPC adverts headline is to showcase your product/service, offering and drawing attention to itself with the ultimate aim of gaining the click. Therefore the overall goals of an organic title tag and a PPC adverts headline are very similar.

Most page titles are 55 – 65 characters and a PPC adverts headline, when shown above the search results with extended headlines activated, can be up to 60 characters which means you can test a variety of page titles via PPC to determine which have the best click through rate before you place them on your website. This is a really simple tip but can make a big difference to the amount of traffic your organic listing generates.

Test New Keywords

If you’re thinking of adding some new keywords to optimise for organically but are not sure if they are the right keywords for you site or if the return they’ll bring will warrant the investment of optimising for them, then PPC is a great way of finding out if they will work for your site without having to update your onsite and offsite SEO.

By setting up ad groups for your potential new keywords and then monitoring your sites analytics, you can gain a valuable insight into whether these keywords will be worth targeting via an organic campaign.