Frequently asked questions about Search Marketing

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 Australia 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 promotional products. Do your clients search for “promo products”, “buy promo product” or “promo clothing sydney”?  Chances are that for even the most niche business there are 1’000’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.

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 optimising the right keywords.

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

(*Ad news search marketing report 06.04.07)

Why would we choose The Found Agency to manage our PPC ad spend?

Basically, we live and breathe search. Everyone in our agency bar our CFO and cleaner is a Google Adword’s Professional. Our Directors were within the first 100 accredited Google Adwords Professionals in the world.

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 here and in the US (where they invented this stuff) to ensure we stay on top of our game.

Also, a number of Australia’s well known brands trust us to maximise their returns from search engine marketing (see Case Studies for details). If we can help them its highly likely we can help your brand too.

What can Found Agency do for you?

• Learn how we manage your search marketing campaign
• Read some of our search marketing success stories
• Learn more about us and our people

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, will require a larger daily budget than a campaign targeting searches for, say, soccer coaching.
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, share trading etc.) will be more expensive than industries that are less competitive and have a lower average value per sale / customer value (e.g., pet toys, books, 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 6-7 working days to launch a new campaign from sign-off. However this can change depending on what work we have on and how big the campaign is. The best thing to do is give us a call 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.

Your competitors can repeatedly click on your ads if they like, but all they’ll be achieving is a sore index finger – you won’t be charged.

For more information about how the major search engines combat click fraud and invalid clicks see what they have to say themselves: Google / Yahoo! / Sensis

We want someone to set up our PPC campaign for us to run in house. Will you do this as a one-off?

In a word: no.

Why do you recommend running Paid Search (PPC) campaigns prior to starting Search Engine Optimisation (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. (Read more about how PPC and SEO can work together).

SEO

What does SEO mean?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimisation”. It’s all about optimising 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. (See here for more about our Search Engine Optimisation services).

“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 “it depends.” 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 Walcha” or “cheap flights to Wangaratta.” 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:

• the age of your site,
• the way the site is designed, and
• the number and quality of one-way links pointing at the site (inbound links).

For example, if you have just launched a new site within the home loans 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, golf 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 as site – it’s much better to get the optimisation 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 optimise it?

As a general rule, no. 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).

My site’s built in frames (or old Flash) - can you optimise it?

Sometimes. Optimising 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. It’s a bit like putting on a weight belt and trying to climb Mt Everest. 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.

Miscellaneous

I want a new website – can you build it?

No, we don’t currently build websites, but 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’m launching a new site and don’t have much money but know it will be successful – can you optimise the site and I’ll share the profits with you once it ranks / turns a profit?

We are always open to opportunities – however, our general preference is to be paid in a traditional form for our time and expertise as opposed to a joint venture scenario.

What the hell are you talking about? Enough with the jargon and acronyms already.

Fair call - like most marketing / advertising forms, search just can’t get enough of its buzz words. Visit the search engine marketing glossary and all will be revealed.