Frequently Asked Questions - SEO & PPC

Paid Search

I never click on the sponsored links - why would I spend money on PPC when I can use SEO to get my website to rank?

There are a few reasons. Firstly, even though you don't personally click on sponsored links, millions of people do. PPC works for advertisers - as is reflected in the growth in search. Online media is the fastest growing form of advertising in the world today, and within the online sector, search is the fastest growing area. More and more companies are spending more of their budgets on PPC - because it works.

Secondly, SEO takes time (months) to work, whereas a good PPC campaign can be up and delivering traffic and clients within days.

The third benefit of PPC is capturing keyword variations - your clients don't all think the same way and hence they don't all search for the same things. Say for example, you sell hair products. Do your clients search for "hair products", "buy hair product" or "herbal shampoo boston"? Chances are that for even the most niche business there are 1000's of relevant keywords potential clients search for. The easiest way to target all these keywords is through PPC campaigns. Effective SEO can get a site to rank for a number of terms but getting a site to rank highly for thousands of keywords is both extremely difficult and extremely expensive. If not impossible.

The third point is tied in with the second point in that for SEO to be effective you need to have data indicating which keywords have worked best for YOUR site. The easiest way to get this info is through PPC campaigns and having this data ensures your marketing budget is focused on optimizing the right keywords.

The last point to consider is that most sophisticated online businesses invest on both PPC and SEO. These organizations will rank well for some terms and target other terms through PPC. The reason they take this approach is because it works and it delivers an even larger volume of ongoing targeted traffic.

Why would we choose Loveclients to manage our PPC ad spend?

Basically, we live and breathe search. Everyone in our agency is a Google Adword's Professional, including our receptionist!. The guys that run the ship are some of the top Google Adwords Professionals in the world. This is what we do, and we live by the fact that we do it best.

This means that we have an intimate understanding of how to deliver great results from PPC advertising. We also continually keep up to date with all things search by regularly attending conferences and workshops all over the world. It's in our interest to ensure we stay on top of our game.

What can Loveclients do for me?

• Compose, execute and manage both your SEO and SEM Strategy.
• Constantly Analyze and Manage your ongoing search campaign.
• Provide real time, 24/7 - 365 day a year support on all your search marketing needs.

How do you come up with budget recommendations for paid search (PPC) campaigns?

There are two major factors affecting our recommended PPC budget:

1. Estimated Search Volumes: Basically the amount of clicks / traffic you could get per day. Budget recommendations will be relative to search volumes - i.e., categories with large search volumes, like travel or finance, will require a larger daily budget than a campaign targeting searches for, say, music lessons in New York.

2. Projected average Cost Per Click (CPC): This is an estimate of how much we think you will be paying on average per click. This will be an estimate based on our experience managing campaigns in a huge range of verticals. We know that industries that are competitive and have a high average value sale or lifetime value per customer (e.g., mortgages, credit cards, forex trading etc.) will be more expensive than industries that are less competitive and have a lower average value per sale / customer value (e.g. books, music, dvd's etc.). Campaigns targeting industries with high average CPC's will require a larger budget to secure decent page positions and traffic.

The estimated daily search volume (clicks) x average CPC estimate = daily budget recommendation.

How long does it take to set up a PPC campaign?

As a guide it typically takes 24-48 hours to launch a new campaign from sign-off. Yes, that's correct - we said 24-48 hours. Remember, we work 24-7 / 365 days a year, so 24-48 hours in 'Loveclients' time, is like 4-8 working days for any other agency. Do note however that this can change depending on how big the campaign is. The best thing to do is chat to us live online and we'll give you an exact idea of when we can have the campaign up and running.

If I run PPC campaigns won't my competitors click on my ads and spend my budget?

"Click fraud" gets a run in the press from time to time, but in reality the effects are minimal. The search engines have sophisticated tools and monitoring systems in place (both automated and human) to be able to tell when a click doesn't seem natural. "Invalid clicks" are clicks deemed by the search engine to be generated deceptively by humans or robots and you won't be charged for these clicks.

Why do you recommend running Paid Search (PPC) campaigns prior to starting Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

PPC campaigns generate a lot of data about keywords and conversions that is very useful to running a good SEO campaign. For this reason we recommend running paid search before SEO.

SEO

What does SEO mean?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's all about optimizing your website to rank well for your target keywords in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Good rankings in the major search engines means more traffic to your website, and more traffic means more sales or advertising revenue.

"SEOs" also sometimes refers to agencies or consultants who specialise in helping clients achieve better rankings. This is a constantly developing and evolving industry. Choosing a good SEO agency is almost as difficult as doing good SEO, but your best bet is to look for someone with demonstrated ability and a record of delivering results.

How do I get my website to rank no.1 on Google?

The short answer is "A lot of hard work". It depends which keywords you want your site to rank for, what your competitors are doing, how old your site is, how many links you have pointing toward your site, and a host of other factors. Ranking number one on competitive terms like "home loans" or "cheap flights" is going to take a lot more work (and money) than ranking for "mortgage broker in Essex" or "cheap flights to Chicago". And, if you have a brand new website with a brand new URL, it's going to make things much trickier.

Some SEO agencies might promise to get your site to number one for a certain keyword or phrase, but in reality, the only people that can guarantee you the No.1 spot on Google are Google themselves. Google constantly updates their "algorithm" (the way they rank sites), and the number one spot will vary from week to week or location to location. Rather than guaranteeing a number one ranking we prefer to let our track record speak for itself.

How long does SEO take to work?

Once again, there's no short answer. There are a number of factors that influence a site's rankings, including:

• How long your site has been online.
• The design of your website.
• The number and quality of inbound links.

For example, if you have just launched a new site within the travel sector, which has no inbound links, and is not very "search friendly" - it could be 12 months before SEO efforts gain traction. On the other hand, if you have a site that is 5 years old, has some link popularity and is competing in a niche vertical - say, badminton equipment - it may be possible to see significant improvements in rankings in a two to three months, and the ultimate ranking targets reached within six months.

I haven't built my site yet. Can you help me with SEO?

It's a really good idea to think about SEO before you develop a site - it's much better to get the optimization right before you build your site rather than spending money redeveloping search engine unfriendly sites. We can provide a pre-development functional spec, tailored to your website that outlines the best practice SEO strategies for your web developers.

Do you actually make changes on my site to optimize it?

It really depends on how much you would like us to do for you. Under normal circumstances, we provide the benchmarking, competitor analysis, keyword research, guidance, consulting and I.P. and these changes are typically rolled out by the website's developers (who we will work with). However, we do have both in house and partner developers & designers who can execute on required changes completely free of charge. There are no hidden expenses with our packages.

My site's built in frames or an old Flash file - can you optimize it?

Sometimes. Optimizing a website built with old technology such as frames or non search-engine-readable Flash is much more difficult than a site with nice search engine friendly information architecture. However, there are some workarounds for old technology. It really comes down to a matter of whether it's going to be more cost-effective to develop workarounds for the old technology or redevelop a new site from scratch.

Other stuff

I want a new website - can you build it?

Yes, depending on your budget we may be able to recommend web development firms who can help you. What we can do is provide SEO recommendations to your developers and quality outsourced web content development. Contact us to find out more.

I don't understand half of whats mentioned in this FAQ, acronyms already!?.

Feel free to visit the search engine marketing glossary, or chat with us live and we'll explain everything where possible.