SEO Reduces PPC Cost

One of my clients recently opened a second Google Adwords account to advertise one of his many businesses. “Why does it cost so much more to go after the same PPC keywords on my new website with this new Adwords account?! Is it because it’s new?” I’d previously mentioned to him that good SEO reduces the cost of any PPC campaign, but I say a lot of stuff, so it must’ve gotten lost in the shuffle. I sent him the following refresher.

Adwords Quality Score

The AdWords system calculates a ‘Quality Score’ for each of your PPC keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215

Lots of good info here. If you’re interested in lowering your PPC cost you should read the whole thing.

Lower CPC for PPC through SEO?

More info on how to get “a high landing page quality score” to decrease your CPC

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs&answer=46675&adtype=text

and a shorter answer

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47884

Even shorter still, here’s a summary of how to use SEO for better, cheaper PPC.

• Optimize your landing pages to match the keywords in your PPC campaigns. Create many landing pages if you have to.
• Do some usability testing on those landing pages. Read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug or hire somebody like me to do it for you.

That’s it. Your ads will be cheaper, appear higher, convert better and your landing pages will be more effective too. Contact me if you have any questions.