SEO
In this article we will cover how one could perform SEO using Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a great tool for SEO if used correctly. The following are a few ways one could use Google Ads for SEO as opposed to paid traffic only.
Keyword Research
When it comes to performing SEO using Google Ads the first thing you must use is keyword research. In order to do this you must use keyword planner to know what will work and what will not. When entering the AdWords dashboard, click on "Tools and Settings" on the top right corner then click "keyword planner". Once entered the keyword planner, click "Discover new keywords". After clicking discover new keywords, it will prompt you with the message below:
From this message, type in some keywords you think might be a popular search. On the next page, you will see which ones are the most popular based on what you typed in. Below
As you can see in the image above, the keywords, "peanut butter", "jelly" and "sandwiches" have monthly average searches of 10K-100K and 100K-1M. The average monthly searches will be key to what we are trying to do, perform SEO. The competition for these keywords are both low and high; that means there are many other people using AdWords to compete to sell to potential customers using campaigns. “Ad impression share” is the number of impressions you've received divided by the total number of searches for the location and network you’re targeting that matched the keyword exactly in the last calendar month. This metric can help you identify potential opportunities this keyword has to get impressions and clicks. Top of page bid (low range and high range) shows the lower and higher range of what advertisers have historically paid for a keyword’s top of page bid, based on your location and Search Network settings. The average CPC of your keywords may vary.
Do The Keywords Actually Convert Well?
After you have chosen your keywords that work for you, you need to test to see if they work well for the ad campaign, The question is: do they convert well? If you don't put the keywords to the test, you will be wasting your money because even if you have high search volume with low competition, you could still potentially lose money. If for example you use the keywords "peanut butter jelly sandwiches", you could reach the first page of google with a lot of SEO effort after a year, and even still, no one can be sure this will happen.
Let's for the sake of the example say that the keywords "peanut butter jelly sandwiches" do rank to the top of Google search rank, it can still be to our greatest disappointment that we do not see the numbers we would like to see, even if we put in a year's worth of SEO work in. Since the bounce rate is really high, this means we are not getting what we are looking for. In this case what we have to use to get better numbers are less popular words such as "sandwich tips" and "homemade sandwiches". The key here is to spend $20-50 on an ad campaign and to figure out the truth about selected keywords, rather than doing a year's worth of work into "peanut butter jelly sandwiches".
Click Through Rate
In addition to keyword research, AdWords is a valuable tool for getting a better CTR (Click Thru Rate) with your existing rankings. You might rank well for a given keyword, get a lot of traffic, and still be unable to monetize this traffic because your CTR is low. The reasons for this might be various but inadequate title and description could be a very possible reason. AdWords can also help you get better CTR with your existing rankings. For instance, if you run ad AdWords campaign and you are satisfied with the conversion/performance, you might want to keep changing your ad title and description until you feel you have reached the maximum CTR for your keywords. Sure, it might take you a couple of tries till you find the winning combination of a title and a description and you might even lower your CTR in the process but once you find this magical combination of a title and description, just copy them as the title and description for your page in order to maximize your organic search CTR as well..
Geographic Targeting
One more good use of AdWords for SEO is geotargeting. If you bid on traffic from many geographic locations, you can use Google Analytics to compare how different locations convert. It is quite natural to have significant discrepancies in the conversions for the same keyword among different countries. When you go to Google Analytics and see which countries are converting best, you can invest more effort in them. For instance, you can create local pages for these countries or target the geo-specific keywords with exceptionally good conversion rates. AdWords is a really valuable tool not only for advertisers. It started as a tool for advertisers but its use is not restricted to them alone. For many publishers and SEO experts AdWords is the most valuable tool because even a moderate AdWords campaign can give you valuable insights and save you a lot of time and money to optimize for words, which don't work for you.
