Blue Tent marketing

For maximum exposure and effectiveness, it's best to tailor your SEO and PPC strategies to complement each other. The wily search marketer knows how to leverage each approach to attain the best results.

As you probably already know, there are two common methods to market your business on the search engines. The first method is SEO, or search engine optimization. Two important aspects of an effective SEO strategy are generating consistent quality content and the second is increasing your link popularity by gaining inbound links to your website.

A consistent SEO campaign will provide the longevity and exposure for your primary and secondary or "long tail" keywords. A solid SEO campaign can bare higher R.O.I. than paid search campaigns due to the longevity of favorable rankings - especially once you land in the Top 10. Generally an SEO campaign is a long-term strategy, and that is why complementing SEO with a highly-targeted PPC campaign is key.

The second method is PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising, in which you pay for visitor referrals on a "per-click basis" from a specific search engine. PPC advertising is based on the simple idea of bidding for competitive keywords that are relevant to your business. Both forms of marketing share the same venue – the search engine results pages or SERPs.

Pay-per-click allows you to place your business in front of millions of users immediately. By bidding on competitive and "long tail" terms you have the ability to drill down into niche markets and gain maximum exposure. A professional PPC campaign allows you to incorporate sophisticated elements such as geo-targeting, seasonality, time of day and international visibility into your budget. Additionally, with PPC you have full control over how your ad reads and can also easily manage where your prospects are sent by creating custom landing pages to improve the user experience and increase conversions.

However unlike SEO, your visibility is tied directly to your click budget – once you have spent your allotted click budget, your advertisements are no longer displayed – and your presence on the SERPs vanishes.

The key, of course, is knowing how to mix these two marketing strategies for maximum impact. Done correctly, you'll drive massive amounts of targeted traffic and new revenue to your business. This is why having a dedicated Search Engine Marketing consultant available to manage your business's strategy and campaigns is so important. Ultimately, with the help on web analytics, you'll be able to measure your search marketing R.O.I. to see that taking this professional approach is money well spent.