Author: Kurt Schauer
„Let’s just do a bit of SEO now.“ No successful search engine optimization can arise from a „strategy“ of that kind. In this article, we show you how to use Google AdWords to align an SEO campaign much more effectively, reach the right customers, and save money in the process – without drawbacks and with a reasonable amount of effort.
The Dream of Exact Prediction
SEO is a field whose success can never be predicted with 100% certainty. With enough know-how, however, this process is largely calculable, so statements along the lines of „SEO doesn’t work!“ are fundamentally wrong. That sentence is only true when no strategy exists – but then the fault lies in the alignment of the campaign and not in SEO as a marketing instrument itself.
When an SEO campaign fails, the reasons are often manifold. They range from a lack of expertise, to too small a budget, to simply poor work. Often, however, the start is what stands in the way of the entire project, because instead of user-data-driven optimization, only the classic keyword research takes place – which, however, became obsolete in 2016 (and beyond). With Google AdWords, an SEO campaign can be significantly enhanced, and the search for keywords is only a small cog in your SEO machine. Because: success is money.
Weak Indicators of an SEO Campaign
The last sentence is intended to mean: It is irrelevant whether, following an SEO campaign, you suddenly gain an additional 2,000 visitors per day, write significantly more comments, or have optimized pages. Are you at the top of Google for certain search terms? That’s good, but you must not forget why you ultimately got involved in SEO in the first place: to increase your profits.
However, more visitors per day are not always responsible for this actually being the case. If you have invested money in an enormously expensive SEO campaign, the result must ultimately pay off. A campaign for 10,000 Euros that ultimately brings you additional sales of 2,000 Euros cannot in good conscience be called „successful“ (despite higher visitor numbers!).
Therefore, you should try to link SEO with Google AdWords: First, start the aforementioned keyword research using traditional methods. The keywords identified through this will then serve you to launch a campaign using Google AdWords. After perhaps one month, evaluate the results and thereby recognize which keywords resonate with customers and which do not. The advantage of this is that this analysis takes very little time and you immediately recognize whether an SEO campaign will bear fruit or not.
The Practical Example
To emphasize the importance of Google AdWords, let’s consider the following example:
- You run a company that manufactures a completely new type of protective film for mobile phone displays. Fingerprints are automatically removed, and the miracle material independently repels dirt and dust. In short: the holy grail. However, one disadvantage is the exorbitantly high price.
- A classic keyword research for this term will also include words like „mobile phone,“ „smartphone,“ „display,“ and similar. These are therefore keywords that are extremely competitive. You will have to invest a lot of time and money to rank your company high using these search terms.
- Due to the complex SEO campaign, you decide to commission an external company. This company optimizes strictly according to the „good old rules“ of SEO. The entire work will take six months, which will naturally be quite expensive for your company.
In the end, significantly more visitors come to your site, but they rarely actually make a purchase. Tools for improving conversion rates do bring some additional customers to purchase, but the enormous costs for developing the SEO campaign have still not been recouped.
How can this be?
User Data Error as the Cause
The problem in our example is that the target audience was completely disregarded when creating the keywords. Yes, you now get thousands of visitors to your site who searched for „mobile phone“ or „display“ – but who are simply not interested in your expensive luxury solution. Perhaps the number of unique visitors increases by 2,500%, but that doesn’t help you if only 5% more sales are generated in the same period.
The entire SEO campaign was a waste of money, and effective optimization for a few keywords would have been much more effective. Therefore: the ranking of a page only conditionally indicates actual sales.
Error Prevention through AdWords
Instead, proceed as follows: Use the well-known Google Keyword Planner to research keywords, then set up Google AdWords Conversion Tracking. This will give you an exact overview of how much money you invest per keyword. Every keyword that reaches a break-even point is worthwhile from your perspective. You can „eliminate“ all terms in the negative range. AdWords also helps to avoid competitors‘ mistakes. Perhaps you are familiar with the situation where you conduct keyword research and then keep an eye on the competition. Successful competitors should, after all, know which terms hold the big money. However, this is often not true: just because a high price is bid per AdWords click does not mean that there is a concept behind it. Your competition sometimes acts just as aimlessly as numerous other companies. You cannot determine good sales solely based on a few keywords.
Of course, competitors often back the right horse – but why shouldn’t you avoid accidentally spending money on useless keywords with a little research?
Blind trust in SEO agencies? Better not!
The information in this article should, of course, be known by professional SEO agencies. The reason why the classic method is still preferred is simply financial. If Google AdWords reveals that a campaign is simply not successful, it would be terminated immediately – and the SEO agency would not receive any money. Unscrupulous companies therefore prefer to keep the client in the dark and stubbornly optimize, even if the result is not remotely helpful.
Do you have questions?
Kurt Schauer
Managing Director
Related articles
Google My Business: That simple!
You can easily place free advertising on Google. How? With "Google My Business".
Friendly Fire - Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts, especially in the form of blog entries, are becoming increasingly popular. Companies particularly favour this form of marketing,...
Dialogue and online marketing
With the imprint, as the operator of a website, you show your visitors who they are dealing with here. This...
