I want to take the opportunity to talk about really examining, I mean spending a good 4-5 hours going deep into your PPC campaigns and weeding out the keywords or poor quality scores that could be driving up the cost per clicks for all your keywords.  These are all things we do on a monthly basis for my clients over at amplifyseo.com but if you’re running your own campaigns you may not.

Dragging Keywords

The first step I’d take a look at is how your keywords are performing.  Assuming you did your keyword research and have 500+ keywords in your campaign take a closer look at the ‘bottom dwellers.’  If a search phrase has not driven a single click or maybe it’s note even generated a single impression int he past 30 days mark it for potential removal.  Then take a look at a number of factors over time (average placement included) and if you see a poor performing tendency it’s time to let the phrase go.

Quality Score

I’m assuming that since you’re reading this blog you are not a complete beginner to PPC or SEO.  With that said, I’m still surprised at how few campaigns I take over for clients where they haven’t opted to display their quality score column.  You need to know what your quality score is as it directly impacts your CPCs (cost-per-clicks).  Enable this column on the ad group page by selecting ‘Customize Columns’ and then ‘Show Quality Score’.

We want to see 8s and above (what Google deems to be ‘Great’) however depending on how large your keyword portfolio is anything 7 or above will do.  Everything else (6 and below) you need to work on.  Read up on quality score factors and get those quality scores as high as possible.  Remember your QS effects not only your CPC for that phrase but all your phrases are effected.

These two really are a 1-2 punch for PPC and should be done continuously.  However, it’s spring so take this opportunity to do a bit of campaign clean up and if you do it correctly you’ll be very surprised and pleased at the end result.

It should be noted, this is an SEO blog so while I will try to be as neutral as possible my opinions certainly lead toward SEO.

Compelling content is the name of the game.
You need to speak with the consumer, relate to them on the level they are at.  If they’re looking for a replacement blender chances are they’re not going to search for “replacement blender” but “my blender broke, what’s a good replacement”.  Marketing firms state that loading keywords into the content will put off the consumer and you will see your conversion rates tank.

One topic that often comes up is that search engine marketers load keywords and use their ‘tricks’ to manipulate the search engines for their own profit.  They will say that if all things were equal the website with the best content should and would always win out.

Optimizing for search brings the customers to you.
Compelling content may be higher converting but if you convert 90% of your visitors but if your total visitors is 100 a month versus 50% of 1,000 a month surely a lower conversion rate for a higher share is better.  The bottom line should be total conversions not percentages right?

Seeking out new developing niche markets can allow you to rank for new phrases quickly with good on-page optimization and thus driving more leads to your website.  You need optimized content to drive that traffic, then you can worry about converting.

My thoughts/conclusion: meeting in the middle.
Sure it might be a cop out to say meet in the middle but the reality is good news: you don’t have to compromise the copy much to rank well.  Too often search engine optimizers will get nailed down to a set philosophy.  We live and breathe numbers; whether it’s keyword density or number of incoming links.  We think in literals: we’re either optimized or we’re not.  And it doesn’t have to be that way.  All you need to do is be a little better than the guy at the top, have a little better link portfolio, and you can easily rank for the up and coming niche markets without butchering the content.

Content is king, but if it’s not seen it doesn’t matter.  However, you don’t have to compromise that content.  Maybe give a list of keyword phrases to the marketers and see if they can naturally slip them in.  Don’t get bogged down by keyword density.  Marketers, you are not diluting your final product by trying to fit in a few keywords the optimizers give you.  Your business is compelling copy, you are blessed with a wide vocabulary, surely you can fit in a few keywords where you think they fit.

Let’s face it, the marketers are here to stay and guess what, so are the search engine optimizers, so let’s find a way to work together.  Understand that the marketers probably know things you as an optimizer do not and vice versa.

However there are a few tools we use just to save time and if you’re interested in Local Search Marketing this is one we use every day: City Concatenator.

What this tool does is allow you to set a few variables such as root keywords, zip code, and a square mile radius. This then outputs a host of variations in just seconds. Literally hundreds of keyword variations at your fingertips within 5-10 seconds.

This tools has allowed us to effectively ditch our Excel keyword generation spreadsheet and get better results within seconds.